Baca County History

by the Plainsman Herald

About This Project


Who’s heading this up?

My name is Kent Brooks. I am the author of “Old Boston: As Wild As They Come,” and have worked in higher education managing Information Technology and Distance Learning departments for colleges in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming for more than 20 years.
Growing up in Springfield, Colorado, I listened to southeast Colorado stories about broomcorn, the dust bowl, and cowboys of the large cattle companies. I am a long-time blogger on various technology topics for my personal blog, KentBrooks.com as well as this local history blog, which covers topics about Baca County Colorado, the most southeast county in Colorado. I currently work for Casper College in Casper, Wyoming.

Who will see these stories?

You! It will be freely accessible to the world as long this website is maintained. Because of our history and connections to the Dustbowl, I think we will get traffic. The Sonora Babb post that spawned this got 1162 hits in the first 21 hours it was posted and as of today Feb 23, 2013 it has 3555 hits.

Who Has Been Asked to Guest Blog?

No one, but all are welcome! Those interested in recording stories of growing up, living in, or being connected with Baca County Colorado.  It is a place to honor those who came before us and celebrate the history of the area where we grew up.

If your schedule and interests permit, I’d be honored if you want to share a guest blog post about Baca county on the Baca County History blog so that we can all enjoy it. I have enjoyed sharing stories about Baca County on Facebook with many of you but thought it might be good to aggregate and archive some of this in a different place than Facebook.   It is not that I am a more stable resource than Facebook, but I do have something Facebook will never have;  I love the history and people who have made Baca County Colorado home.

Maybe this project stops with a few blog posts and tall tales, or maybe we can transform the content into an update of the big brown Baca County History book from the early 1980s. There are plenty of self-publishing tools that could allow individuals to order as a coffee table type of book.  Utilizing tools such as Google Docs for drafts and a WordPress blog for final content we can create a shared space where we can collaboratively add content about all things Baca County. I can see lots of ways this will go and I am sure we will learn some things about collaborating along the way. If you have ideas about how we can improve the process please let me know.

If you can and want to work on this project that would be great! You can scroll down this document to read more in terms of guidelines / etc. (basically just share something related to Baca County History, Family Stories, Local Lore Legends, and other related content.  Please feel free to include links to your school, projects, blog, etc.) I’d love for you to use this as an opportunity to amplify some of the work you’re most interested in… but themes of posts can certainly vary as long as it is related to Baca County Colorado.

To maintain some structure people will need to sign up for posting opportunities so that I can set up a guest account.  As we get guest storytellers (aka bloggers) we will come up with a schedule so that we can space the timing of posts. You can click any of the buttons below to connect with me.

Who pays for this?

The Plainsman Herald is our primary sponsor, but you can help too!

Sponsors are the ads you see scattered across the site; on posts, or the bottom of pages. Donors are voluntary contributions from readers like you, or from businesses.

Not everyone is a writer, but you can still help by supporting our technical crew. All donations go directly to keeping Baca County History active and open to the public.

This is non-profit project; open to the public and free. We hope to keep this archive online for many years to come, however, there are costs involved in keeping a website up, including things like hosting, research, and even simply time to put in the foot work. 

Every donation is greatly appreciated. Donors will be displayed on the wall, unless they choose to remain anonymous.

7 responses to “About This Project”

  1. I am proud to be from Baca County, My grandparents ,on both sides were from there . someday I will write a book about my experienreces while growing up there.

  2. I would love to write a blog post for Baca County. My grandma, Pamelia Regnier was born in Two Buttes, Colorado. I believe Regnier, Colorado was named after my ancestors, so I might be able to write something on that.

    • Hey Beth I would love for you to write a post here. We could push it out to the Plainsman Herald as well. Were you related to Doc John Regnier at Balko then?

      • Hi. I just now saw this. I must not have received an email. Sorry.
        Don’t know if I’m related to “Doc John Regnier at Balko”, but I’m guessing probably. A couple of my grandma’s brothers are buried in Baca county, and she was born there. I don’t know if I know enough to write, but maybe we could collaborate.

  3. I am a librarian in St. Louis, MO, assisting a student on a research project. I am looking for the name of the high school that was turned into an emergency hospital by the Red Cross in April-May 1935 due to the Dust Bowl. If you also know the town it was in, its coordinates, and the location of the other 5 emergency hospitals (I have an incomplete listing), I would greatly appreciate it.

  4. My name is Kenneth Jeys and i live in Denver, Colorado. I have just obtained for my discontinued post office collection a postcard dated January 27, 1890 with the postmark of Decatur, Colorado on it. It was sent by Mrs. M.L. or M.S. Martin and she wrote on it Decatur, Colorado. What can anyone tell me about the Town of Decatur? Does anyone have a picture of the post office there or a picture of the land now where the post office was? Thank you for your help. Sincerely Kenneth Jeys

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