Baca County History

by the Plainsman Herald

Month: March 2019

  • Wilde, Colorado: Colonel York, the Bloody Benders, and West Point.

    The town, Wilde, Colorado is not Baca County.  It was technically in Old Bent county or what is now Prowers County just west of Two Buttes Mountain and north of Butte Creek. However, most of us from Baca County feel the mountain, just over the county line, and the area just north of Two Buttes…

  • When did it the Old Stone Schoolhouse become the Masonic Temple?

    The question that led to this blog was, “When did it (the old stone schoolhouse) become the Masonic Temple?”   I couldn’t answer the question off the top of my noggin so I went to a resource I found awhile back, James Hill’s 1941 Master’s Thesis, “A History of Baca County”  Hill was superintendent at Vilas…

  • Boston, Lamar, & Sam Konkel’s “An Outlaw in Lamar”

    There are many connections between Lamar, Colorado and the 1886-1887 Boom towns of Southeast Colorado. If you have not familiarized yourself with those boom towns click here to see a map.  The news about migration to Southeast Colorado and those new towns was often reported in newspapers such as the following from the March 24,…

  • THE OLD SETTLEMENT AND THE NEW SETTLEMENT OF BACA COUNTY: by Sam Konkel

    Sam Konkel told us much about the first wave of settlement in the 1886-1887 time frame. In this article from the December 21 1917 issue of the Springfield Herald he offers some observations comparing that first wave with the second wave starting in 1907 Sam as always is entertaining with his writing. I will leave…

  • Joy Coy, Colorado & the Coming of the Railroad

    “Nearly everything lives in a hole in the ground; the rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, owls, ground-squirrels, and even the people.” -Letter from Joy Coy Colorado, 1916 Pritchett, Colorado lies in the extreme Southeast part of Colorado.  There is not a lot of activity there these days. There is a school, a bar, a hotel for providing…