Happy Killdozer Day: The Making of a Martyr

— "Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things." Marvin Heemeyer

RIP to the fuck around and find out legend.

On June 4th, 2004; disgruntled welder and muffler repair shop owner Marvin Heemeyer takes his armored Komatsu Bulldozer on a tour of destruction, demolishing the Granby, Colorado town hall, the former mayor's house, and several other buildings and leaving millions of dollars in damage. The rampage comes to an end when he commits suicide, after his bulldozer becomes trapped in the basement of a partially-demolished hardware store.

Marvin Heemeyer built a tank. He built a tank, leveled a good portion of a previously quiet small town in the Rocky Mountains with it, then immediately gained a measure of fame because of it, and almost as immediately met an inglorious end.

But here's where the story gets weird (as if it isn't weird already). Somehow during the past 19 years since, Heemeyer has become a legend of sorts. A patriot, even, in some people's eyes. A hero for our troubled times.

Which, for more than one witness to this bizarre chapter in modern American history, is simply wrong. Just flat out wrong.

A man with a grudge built something, instantly christened a "killdozer," to tear up a town: How is he a hero?

"It is the predominant narrative; that Marv was screwed by this small town board that was out to get him, that the local community was out to get him," says Patrick Brower, the author of a book on Heemeyer and his tank. "People get focused on this, that Marv was victimized by the town. But the idea, somehow, that Granby was sophisticated enough to launch this campaign to go get Marv really defies my imagination."

This is his story: The Making of a Martyr
Heemeyer's story, at least the interesting part, begins in Granby, a town in a high basin of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado. Granby, elevation somewhere around 8,000 feet (2,438 meters), is small. Fewer than 2,000 people live there now, and it was no bigger than that in June 2004, when Heemeyer bulldozed his way into history.

Tourism is a draw in the area, though Granby is hardly the center of it. But Rocky Mountain National Park is less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) away. Denver is less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the south. If you want to see the grandeur of the Rockies, any time of the year, and want to get away from the crowds, going through Granby would not be out of the question.

"It's not like a boutique tourism town, like an Aspen or a Vail. It's not really like that at all," Brower says. "It's really a mix between that and just a service town," with a couple of banks, a concrete plant, an electrical co-op and many businesses that cater to the tourism industry.

Granby also is like a lot of small towns in America in that it's a place where it's relatively easy to get to know people and for people to know you. Like it or not.

"There's new people coming and going a lot here, but it definitely has its good old boy local element as well," Brower says, "an element that Marv really tried to capitalize on."

More information on his story >> https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/killdozer.htm