Paula Noonan
Summer isn’t an easy time of year. The winds blow and the earth turns brown. This rewrite of George and Ira Gershwin’s most famous song paints a perfect picture of this time of year in southeastern Colorado.
Yet a trip through the high plains in the southern part of our rectangular state offers many insights into our history: the Santa Fe Trail, 19th-century Army forts, the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, Amache Confinement Camp, towns such as Eads, Granada, Pritchett and Kim, the metropolis of Trinidad and the site of Ludlow, where many died during the state’s labor disputes, all make up our Colorado heritage.
To take a history tour from the metro area, take Interstate 70 east, turn diagonally south on Highway 40 in Limon, and travel through Hugo to Eads. Eads is the Kiowa County seat of 657 residents, and its yellow brick courthouse houses the local library (guns are prohibited), courthouse, sheriff’s office and public restrooms. Eads is home to the Sand Creek Massacre Museum, which tells the story of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes who fled war around a bend in Big Sandy Creek in November 1864.
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It was winter when, on November 29, Colonel John Chivington and 600 men completed their long, cold trek from Denver through Boonville near Pueblo to the remote Big Sandy Creek area. Acting on a proclamation by Governor John Evans, Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle and numerous Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders gathered their men at Big Sandy Creek, calling for safety at old Fort Ryan in Otero County near La Junta. Today, the gate at the site commands a commanding view of the western hills, allowing the soldiers to see the tepees along the creek and the Indian ponies to the west.
Black Kettle stood in front of the lodge with an American flag and a white flag to demonstrate the protection he was expected to receive from the U.S. Army based on negotiations with Fort Lyon commander Edward Wynkoop. Nevertheless, Chivington’s men fired into the Indian camp, and the cavalry scattered the Indians’ ponies to prevent them from escaping. Over nine hours, at least 163 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children were killed. When news of the massacre reached the area outside Denver, the U.S. government launched an investigation, but no U.S. leaders were charged.
Chivington is buried in Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. Chief Black Kettle died in November 1868, killed by U.S. cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer while fleeing with his wife across the Washita River at the Battle of Washita, Oklahoma. Edward Wynkoop, who lived on Wynkoop Street of the same name in downtown Denver, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is buried in the national cemetery there.
The latest result of the massacre is the renaming of Mount Evans. Governor John Evans, who died in 1897 at age 83 and is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Commerce City, was disgraced for approving Chivington’s actions. Mount Blue Sky now honors the Cheyenne and Arapaho people. The Arapaho are known as the “Blue Sky Tribe,” and the Cheyenne hold an annual ceremony called Blue Sky.
From the Big Sandy Creek site, travelers head to Lamar and then south on Highway 287 to Granada, home to the Granada Relocation Center (also known as Amache Camp), named for a Cheyenne who married rancher John Prowers, for whom the county in which the camp is located is named.
Amache has been preserved in history thanks to the efforts of the Amache Preservation Society and students from Granada High School, who run the comprehensive Amache Museum in town. These students also conduct archaeological research in collaboration with the University of Denver and work to help the public understand how more than 7,600 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were incarcerated under U.S. Executive Order 9066 during World War II.
Most of the camp’s inmates were from California and Washington state, and they landed on the windswept Granada plateau, far from the vegetable and fruit farms of California’s Central Valley and their homes in cities like Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento. The barbed-wire camp’s original water tower and one of eight guard towers overlooking the one-square-mile “city” are now prominent.
The camp’s population was much larger than either Lamar or Granada. Many inmates worked on the 16 square mile farm. Others worked as doctors, teachers, cooks, and other roles caring for the camp. The camp had a 150-bed hospital, an elementary school, and a high school. A highlight for the camp residents was a high school football game between Holly and Amache players. Governor Roy Romer was on the losing Holly team.
American-style cafeteria meals were foreign to many of the internees, and life was extremely harsh, with no privacy from the bed to the toilet. Among the dead in the cemetery is an adult who died on Christmas Day 1943 and a four-year-old child who died the next day. Families sold off possessions from their hometowns, but little was ever recovered. In 1988, the U.S. Congress appropriated $20,000 to be paid exclusively to surviving former internees. The museum’s petition book notes that people from all over the country have visited the site.
Heading southwest from Amache, the traveler can imagine the harshness of life on the plains. The air is dry, warm and windy. No buffalo roam. Even cattle are scarcely seen along Highway 287, which runs from Granada through the Springfield, Kim and Comanche prairies to Trinidad, where the Rocky Mountains rise miraculously.
Surrounded by mountains, Trinidad has renovated many of its early 20th century buildings and cobblestone streets. It is home to the oldest synagogue in the Rocky Mountain West and tells the story of miners from around the world who extracted coal from the mountains. The Ludlow Massacre historic memorial, just north of Trinidad on Interstate 25, marks the site of an attack on striking United Mine Workers (UMW) miners and their families by private security and the Colorado National Guard on April 20, 1914. As the memorial notes, at least 21 people were killed, 12 of whom were young children.
The Colorado Fuel and Steel Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. at the time of the strike, was the region’s leading business. The railroad, which transported coal north and south, protected the mine owners. When negotiations failed to make headway, the strikers were driven out of the company town. The UMW pitched tents on the lush, windy plain leading to the mines. The strikebreakers used armored cars, known as “Death Specials,” provided by Rockefeller’s company, to fire on the camp.
Ironically, the day before the shooting began, the miners and guards had been playing a baseball game to celebrate Orthodox Easter. Fighting began in the morning and continued throughout the day, leaving four women and 11 children dead in a hole under a tent that had been burned down by a fire set by the guards.
The strike ended without victory for the UMW on December 10, 1914. However, its legacy was different. This act in labor history led to many reforms, including the 40-hour work week, improvements to working and living conditions for coal miners, and the beginning of the right to organize to negotiate workers’ rights. Colorado’s current family leave law, which was fortunately passed by the legislature, is a current example of this progress for workers’ rights.
The Southeast History Tour finally heads north on I-25 through Pueblo, a great riverside walk along the Arkansas River, Colorado Springs, Castle Rock and back to the metro area again. This tour is the tip of the plains in terms of eastern Colorado’s contributions to the state’s history. Next spring or summer, the tour will head into central and northeastern Colorado to explore what’s going on there.
Paula Noonan is the owner of Colorado Capitol Watch, a platform that tracks Colorado’s Congress.
