The First We Can Remember: Colorado Pioneer Women Tell Their Stories

Chapter 5: The Eastern Prairie: Kit Carson and Prowers Counties

Many a time I have walked one and one-half miles to town to get a drink of fresh well water and bring home a pailful for the children. Cynthia E. Pierce Boyles Before much of it was turned to farmland and rangeland, the eastern third of Colorado was short-grass prairie with an average rainfall of below twenty inches a year. A concern mentioned by nearly every narrator in Kit Carson County, therefore, was the scarcity of water. The drying effect of hard winds can cause drought, severe lightning storms, and tornadoes in summer and intense cold, blizzards, and deep snow in winter.1 By the time these women settled on the eastern prairie, the Plains Indian tribes—the Arapahos, Comanches, and Pawnees, for instance—no longer traversed this area in large numbers. Even before the extermination of the buffalo during the 1870s, mentioned by several narrators, Native Americans had been essentially forced off the land, especially following the Sand Creek Massacre (1864) and its aftermath, when even the peaceful Indians were not safe. The area that became Kit Carson County was known to the rest of the United States as early as 1843 when the explorer John Frémont— looking for a way through the mountains—followed the South Fork of the Republican River toward its source before he turned north.2 In Chapter 5: The Eastern Prairie Kit Carson and Prowers Counties Limon Hugo Flagler Sibert Vona Stratton Burlington Cheyenne Wells h La Junta Granada t Cope Idalia U N I O N PACIFIC RR CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND, AND PACIFIC RR Arikaree River Arkansas River South Fork Republican Riv e r KANSAS NEBRASKA COLORADO KIOWA COUNTY CHEYENNE COUNTY KIT CARSON COUNTY LINCOLN COUNTY BENT COUNTY WASHINGTON COUNTY YUMA COUNTY PROWERS COUNTY N 50 mi 0 25 7. The eastern prairie the eastern prairie 135 1858 the same route was surveyed for the Pikes Peak and Leavenworth Highway, which was used for a year until it was abandoned in 1860. The rush of European American settlers into what became Kit Carson County coincided with the completion of a railway through Burlington and Limon on its way to Colorado Springs in 1887 and 1888. The Rock Island Railway follows an almost due west route through what remain the only communities in the county: Burlington, Stratton (formerly Claremont), Vona, and Seibert, for instance. The first trains ran the route in the fall of 1888. In response to the influx of settlers that the railroad brought, Kit Carson County was organized in 1889, taken from the eastern section of Elbert County, which had been carved from the original Douglas County in 1874. As in the northeastern part of the state, many of the settlers here took lands under the Homestead and the Timber Culture Acts, which allowed a settler to claim up to two 160-acre plots by living on that acreage and improving it by building and farming or, in the case of the latter act, planting ten acres in trees. Although initially a settler had to remain on the land for five years, by the time of the Timber Culture Act in 1873, six months sufficed. After the specific time period, if a settler could prove up, that is, show that the requirements had been met, he or she could buy the land at $1.25 an acre. A severe drought in 1893 and 1894 ruined many of the would-be ranchers, but as is evident from the following accounts, many settlers did remain on the land. The railroad provided a livelihood, as did cattle ranging, and, with irrigation, farming became possible. Wheat and cane or sorghum (for both cereal and for livestock feed) were important early crops in eastern Colorado, and their production provided valid reasons for settlement. As mentioned by these narrators, there were continual conflicts between the farmers and cattlemen. Although, as several of the following narratives suggest, procuring a minister was not often easy, the Methodist Episcopal Church South was popular among the early settlers. This church had come 136 the eastern prairie into existence in 1844. When faced with the moral and political issue of slavery, the Methodist Church divided, and the new church counted among its communicants many African Americans. Most of the narrators here admit that their first several years were very difficult. They had to face and overcome scarcity of water, severe weather, poor housing, lack of knowledge of...