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Baca County has always been farm country, and in the fall of 1931 Springfield was talking about a rather unusual harvest. It wasn’t wheat, broomcorn or feed. This time the crop was tonsils and adenoids, and before it was over, some 400 people had reportedly undergone operations at a free clinic in Springfield. The story…
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The years 1934 and 1935 were arguably about as tough as the Dust Bowl ever got in Baca County. The country was dry, crops were failing, dirt was moving and times were already plenty hard without Mother Nature piling on. Yet buried in the newspapers from those two years is a curious part of the…
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The arrival of the railroad in Baca County in 1926 changed the possibilities for the county’s growing broomcorn industry. Distance had long been one of the greatest obstacles facing farmers on the isolated southeastern Colorado plains. Broomcorn might command a good price in distant markets, but getting bulky bales to those markets was another matter.…
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History and Stories
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The Life and Legacy of Cowboy Fred Holister By Kent Brooks Great journeys into the past starts with a single question. For this story that question came a few years back (maybe 2015 or 2016) during a visit with my Uncle Harold Brooks. As we sat talking about the old stories and forgotten histories of…
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As we take part in that annual icon of the southeast Colorado prairie, the 2026 Baca County fair it seems appropriate to talk a little about the culture, history and present-day issues surrounding the event. Some circles of society might question the relevance and value of a county fair when less than 2 percent of…
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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…
