Baca County History

by the Plainsman Herald

Month: September 2018

  • Names of Springfield Residents of 1889 Disclosed in Letter this Week…

      The names of those who lived in Springfield and community back in the year 1889 disclosed in a The Democrat-Herald (Springfield, Colorado) 25 Jan 1935. — clipping from the Springfield Herald, the predecessor to The Democrat-Herald.  This is a reprint of a February 25, 1889 letter written from Springfield, Colorado and reprinted in the…

  • A 1907 View of the Santa Fe Trail.

    We have had several conversations about the portion of the Santa Fe Trail which crosses Baca County.  Most recently we posted Jim Womack’s “Ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, The Aubrey Trail Cutoff.”  The following article in the Springfield Herald (Springfield, Colorado) May 31, 1907, is attributed to the Syracuse Journal, but no specific issue.  It…

  • Sam Konkel’s take on the Al Jenning’s “Fishy” Autobiography.

    In “Old Boston: As Wild As They Come” we tell the story of many of the characters of the that short-lived (1886-1889) and wild Colorado Boomtown, Boston, Colorado.  The key resource for this story are the 1918-1919 writings of Sam Konkel, who ran one of two newspapers in that town.  Konkel told us much about the…

  • Sam Konkel’s Map of Southeast Colorado Stagecoach Routes 1887-1889

    A couple years ago I found a copy of Sam Konkel’s Southeast Colorado Stagecoach map in terrible condition.  The quality was so poor it was basically useless and it led me to the development of the 1886-1889 Boom Town map located here in a previous blog post. However,  in my last visit to Baca County, I…