http://www.mnhm.org/246/Morrison-Natural-History-Museum http://www.colorado.edu/cumuseum/ ONLINE VIDEO — https://vimeo.com/143654356 WITH DR. MARTIN LOCKLEY M, DEC 10, 2012 - 7 MP VISIT A MUSEUM AND/OR WATCH A VIDEO Dr. Martin Lockley, a world-renowned expert in geology, paleontology, and evolution, took us far back in time to when Anthem Ranch was under a huge inland sea and the Front Range had a beach. The dinosaurs walked along this beach for ages, leaving their tracks and bones. He explained the intense 19th century rivalry of museum directors leading to a dinosaur bone “gold rush” & “bone wars.” Dr. Lockley has been instrumental in the creation of the Morrison Natural–History Museum and the dinosaurs tracks unit of the University of Colorado Natural History Museum. THE PAST, BOTH RECENT AND DISTANT, OF ANTHEM RANCH & OUR NEIGHBORHOOD OUR CLUB HAS SPONSORED EVENTS FEATURING WELL-KNOWN EXPERTS WHO EXPLORE OUR HERITAGE. SOME OF THEIR PRESENTATIONS ARE SUMMARIZED HERE. COLORADO DINOSAURS ! Gwen Kelly, a 3rd generation Coloradoan, wanted to share the state’s rich history and heritage with others. Toward this end she organized the founding of The Colorado Heritage Club in January 2011 and has led it ever since. Over the first year the club produced events featuring professional speakers and entertainers open to all interested Anthem Ranchers. By popular demand these evening events soon became the main focus. Low price tickets ($1—$3) were sold to cover costs. High quality videos were often shown at “matinees” (free). Local town museums, libraries, and historical societies were valuable resources. An extensive club website was created, with active links to these information sources — accessible via the club web page. In April of 2012 The Colorado History Center reopened in Denver and it also became a valuable resource, http://historycoloradocenter.org/ . Recently many new residents have requested information about the origins of towns surrounding Anthem Ranch. Of the 66 programs, 2011-2017, Gwen and Joe Kelly have provided summaries here of those that were specifically about neighboring towns. It is hoped this will bring back pleasant memories for those who attended and interesting information for residents who are new. Distant Past …………………………………….. 1 Introduction …………………………………….... 2 — 3 Anthem Ranch (Distant Past to Present) …….. 4 — 7 Louisville ……………………………………..….. 8 — 9 Lafayette ……………………………………..….. 10 - 11 Erie ……………………………………………..... 12 -13 Historic Marker …………………………….……. 14 - 2- PAGE — BACKGROUND — —TABLE OF CONTENTS—
10
Embed
COLORADO DINOSAURS€¦ · the state’s rich history and heritage with others. Toward this end she organized the founding of The Colorado Heritage Club in January 2011 and has led
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
While Lafayette and Louisville were both initially settled
by farmers, once coal was discovered they quickly became
coal mining towns. In these towns the coal miners owned
their homes and lived lives independent from the mines
where they worked. Erie, however, became a company
town.
Erie was also different in that it was isolated from
Lafayette and Louisville. As the mines grew and railroads
arrived Erie became oriented toward Denver, Boulder, and
Longmont.
The line on the map above shows approximately where
the band of coal deposits were. Broomfield is outside this
strip so it was never a coal town.
In the years gone by The Colorado Heritage Club
hosted speakers who covered the history/heritage of
Lafayette, Erie, and Broomfield as well as other
neighboring towns. These earlier presentations are
summarized in this booklet as is our presentation on
Louisville. Kirk Oglesby shares the history of the very land
on which Anthem Ranch is built.
- 3-
APPROXIMATE
PATH OF THE
COAL SEAM
— LEARNING MORE ABOUT WHERE WE LIVE —
ANTHEM RANCH’S PAST
By Kirk Oglesby, Code Compliance Manager, City and County of Broomfield (Originally presented at
Anthem Ranch during a visit with the mayor around 2013.)
- 4-
You are not the first persons here on the western edge of the Great Plains. At least 7,000 years ago ancient hunters strolled the high rolling grasslands of Anthem Ranch and scouted locations of the massive herds of bison and antelope. The prehistoric butchering site along Rock Creek down in the valley has items dating to the early Archaic Period 5500 – 3000 BC. These ancient hunters too were renewed by the majesty of the Front Range in the morning sun.
In later times, Spanish armies explored the Great Plains intending to conquer and colonize the land, but never quite made it up to Anthem Ranch. Although they conquered the peoples of Central and South America the Spanish could not extend their rule northward from Taos through the Apache and Comanche territory. The lands north of the Arkansas River up to Anthem Ranch were primarily Arapaho. The neighboring Ute tribes did not venture out very far onto the plains from the mountains.
Eventually, after the Indian lands were taken following the Civil War, the area was flooded with farmers who broke the prairie sod and planted crops. After an 1880’s drought the families in the area banded together and dug ditches to carry water from the mountain streams in the foothills onto their farms in the area. The Community Ditch running through Anthem Highlands is a remnant of these historic ditches and is still active today. The ditch can be seen crossing Sheridan Blvd east of Sienna Reservoir lying east of Lowell Blvd. Following the drought and the dust bowl of the 1930’s, farmers along the northern Front Range created the Northern Colorado Conservancy District and a tunnel was dug underneath Rocky Mountain National Park to bring water from the western slope to fill the irrigation canals of the farmers with more water. This extensive system of snowmelt diversion and storage is known as the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. The water from Big Thompson and Windy Gap water rights owned by Broomfield is delivered to us by the conservancy district through a pipeline from Carter Lake to our water treatment plant lying to the east of Holy Family High School.
Coal mining fueled the economy of Lafayette and Erie into the 1900’s, but coal mines were not a part of what is now Anthem Ranch. Remains of a shaft from the old Blue Ribbon mine can be found on the northern portion of the Anthem Ranch open space just west of the
- 5-
Boulder County line. This was a small mine from 1933 next to the older Baker and Vaughn mines to the northwest. Some coal can still be seen on the surface near the former opening of the shaft.
Annexation “wars” started in the 1980’s when cities around Anthem decided their financial health required expansion for future commercial sales tax revenue. The natural drainage basins determined boundaries for sanitary sewer service to the new development which would soon come to the area. The gravity flow sewer services ended up defining the eventual boundaries of these cities. Westminster stopped its northward expansion at W 150th Avenue along I-25 once Broomfield annexed the lands to the north. If you look at the map on page 5 you will see that Broomfield’s boundaries are highly irregular, looking somewhat like a dragon (head in the lower left corner and tail in the upper right corner).
At the time of annexation into Broomfield in 1988, Anthem Ranch was part of the Nordstrom family farm. Pete and Dorothy Nordstrom were the patriarchs of the farming family and lived in a small home along the north side of W 160th Ave to the east of Sheridan Parkway. Their home is gone now. The farm extended eastward from the Boulder County line as far east as Huron St and ranged northward from W 152nd Avenue up to State Highway 7 with smaller farms around the perimeter. The Nordstrom extended family drove the tractors and made a modest living from the land. The farm family spent their entire lives enjoying the same magnificent views which renewed the spirits of the hunters on the rolling grasslands so long ago.
The youngest son, Carl, farmed the area where Anthem Ranch resides. Carl spent his entire life on a tractor farming the soil. He eventually built his brick dream home which was located to the southwest of where the Aspen Lodge is today. The view of the Rocky Mountains, which had been an everyday part of Carl’s early life, was spectacular from his new home. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness shortly after moving in and passed on a year later. The house was removed not long after as was the small shooting range along the west side of the old Lowell/Tennyson dirt road which connected up to State Highway 7.
The beltway now known as the Northwest Parkway came in time and the wheat farm was reshaped with large earth movers. Homes were built, water pipes were installed, and the area was planted with irrigated turf and trees. Over the years, the former grasslands and wheat fields will transform into an irrigated urban forest at the foot of the Front Range.
Post Script from Kirk Oglesby
Both coal and dinosaur bones are often related to areas with oil and gas. Coal is found along the western edge of the area near Louisville and dinosaur bones are found throughout the Front Range where rock formations outcrop that contain fossils from dinosaurs and plants. A casting of a rock uncovered in Interlocken during construction of an office building contains a large palm frond with dinosaur tracks and can be found in the lobby of the Broomfield library.
Actually the exploration for oil and gas in the area was just beginning in earnest in 1965. My dad was a geologist in Oklahoma and did one of the first geologic workups for the whole Denver-Julesburg basin (the DJ Basin) in the 1960's. He analyzed the geologic bedding and identified areas likely to contain oil and gas traps.
Here is some information on the D-J basin. I'm no expert but have knowledge of my dad's geologic analysis and have witnessed the boom in our area in the 1990's and more recently.
The D-J Basin extends from Denver to Julesburg and beyond. The rock strata dip dramatically downward at the foothills to dive deep under Denver. Moving eastward, the strata gradually rise. Over a mile deep, the sandstones and shales contain traps with oil and natural gas - remnants of the plants and animals who lived along the great inland seaway, transformed by age, heat, and pressure deep underground.
The 1950's saw a lot of exploration with limited drilling activity in the basin north and east of Denver. In 1963 my father was a geologist with Cities Service Oil and produced a large format, hand drawn geologic work up of the basin showing the limited drilling and production to date. The geology looked promising and he recommended pursuing further exploration in the area. In 1972 he was transferred from the Bartlesville office to the Denver office to focus on exploration in the Rocky Mountain region.
A boom in the early 1990's produced the first wells along this southern edge of the Wattenburg field. The spread of horizontal drilling and the subsequent refinement in the technology will allow increased recovery of the oil and natural gas buried deep beneath our land for many years into the future.
- 6-
FASCINATING ON-LINE VIDEO TO WATCH OIL & GAS WELLS
It was not so long ago that Louisville’s fortunes were tied to the dying coal mining industry and the town still had dirt streets and outhouses. How to explain, then, that it is today a thriving small city with an energetic downtown that garners national attention for being a great place to live?
Lafayette History — A Brief Outline
1863 Mary & Lafayette Miller arrived in Colorado.
• They operated a stage coach station on
The Overland Trail — between Denver &
Cheyenne.
• They bought land & began farming at the
present site of Lafayette
1878 Lafayette died suddenly leaving Mary with 6
children to support and a ranch to run.
1884 Coal was discovered on Miller farm land,
eventually leading to extensive mining &
growing commerce.
1888 Mary Miller platted the town site of
Lafayette, named after her late husband.
1889 The railroad reached Lafayette & in 1890 the
town was incorporated.
1891 The Lafayette population reached 1,000.
1906 A power plant was built in Lafayette which
also produced electricity for Boulder,
Longmont, Loveland, Ft. Collins, Greeley, &
the interurban rail line.
1910-14 Strikes in the northern Colorado coal fields
railroad also hauled coal to Mitchell where it connected
with the Denver, Utah and pacific line into Denver. ( Note:
Canfield was a town started by the Wise family just west of
Erie along the Jasper road. Today the Wise Family Farm
home is an historical museum.)
• Later the Chicago Burlington and Quincy line passed
through Erie on its route between Denver and Lyons
carrying both freight and passengers until 1957.
• From 1909 to 1925 the Union pacific operated motor cars
allowing Erie passengers to travel comfortably between
Brighton and Boulder. These cars were single self –
running cars operated by an engineer who was also the
conductor.
• In 1927 Erie became a national newspaper headline. The
Columbine Massacre occurred there when militia opened
fire killing 5 miners and wounding 13 men. A 6th died later
in the week.
• In 1979 the Lincoln mine in Erie closed. This was the last
operating mine in the Northern Colorado Coal Fields.
• Erie came late to the era of modern annexation and
development, but has recently experienced rapid and large-
scale residential growth with the accompanying substantial
revenues. Modern civic buildings and services are quickly
developing. It now spans 2 counties, Weld and Boulder.
-13-
A Wide Awake
Woman By
Elinore
McGinn
Josephine
Aspinwall Roche
By
Martha Biery
(For Ages 8-10 )
A Colorado Historical Society informative sign located along CO-7, between I-25 and Lafayette, installed in 2002 (The text below is copied from the marker.)
Colorado's immense northern coal field, centered beneath these rolling hills, contributed to the early development and growth of Colorado and to the birth of nearby towns. Miners and mine owners in this area battled over issues of workers' conditions, wages, and rights through many conflicts over the years. In 1927 tensions mounted for weeks as pickets urged the Columbine Mine workers to join the statewide strike called by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). On November 21 several hundred men and women gathered at the mine 1-1/2 miles northwest of here. After a confrontation with state police, gunfire erupted, killing six union miners and wounding many others. Following this tragedy, mine owners finally signed lasting union contracts with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The sacrifices of these miners and their families manifested the struggle for the rights and dignity of all Colorado coal miners.
IF YOU LOOK NORTH
FROM THE MARKER
YOU WILL SEE THE
LOCATION OF THE
TOWN OF SERENE
WHICH NOW RESTS
BELOW THE ERIE
WASTE DUMP.
- 14 -
THIS HISTORIC MARKER IS AT THE EAST END OF
ANTHEM HIGHLANDS NEXT TO HWY 7.
DEFINTELY WORTH
A VISIT !
THE “COLUMBINE
MASSACRE”
TOOK PLACE
AT SERENE ON
NOVEMBER 27, 1927.
ANTHEM ANTHEM KING SOOPERS RANCH HIGHLANDS MARKETPLACE
Bromfield became the 64th County.......................... In the late 1990s, Broomfield made history. To help alleviate the problems and confusion in accessing services, with the City of Broomfield being the only city in the state to lie in portions of
four counties, residents sought relief in a constitutional amendment creating a City and County of Broomfield. The amendment passed on November 3, 1998, giving the city a three-
year transition period in which to organize to become Colorado's 64th county. The state's newest county, the City and County of Broomfield, officially took effect on November 15, 2001.