Down In the SE Corner

Vilas, Colorado

            A small village, located in the far southeastern corner of Colorado, near the Oklahoma Panhandle and Kansas border.  It has survived the Dust Bowl and the other farming downturns over the past century.  Founded in 1888, Vilas began life as a ranching community but with the flat rolling land, it soon became farm land.  Today it has a population of just over 100 hardy souls.  The school is still active and that is probably what keeps the little town going. 

            Main Street is vacant, lined with vacant stores from another era.  Even the garage and café appear to be closed.  The Post Office still flies the flag and the sounds of children echo across the village at recess time.  Otherwise one could hear a pin drop on the pavement leading into to town, it is that quiet and peaceful. 

The town sits a good distance off the highway and out there is where the grain elevators are located.  No longer do the rails get polished by trains.  The railroad stopped service some years ago. 

Vilas has become one of the wide spots on the highway from somewhere to over there.  Cars and trucks zoom past with the occasional local slowing down to go home. 

Vilas is becoming a classic ghost town, with a few residents.  Most of the store fronts along main are still standing, most overgrown with trees and weeds.  One of the stores has 1886 marked on its roofline.  It appears that most of the other stores lining the street were also built during the late 1800’s.  They are small, functional buildings and most around 400-600 square feet. 

In other towns, the old buildings on main street were burned down during a town fire.  Making the new stores bigger and usually made of brick.  In Vilas it appears there was not a major fire in downtown that burned up half of the town.  Here is a throwback to what many little towns on the prairie looked like during their early days.  

Ghosts on the Prairie

Abbott, Colorado

            Abbott, CO, is a small ranching and farming community is southern Washington County. The history map shows the first Post Office being established 1887 near where the church is located.   There is also a ranch house nearby, where the PO was located.  It is along the Deertrail wagon road and there are 3 other locations show for Abbott.  Another location for Abbott is a few miles north and showing the mail contract in 1924, 

            Today the land is pretty empty, a few homes dot the area but there are more abandoned homes lying in ruin.  Sometimes it is but a few trees marking where the homestead had been.  Small creeks run across the land and the occasional spring forms small ponds for wildlife and being attractive to the settler of the 1800’s. 

            Homesteading on the Colorado prairie during the late 1800’s was not very successful.  A quarter section of land would not provide much of a living for the farmer back then and most homesteaders failed.  The few that made it were cattlemen and the area around Abbott is mostly ranch land.  It is rolling hills of pasture and some hay fields.  So it is understandable why the 1887 post office would have survived. 

            Being along a wagon road helped the community also.  Supplies would of moved along this route, for the stores that served the community.  The land has not changed much in the past 100 plus years.  One can sit on a ridge overlooking the small valley and hear the creak of wagon wheels as they made their way along the route.  Cattle would have dotted the land, very few fences back then, the antelope would have stood on the horizon watching the traveler make its way over the short grass prairie. 

            The Abbott Church sits on a knoll overlooking a small creek.  A few trees have survived along the banks and the greener grass shows where the water runs along.  The view the other way is to rolling land falling away to the horizon.  The church is on one of those half section roads and one has to zig then zag a bit to get down the country road to get to it. 

            Riding along the dusty road, one climbs up a small hill and in the distance can be seen the church.  Very diminutive building that dominates the land with its distinctive steeple.  Here the local people gathered for celebrations, Weddings, funerals, baptisms, Sunday church and the potluck. 

            Today the little country church sits silent, a reminder of other days.  The pews are dusty, the pulpit awaits the preacher, the bell in the steeple sits at the ready. 

            Nearby is the cemetery and it is still used by a few.  It is unusual in that it is on a sloping hill going away from the church.  Down among the grasses are a variety of markers, some unmarked, with wild flowers and overgrown grasses. 

            The occasional breezes caress the land, ruffling the grasses, rearranging the dust, it is a land that has not changed much.  Yet it has, no longer are there the shuffling of feet in to the church, the laughter rolling out across the land, nor the conversations the day’s news.