Frontier Village

Hugo Colorado

            Hugo is one of many little towns that dot the plains of eastern Colorado.  Sitting on the old Smoky Hill Trail, Hugo is loaded with all types of little treasures.  Being the county seat it is a long ways from being a town of ghosts.  Instead it has lots of early day pioneer settler ghosts that hang out in the little frontier town. 

            When one rolls down the hill into town they are greeted by an early day gas station, built around 1910.  Today it is a boutique, gift shop and flower store.  There have been some additions over the years but its distinctive roof line is still there.  On the east side of town one is greeted by the World Champion cowboy, Kid Fletcher at the Lincoln County Fairgrounds.  The fairgrounds are also the site of Willow Springs.  Here the Butterfield Overland Dispatch (BOD) Stage Lines established a relay stage station at the springs.  Standing near the spring, one can look to the hillside to the east and see the ruts of the stage route and Smoky Hill Trail descending the hill into Willow Springs. 

            Willow Springs is not the only stage stop near Hugo.  To the northwest was the Hogan stage station and to the southwest was Cap Barron’s stage stop.  Both sit on private land out in the pasture.  Hogan station was used by the Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Stage line and freighting company.  It was on this stage line that Horace Greeley rode went he went west to Colorado in 1860.  After the stage service was discontinued, the freight wagons continued to roll across this area on their way to the Rocky Mountain goldfields.  When the BOD began operations, they selected the spring at Cap Barron’s.  Because of distances between stations, it did not last long and the stop was changed to Willow Springs. 

            These stage stops were often the targets of Indian raids, killing the agent and driving off the mules.  1870 the Kansas Pacific Railroad began construction through the area.  The spring of that year, the Indians launched coordinated raids on the railroad camps, workers and stage stations, killing and wounding numerous workers, burning anything and everything they could.  Workers retreated to Kit Carson for protection and work was shut down for a few weeks until the army could send troops out to patrol the rail line construction. 

            Today people find arrow heads in the Hugo area and occasionally spent shells from the battles.  After these raids, the Indians fled north and most of the Indian problem was gone.  The railroad went back to building and in the summer of 1870 the rails reached Willow Springs.  That summer the town of Hugo was founded to the west of the stage station and became a division point on the rail line.   A depot was built, along with a roundhouse and hotel with restaurant plus some homes.

            In 1874 John Dickinson, a railroad engineer, rancher and politician, built his house just south of the tracks.   Today that home still stands and is still used as a residence.  Some years ago a family bought the home and began to restore it.  The home was brought back to its original looks and could be a doctor’s home of pioneer days.  There is the picket fence, small lawn, flowers and tall stately trees standing to give shade in the heat of summer.  And yes, a doctor does walk out of the front door.  It is now owned by the local veterinarian.  In Colorado, it is probably one of the oldest homes still in continued use as a residence. 

            There are other old houses like this scattered around Hugo from the 1870’s and 80’s.  The Hedlund House, sits just north of downtown a couple of blocks.  It was built in 1877 and today it is a museum.  It has been maintained by the town and has numerous exhibits from local history.  Peter Hedlund was a land man and had a company in Hugo recording many of the patents for homesteaders.  The company he started still bears his name, Hedlund Abstract and is still doing business.  Over the years the little museum, that the Hedlund’s donated, has seen changes and additions yet it still reflects life on the prairie.  It is open on weekends through the summer or opened by request.  Here one can step back in time, seen many original furnishings and dream of what it would have been like living on the plains over a century ago. 

            There is the little Brown Church, built in the 1880’s.  it is wooden church that still stands and serves a congregation, holding services on Sunday’s. 

            Hugo also features a Boot Hill.  To the north of town, out in the pasture is a cemetery.  Until someone fenced it off, livestock grazed through the graves and some of the head stones have been knocked over and or broken.  There are numerous unmarked graves and many large elaborate fenced plots.  A few wooden crosses lie on the ground and mysteries float over the ground.  There probably a few souls resting here that met their demise at the end of a six shooter or maybe at the end of a rope.  There were train robberies in the area, wild and wooly nights at the many saloons and other assorted altercations.  Hugo was a wild and western railroad town.  Some of the headstones in the cemetery read, born in _______ England, buried in Hugo ….. or born in ______ Michigan, died in Hugo, Co.  There are the sad ones showing a baby or child and there were the diseases. 

            Doc Coulson, did not make it to the old cemetery.  The residents of Hugo at the time gave him his own personal graveyard.  On a ridge overlooking the valley lays the fearless frontier doctor.  In 1890, smallpox broke out in Hugo, creating fear and panic.  A local rancher caught the disease and no one would care for him.  Doc Coulson agreed to care for him and nursed the rancher back to health.  The Doc did not survive though, he caught the smallpox and perished in 1891.  Today he sits on the ridge looking out over the land below.  The town built a trail up there and named the park after the good doctor.  The Doc Coulson Trail is in the northwest corner of town. 

            A small quite town on the prairie that is not s ghost town but is full of ghosts.  There were the buffalo hunters that visited, the Calvary that rode past, the Indian relics, buffalo wallers and tall tales of yesterday.

            An ancient railroad roundhouse is on the southwest side of town.  It is slowly being rebuilt and restored.  Built in 1909, it served the railroad many decades before being vacated, then sold to a hardware and implement dealer.  Then a junker got it and stored his junk in it.  Eventually the county was able to buy it and the Union Pacific donated the land it was on to the county.

            Today the town of Hugo is on the Ports to Plains expressway and a few pause to look at the village.  The old depot sits in a park that houses some of the old courthouse memorabilia.  Few will stop and look at the sign showing the nearby Texas Montana Cattle Trail and the Smokey Hill Trail.   City Park has an area where truckers on occasion spend the night.  There a couple of shops on main street downtown in the old business district.  Occasionally it gets exciting when the turkey parade crosses the highway and the truckers lay on their horns.

            No longer do the cowboys ride into town for the weekend, riding up to the saloon, riding their horse in the door, getting their whisky, riding out the back door and BS’ing with the other cowpokes.  No longer do the trains stop and change crews.  The old hotel where the train crews stayed, is now a memory.  Out at the fairgrounds, there are still rodeos and the cowboys now ride up in their pick-up pulling a trailer. 

            

World Basketball Champions

 

A story that grew into a legend of mythical proportions.  The little town on the prairie beat  the big city boys.  In 1929 the little town of Joes was the Colorado state basketball champions and went to the national championship tourney.  They progressed though the tourney but not to the finals.  Because they had beat at team that had beat a team that had beat the national champions, Joes was declared the national champions. 

Here was a little school of less then 40 students in all of 4 grades in High school.  There were 20 boys and 10 made the team.  The tiny school was the goliath slayer of the 1920’s. 

Today about all that is left of Joes is the story, now in epic proportions.  Population is less then 100 souls and the streets get rolled up at night and the wide spot on Hwy 36 is host to an occasional truck passing through in the night. 

Sore fronts, businesses sit silent along the highway, the liquor store shows some sign of life.  Peeling paint, boarded windows, tattered shutters on long neglected shops.  The school has long closed and consolidated with neighboring schools.  The roar of the crowds are silent.  Whispering winds of the past echo over the rooftops of yesterday. 

How does the little burg cling to life.  Back a ways off the highway sits a nice well kept modern office building.  The telephone company  maintains an office building in the little village, giving it life support.

Here are a few jobs to keep things going.  The nearest shops are not near.  A town of any size is an hours drive or better.  Here the few dwellers learn to live without lots of amenities. 

Then there is the guy that retired and moved to Joes.  He bought an old gas station and made it into hos shop.  Here he works on his dragsters and street rods.  There is a nice house next door and is well cared for.  Time marches on while he and a couple of friends tinker in the old gas station.  More hot air is generated along with some dregs of coffee.   In the wide spot on the empty highway life motors along. 

On the east side of town is a Memorial roadside park, picnic shelters, horseshoe pits and well manicured pasture grass. 

Hwy 36 across the eastern prairie probably has one of the best collection of little towns and old empty buildings.  It is a road of past times, passing many a ghost of other years.  From Strasburg east it is almost all ghost towns and dozens more on the country roads. 

Peoria, Colo

 

Much like a cat, Peoria, has had more then one life.  Today it is an exit on I-70 and a few empty building and some rubble piles mark the spot. 

Peoria had its beginnings on the smoky Hill trail during the 1860’s n 70’s.  The summer of 1870 the railroad passed through the site and they put in a depot and some section houses for a maintenance  crew.  It sits on a ridge overlooking the East Bijou Creek where there are springs and water. 

A store was built for the local settlers and later when the highway pushed through a gas station.  Peoria never became much of a town, mostly a stop on the railroad and a wide spot on the highway.  The railroad closed their facilities and the rest followed suit and soon it was an empty wide spot.

Then the Interstate was built.  Rather then isolating the area, it brought life.  Some dog people bought some land by the exit and soon the Byers race track was built.  Busloads of people traveled out the Byers racetrack at Peoria. 

The greyhounds brought the little junction back to life, well kind of.  There were a few homes built for the caretakers.  Nothing else but the race facilities.  The the racing dogs hit as pot hole and greyhound racing went into the history books.  For years the p;lace sat empty, collecting dust and tumbleweeds. 

For years it was an empty land mark next to the Interstate. 

Few years ago it was given a new life transfusion.  It was purchased and things were cleaned up, painted and new life as a race track of another type was on the horizon.

The collector of tumbleweeds and dust was looking new and shinny.  Time rolled on and nothing more was happening.  Activity around it was gone.  The ghosts of greyhounds were free to roam again. 

Today, machinery site quietly, fences are up and gates secured.  The prairie land mark sits in slow repose of nothing. 

Even the house looks forlorn as waits for something.

The wide spot of Peoria is once again an empty wide spot.

Old Saw Mills at Thresher’s Day

After the Harvest, lots of communities will have their heritage festival of some type.  These run through October in some parts of the country.  Here one can see many of the old machines that were used during the 1800’s in to the early 1900’s.  Lots of this could be found in the mining camps as well as the prairie land. 

The pictures are from scanned slides I took a number of years ago, well decades ago.  Since then things have changed some yet here is a glimpse into another era that is slipping into fading memory banks. 

The steam engine was developed during the early 1800’s and one of the reasons for the Industrial revolution.  The vertical steam donkey supplied power to factories and was put on the wheels to operate early trains.  Here the steam engine is a tractor that is being used to operate a saw mill. 

Lumber was critical to any early pioneer endeavor.  Building houses, shops, sheds, buildings… etc. 

The mill could be set up in the woods, town, camp or wherever a supply of wood could be found.  Down into the mine shafts the timbers went for bracing.  Out on the land there was a home raising and on the corner was a half frame for a saloon tent. 

It was fascinating to watch the old timers operate these old pieces of machinery that their parents or grandparents had used to help build their home. 

The lumber would take shape and one could feel the anticipation of new structures being built,a dream coming to life.  It was a shared experience, neighbor helping neighbor.  Working together to accomplish their dream. 

The crowd was just as enjoyable as was watching the different machines operate. 

because of the plethora of government regulations many of these old machines now sit back in the corner of the barn collecting dust. 

Giving up the ghost

 

 

The little house on the prairie is slowly giving its ghosts over to memories. For decades is has stood on the grass lands, a monument to other times.  Here the dreams of the early settler was realized.  Their own home and a piece of land. 

Built in the early 1900’s and looks like added on at a later date.  Roots were established, A school was nearby and Town was not much further.  Roots were put down and a new life was begun.

Farm prices sky rocketed at the end of WWI and farmer scrambled to the banks mortgaging anything and everything to produce more or buy more land.  The bottom fell out of the farm market and there was no money.  The banks wanted the loans paid and there was none to pay the banks.  Then the dirty 30’s rolled in on black clouds of dirt. 

Soon the dream was vanishing, farmers were being evicted by the banks and a few with money were buying up the vanished dreams.  The building were left and soon the residents were cattle, laying the shade and grazing on the grasses. 

Having no use for the house or wanting to spend the money to tear it down the house settles back to the land. 

Amache ….. Relocation Camp

 

At the end of the Arkansas River in SE Colorado is where the Japanese interment camp was located.  Overgrown with weeds the markers rise out of the growth.  Foundations and footers dot the land, that today is almost empty.  There have been numerous conversations about fixing the place up and recreating parts of the camp.  Yet that has been mostly it, conversation.  With the governments poor condition, money for projects like this is hard to come by and it takes lots of effort that few are willing to put forth.  So the prairie winds rustle over the land. 

Here is a link that will take you to a web site with numerous pictures of the area showing its size. 

https://www.google.com/search?q=amache+relocation+camp&espv=2&biw=1360&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=MaDvVPuDMY6gyATjo4GgDA&ved=0CDYQsAQ

Fear causes people to do many unusual things and sometimes there are regrets.

The day I walked the camp it was empty.  Few grasshoppers and the rustling breeze.  There were a few markers in the cemetery.  Most had been exhumed and moved to a family grave site after the war. 

For years, families lived out their lives in a military stockade.  There was bitterness and anger, among the residents and the neighbors.  Many of the local people did not want the camp to be in their back yard and there was the occasional conflict. 

Some of the locals had relatives that had been at Pearl Harbor and they carried lots of bitter anger.  There were some Japanese that had sympathies with the homeland and there were others that were some of the most Patriotic of Americans. 

Some of the Japanese descendants joined the military and fought during WWI in the European theatre.  Most lived out their time in the camp and tried to go back to their homes after the war. 

Out on the empty grass land of the prairie are conflicted memories, Love, anger, melancholy and a moment in time that stands. 

A ghost town in short duration.

Idalia, CO

 

Idalia is a curious little town, covers maybe 6 square blocks.  Main street is empty, at the end is the school.  The glue that keeps the town going.  The grain elevator is still in operation and there is a convenience store/gas station and garage that sits on the east edge of town.  Then there is the curiosity, a motel.

Highway 36 is not a major road and Highway 385 is that a way some distance.  So how does a motel stay open in a dwindling country town. 

Yet… there it is, on the eastern edge of town across from vacant land. Next door is an abandoned gas station indicating there had been a fair amount of travel at one time on the road. 

Its better days are someplace in the past an era of long ago.  The nearest towns of any size are 30 some miles that a way or that a way.  Stores and shops sit vacant next to empty lots. 

It is farm country and the grain elevator stays busy throughout the year and the convenience station gets a few of the truckers and the occasional traveler. 

The prairie icon, stoically stands, overlooking the land that feeds it.  It is a considerable distance to the nearest railroad.  Trucks rumble in and out at various times of the year. Otherwise the ghosts of other days silently repose on the vacant streets that are briefly interrupted when school is out. 

Kanarado, Kansas

 

On the Colorado Kansas border is the declineing village of Kanarado.  It was named for the two states is joins up with.  The Interstate passed it by and most of the highway business have withered away to empty shells.  The exit is back over there someplace to the east of town and the little rest area at the state line is empty and overgrown.

No longer do the passing motorists pause briefly for fuel and maybe a quick bite at the greasy spoon.  The wind whistles through the remaining trees.  The train rumbles through couple times a week and the occasional farm truck rolls into the grain elevator. 

Main street appears to of been a lively commerce center.  Toady it is mostly empty.  A few cars cars the street.  The Post Office is open and there is a sign on one of the old building that says “Senior Center.”  Otherwise a person could probably take a street nap and not be disturbed. 

There are a variety of old empty decaying buildings for reminders of another day when it was a bustling prairie town.  From the size of the town it appears it was around 500 to 1000 residents at one time, now a couple hundred or less call it home.  The farms keep it alive.  The school is gone, consolidated with the neighboring town, where most of the businesses are now. 

The lumber yard office is now the community museum.  It is open a couple days a year.  Like most of the rest of the town, it is asleep the rest of the year. 

The reminders of another era cling to life, in various states of decay and neglect the little town hangs on.  There are numerous vacant lots and some neat old homes that would make cool haunted homes.

Next October I’ll probably pull it out for halloween week and see what kind of story I can put to it.  These little towns had so many different characters that lived in them and their stories beg for telling. 

Buildings stuffed back in a corner beg as question…. what were they used for?  It is a question to speculate on for the mystery is the question. 

Just outside of town a farmer has a neat old barn, that has been kept up.  It is these few people that keep the little burg from completely disappearing.  Although now they drive some distance to go shopping. 

On the side street by the tracks are more reminders of when this was a prosperous little town.  Shops and garages, now overgrown with weeds and ill kept. 

The siren song of the big city has a lure that many a country person goes to.  The big box store has replaced the little mom and pop stores.  The fragrance of new attracts many a person to the big plastic city lights.  These little towns are on life support and recitation is of very little avail. 

The grain elevators and the railroad are the life support system to keep a faint pulse. 

The Great Depression and the Dirty 30’s was the clamp that began to squeeze the life out of the farm villages.  The big box stores began hammering nails into their coffins.  Today the whispering winds of the past float over the land. 

Galatea

 

Galatea was one of those towns that took me more then one attempt to find.  I had driver past it several times but never noticed it.  The railroad has a huge earth berm beside it and things on the other side are well hidden.  Where the county road turns off the state highway there is a small window to look back into it.  Then it still looks like no more another abandoned ranch house, which are plentiful on the plains. 

Galatea sits north of the junction of SH 96 and CR 27.  It had its beginnings in 1887 as a railroad camp.  The Missouri Pacific wanted to reach the Rocky Mountain goldfields and this route to Pueblo was almost a straight line from Kansas City. 

Most of the railroad camps became memories.  Galatea lasted for a bit.  Some shops were there plus homes.  Today there is mostly weeds, couple houses, some out buildings and lots of concrete piles from footers and foundations. 

The depression hit followed by the drought.  The lack of money and moisture took its toll on the early settlers.  The Dust Bowl of the 30’s blew many a settler out.  Most farm land was ruined and very little range land could be used. 

The railroad provided some work for the few that hung in there during the dust storms.  The land is still dry and the dust boils in the sky on occasion.  It is not an easy land to live on yet a few make a nice living.  Many people grudgingly left their homes, for here were their dreams, their own land. 

The railroad no longer carries trains, the rails are possibly going to be removed and the highway sees the occasional traveler.  Near by is the town of Eads, the County Seat.  Here are the stores and shops for provisions and take care of business.  Way over there someplace is a city or two.  Homes are few and far between.  Population for the entire county is less then 2000.  Galatea seldom shows up on maps and most travelers fly by not even noticing the few trees that struggle to survive marking the once town. 

Here one can walk the path of John Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath. 

Highway 96 begins in western Kansas and ends in Pueblo, Colorado.  Along this route are scores of little ghost towns like this.  After doing some more research on Galatea, I found there were numerous camps the railroad built that never became towns.  So I have future excursions along this stretch of road to go town looking again.  Have to find a better map that shows the railroad locations. 

It is a highway of ghosts that winds beside the railroad tracks, much like it did more then a century ago.  The code polls still stand and the rails are rusted and the highway glides on past these pages of times past.

The Cheyenne Wells

Near the headwaters of the Smoky Hill River is the wells that the Indians had dug out.  It is also the name  a town to south used, Cheyenne Wells, CO. 

The Indian wells had been hand dug over the years along the banks of the creek.  Looking at the sand creek, one would see no water.  Yet along here there are small springs and if one scoops out some sand, the hole will fill up with water.  Knowing this the Indians would use this for their water source as they roamed over the plains in search of the buffalo. 

Curved back into the bank of the creek the Indians had a nice cool place in the summer to get out of the heat.  Into the side of the stream a small cave had been carved for protection and the water from the springs kept the cave nice and cool.

Then gold was discovered in the mountains to the west and gold fever was under way.  This watering hole became and important stop on the journey west.  The Smoky Hill Trail marked this as a water stop on the trail map and later it was a stage stop. 

The white man enlarged the cave over the years to the point where a team of horses with wagon could be driven into the cave and be turned.  It had become a cavern.  Even after the railroad went to the south these wells were still used to wagon travelers. 

Some local people said it was to big and could no longer support the span.  There was fear it would collapse.  For years it stood the test of time.  Then in the 1930’s there was a clamor it was unsafe.  A local to it on himself to make it safe. 

He walked into the cave with dynamite.  Walked back out and watched a cloud of dust belch out from the cave the Indians had begun centuries earlier.

Today it is a desolate spot on the prairie.  The springs ooze out of the ground only to disappear into the sand.  Near by is a pump, not for water, rather black gold.  What had been an important oasis, is now forgotten empty spaces.

Ghosts of Towner, CO

 

Towner is almost in the state of Kansas.  On a nice day one can look east and see the grain elevators od their neighbors in Kansas.  That is about all that’s left in Towner is a couple of grain elevator operations.  Population is now less then 25.  The businesses are gone, shuttered and overgrown.  The few homes there are nice and one can see some activity there. 

Towner probably has one of the saddest stories a person could read about.  March of 1931 a nasty spring blizzard swept across the plains with nasty fury.  That morning dawned nice and warm, 60 plus degrees.  School children were picked up by the bus and off to school they went.  By the time they got to school the radio was reporting on the ugly blizzard headed their way. 

Children were put back on the bus to go home at 9 in the morning.  Having gone a short distance down the road the blizzard hit.  It was blinding and the driver could not see the hood of his bus.  There

was no heat and the windshield was frosted over.  Taking a turn to go to a neighbors house a short distance away the drive got lost and drove in circles becoming stuck in the heavy snow. 

For a day and a half the blizzard raged.  The children and driver were trapped in the bus, no heat, no food, no water.  The ending was not happy.

Today there is no longer a school, it has consolidated with neighboring Sheridan Lake.  It is now a town of mostly empty streets, old machinery and a few dwindling houses. 

Located on a state highway, there is not much traffic that flies past on the blacktop.  Being a state road rather then a US highway, not many changes have been made to the right of way.  The highway and the railroad parrallell each other for the most part and the bend and wind across the plains. 

Here one can step back in time and see what it was like to drive on a highway in the early 1900’s.  When the railroad pushed through in the late 1800’s a wagon road followed the iron rails.  Not much has changed.  Today it is a nice paved highway slicing over the grasslands. 

Most of the towns on SH 96 could be considered ghost towns and few there is nothing left but empty shacks.  Even western Kansas has its share of forsaken burgs.

Here there is a look back at another time when dreams of a new life were flocking to get their own piece of land. 

When something is neglected, Mother Nature steps up to reclaim her land.  Weeds sprout and things collapse.  Even the railroad is seldom used and buried in among the weeds.  Time has stopped along here. 

Old Cemetery

 

To the north of town is an old cemetery, out in the pasture.  There is no roadway or path to it, one has to walk across the pasture to get there.  One day finally arrived and I put on my boots and strolled out to have a look see.  It is not a well organized layout.  More of a collection of plots scattered here and there with some single graves.  There are probably a bunch that had wooden crosses or were unmarked.  There was one wooden cross laying in the grass and there were some markers that had crumbled in the land. 

I found a local that had grown up in the area and asked him some questions about it.  There were some fenced off areas with mixed stones in them and one was some distance from the others.  He said they probably died from anthrax is why they were buried over there. 

That gave some pause to stop and think.  Anthrax is common in the area but with today’s medicine it is not the life threatening plague like it was a couple of centuries ago. 

He went to say there were some pastures in the area that if cattle were grazed on them they had to be vaccinated for anthrax.  There are also other grave sites around where they buried people that perished from the fungus. 

It was not unusual years ago to bury people that had a plague type of disease in separate area.  Sometimes the people were cremated, the fear was so great.  Smallpox, measles and influenza were some of the nastiest killers that swept over the pioneers that settled on the prairie. 

There was a doctor that died from smallpox.  He is buried  way over in another area west of town with a woman.  Such were the fears of people that they would be contaminated. 

It was fascinating to walk through the grave yard and wonder what happened.  Then hear the story and read other stories, things kind of make sense. 

Most of the head stones were in the 1880’s and the unmarked ones, probably earlier. 

The town has another cemetery to the west about two miles.  It sits on a ridge, make a good boot hill.  Across the road is the Catholic cemetery. 

It is in the old cemetery where one can find the struggles of the town to survive in the early days.

How many perished from lead poisoning is not mentioned.  Yet I’m sure a few of the forgotten spots were from altercations at the saloon.  There were train robberies, Indian conflicts, range disputes and a mixture of frontier people.  Two different stage routes passed through, the Smoky Hill Trail was nearby and there are Indian camps by the springs in the area. 

The cemetery is rough looking yet the life these people lived was rough and tumble.  To survive in the 1870’s and 80’s was a feat in itself.