Lifeblood of the grasslands

<i><b>Stories for 14</b>
<li> Colo. 14, which divides the upper third of Weld County, is the main artery across the grasslands. This is the first of an occasional series of stories on the highway, its history and its people. If you have stories or adventures surrounding Colo. 14, call Mike Peters at 352-0211, Ext. 238, or e-mail peters@greeleytrib.com.</i>

STONEHAM - A metal-gray fog shrouds Colo. 14 this morning, hiding the power poles, sketching the skeletons of bare trees against a misty canvas.

Headlights of rumbling semi-trailer trucks pierce the fog for only a few seconds, then speed past, only to have their red tail-lights swallowed again by the gray blanket. On a highway where you can normally see a truck a mile away on the horizon before the sound reaches you, mornings like this reverse the physical laws; you can hear the truck long before the headlights break through the fog.

At Prairie View Cemetery on the outskirts of Stoneham, white wooden crosses stand starkly against the brown grass, silent except for the roar of a lone car traveling east on Colo. 14 toward Sterling or Kansas or Nebraska.

We can imagine the fog was heavy here, 60 million years ago, when this was a jungle, and the great sea was receding. It must have been like this when the dinosaurs were here, the triceratops and T-Rex, then the huge rhinos and the sabre-toothed tigers, the plant-eaters and carnivores. They are gone now, but they left traces and clues of themselves behind on the land that holds Colo. 14 together. We dig up their bones now, and they tell us what this land was like before man came along.

And we'll leave clues of our lives here, also. There are old homesteads: crumbled buildings with little left but the walls and empty window frames; there are farms here, where farmers make love to the earth, nurturing, cajoling, feeding the soil and the seeds until they emerge, green and strong.

Strange round pads can be found alongside Colo. 14, standing silent and dangerous and surrounded by high fences. On the gate, the sign warns visitors: "NO TRESPASSING - DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED." Inside, deep in the ground, armed with multiple atomic warheads, are the weapons we hope will never be launched.

We also find early evidence of man here, from when he came into this country from the north 11,000 years ago. We find the story of the Arapaho, the Lakota Sioux, the Pawnee tribes. This is where they lived undisturbed until the white man came in the early 1800s. First came the explorers and trappers, being drawn across the prairie by the lure of the mountains in the distance. Then came the families in wagons, the ranchers, the farmers and the gold seekers who were heading toward Pikes Peak to find their fortune.

Railroad tracks are silent now, some gone completely, leaving only the mounds that held the rails and timbers. Homesteaders came on those trains from back east, looking for the land advertised in Boston and Chicago and St. Louis. The promoters called northern Colorado "the greenbelt of the Great Plains." Disappointed pioneers found no greenbelt and little rain, hard, dry ground, and to their dismay, they discovered they could stand on a hill and not see a tree in any direction.

But the farmers who stayed were hearty, determined and resilient. They worked the earth, saved their water, planted crops that could survive. By the 1930s, 60 percent of the grassland was cultivated. Then came the drought and the winds and the Great Depression.

Many of the farmers left, moving literally to greener pastures, or into the towns to find other jobs. As the land was left unworked and vacated, the federal government stepped in to purchase the grassland and turn it into a federal preserve. In the 1960s, they named it the Pawnee National Grassland.

And through those years of hard times, some people stayed, some returned to the land. They still work the land, run the stores and cafes and gas stations, clustering together in the small towns: Stoneham, New Raymer, Briggsdale and Ault.

Only four towns survived in this 75-mile stretch of Colo. 14 through Weld County. They are proud towns, full of proud people. Don't criticize their roads or their schools or their lifestyle or you could find a fight. When our entire country suffers from widespread crime, these towns still have unlocked doors, kids can play kick-the can outdoors after dark. In a country of low-fat, low-calorie, low-cholesterol foods, these people still sit down to a thick steak and fries at the end of a day. They are a tough, resolute and extremely friendly people.

Colo. 14 slashes across Weld County like a broken lance. Coming from the east it is a straight shot across the plains for 12 miles; there's a small dip as it reaches New Raymer, then it's straight again for 40 miles until it breaks at a southward slant and straightens out again through Ault and beyond until it reaches Larimer County.

This road probably started as a path for the tribes of the plains, then a wagon trail, and at the turn of the century, it was the bed for the Burlington Railroad tracks that cross from Sterling to Cheyenne. It was a dirt road in 1930, then it was oiled by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, and finally, in 1954, the state paved it.

Colo. 14 has stood against hard weather. The wind is almost constant, creating low sand drifts against the fences; the heat of summer creates water mirages in the distance on the hot asphalt; when it rains, it pours, sometimes washing away parts of the road and even huge bridges; and the snow, many times driven by the wind, closes the highway in the winter and early spring.

Pounded by the weather, overused by big trucks, scarred by high-speed drivers who want to test their cars on an open road, this too-narrow, slightly rough, two-lane highway is the lifeblood of northern Colorado.

This is Colo. 14.

<b>What's next </b>
In two weeks, we take you to the towns of Colo. 14: Ault, Briggsdale, New Raymer and Stoneham. The trip also will stop at the ghost towns of Buckingham and Purcell and explore why they disappeared.