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By Kent Brooks Before the telephone reached most towns in the American West, one of the largest ranching companies in the world had already built its own private communications network stretching across what is now southeastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico. Most histories of rural telephones focus on the famous barbed-wire fence telephone systems that…
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“Low characters naturally gravitated in this direction where they would be in less danger of the law. Peaceable men were sometimes forced to become murderers through association with the lawless element who were thrown in their midst. Questions were not asked of their past.” -J.R. Austin, 1936, An Early History of Baca County In the…
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One hundred and forty years is a long time. When George Hosmer published the first issue of the Plainsman Herald in the spring of 1887, Baca County had not yet been organized. There was no courthouse, no county government, and many of the communities that would eventually dot the High Plains had yet to be…
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By Kent Brooks Before the telephone reached most towns in the American West, one of the largest ranching companies in the world had already built its own private communications network stretching across what is now southeastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico. Most histories of rural telephones focus on the famous barbed-wire fence telephone systems that…
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“Low characters naturally gravitated in this direction where they would be in less danger of the law. Peaceable men were sometimes forced to become murderers through association with the lawless element who were thrown in their midst. Questions were not asked of their past.” -J.R. Austin, 1936, An Early History of Baca County In the…
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Few men embodied the spirit of southeastern Colorado more fully than Alfred A. Arraj. Born far from the windswept plains of Baca County yet forever shaped by them, Arraj rose from small-town lawyer and civic booster in Springfield, Colorado, to become one of the most respected federal judges in the American West. Today, his name…
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Reference: Martin, Arthur. The story of broomcorn. 1950. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/56245. (Accessed April 23, 2026.). Public domain. Published 1923-1977 in U.S. without printed copyright notice. Contact dcc@library.uiuc.edu for information.
