We made another trip out to Dearfield today.
We’ve visited several times over the past year or so but have never been when there has been an “event”…
I have to say it’s MUCH better to visit when this tiny historic settlement is filled with people, music, and life.
Dearfield was the largest Black homesteading settlement in Colorado, and during its heyday in the late 1910’s it was a thriving farming community with a several hundred residents. Sadly, a combination of the Great Depression and the dry Dust Bowl years doomed the community. It is now a ghost town…
But today it was alive! There was a great little band set up on the porch of the old Dearfield Lodge, and all the buildings were open so we could wander around inside and get a sense of what things might have been like back then.
Across from the Dearfield Lodge there had been a dance hall, which is gone now, but I could imagine how 100 years ago, right where we were standing, there had also been music and dancing and people laughing and babies playing just as there were today.
The (trumpy ) congressman from that district spoke and seemed to compare Dearfield to Amache, a Japanese internment camp in SE Colorado, and I was offended. Dearfield was built on hopes and dreams, on strength and courage and the desire to create a better world… and through no fault of its inhabitants, it didn’t survive. Amache was built on racism, loss, and fear.
But once the congressman was gone, it was a lovely afternoon with good conversation, good music and a lot of history.
On the way home R kept saying this had been her “best day ever”.
