Baca County History

by the Plainsman Herald

Category: Southeast Colorado

  • An Al Jennings 1908 Silent Western, “The Bank Robbery”

    I have mentioned several times the influence Old Boston, Colorado likely had on the early development of the western movie genre because of the time Al Jennings and the Jennings clan spent there. He doesn’t mention Boston much after their time there, but like everyone else who past through the town, the Jennings left there…

  • Tributary Towns

    As a continuation of my look at Southeast Colorado Boom towns (1886-1889) I thought I would toss out an interesting town ad for Lamar. Almost all of the towns which popped up during that era had an advertisement that was placed in newspapers “back east” (usually Kansas) to encourage settlers to come west. This is…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • The Noted Burying Ground: Boston, Colorado

    The “Noted Burying Ground” or Boston, Colorado Cemetery shown in the Dec 2018 photo below is all that is left of what was Boston, Colorado of the Southeast Colorado plains.  There are two issues that must be clarified as we give you a bit of this story. The Southeast  plains reference is important as there…

  • An 1887 Letter from Judge Jennings

    Many of you are familiar with Judge JDF Jennings who was Vice President of the Boston or Atlantis (Colorado) Town Company from my book “Old Boston: As Wild As They Come.”    The Judge aka Judge Jennings aka John D.F. Jennings was a former plantation owner, an attorney, and a physician.  He served the Confederacy during…

  • Dust Bowl Research Update: Origins of the term”Dust Bowl”, Maps and more

    I have been collecting artifacts of the Dust Bowl as it relates to Baca County for awhile. My focus is compiling a resource that tells the “Dust Bowl” story from the perspective of the Baca County Newspaperman, in particular, Springfield Democrat Herald, Editor Ralph Williams.   However, the research from other newspapers across the country…

  • Names of Springfield Residents of 1889 Disclosed in Letter this Week…

      The names of those who lived in Springfield and community back in the year 1889 disclosed in a The Democrat-Herald (Springfield, Colorado) 25 Jan 1935. — clipping from the Springfield Herald, the predecessor to The Democrat-Herald.  This is a reprint of a February 25, 1889 letter written from Springfield, Colorado and reprinted in the…

  • A 1907 View of the Santa Fe Trail.

    We have had several conversations about the portion of the Santa Fe Trail which crosses Baca County.  Most recently we posted Jim Womack’s “Ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, The Aubrey Trail Cutoff.”  The following article in the Springfield Herald (Springfield, Colorado) May 31, 1907, is attributed to the Syracuse Journal, but no specific issue.  It…

  • Sam Konkel’s take on the Al Jenning’s “Fishy” Autobiography.

    In “Old Boston: As Wild As They Come” we tell the story of many of the characters of the that short-lived (1886-1889) and wild Colorado Boomtown, Boston, Colorado.  The key resource for this story are the 1918-1919 writings of Sam Konkel, who ran one of two newspapers in that town.  Konkel told us much about the…