From Boom to Bust

Today we dropped FROG at the body shop in Arvada to get his front air conditioner hat replaced, his left butt cheek adjusted and painted and his door hinge unsprung, as well as a few other minor things adjusted or repaired.

Then we headed into Denver to visit the library (of course!) the state capitol building (The dome is completely covered in pure gold leaf but much of the building is getting a summer time fix-up and cleaning) and the Colorado Historical Museum.

The latter is a new building with highly interesting interactive displays that tell stories rather than only show off artifacts.

I would like to hear your reactions to one such story. The life story of the small Northeast Colorado prairie town of Keota, which still has a couple of buildings standing just north of the beach Mona and I were relaxing in two days ago.

I can't give you the interactive displays, the recorded interviews with living old time residents or their descendants, or the full scope of seeing the life size displays.  What I can do is try to give you a bit of a slide show that will take you quickly through the birth, life, and death of a prairie community that retains its community spark even decades after the last resident left town.

The town of 'Line Camp' in James A. Mitchener's novel Centennial was drawn from Keota's story.

I bring you Keota, Colorado.    As the museum titled it:      From Boom to Bust

 The cover photo at the top of this blog is of my family in 1965 camped in the high school parking lot of the Kit Carson School. in the late 1800's my Great Aunt Alice's family moved from Michigan to the small town of Sorrento, just west of Kit Carson. The railroad had come through central-east Colorado clear to Colorado Springs. Free land if you would work it was the draw.

They worked it for several decades till the dust bowl of the 1930's forced them out. They moved into Kit Carson and found day labor and took in sewing until that money ran out and then those who were left moved back to Michigan.

When we visited in 1965 Sorrento had only the railroad station sign and the old metal walled grain tower by the tracks. My aunt's homestead was only a couple of trees planted there as a windbreak by my great uncle.

Today nothing remains of Sorrento.  Even the farm wind breaks have died or been knocked over.

Today Kit Carson has about 300 residents. Holding onto community and a place to call home.

Keota has an annual reunion of old timers and youngsters. Sorrento has sand.

-Ken