Cowboys, dust storms and the prairie

STONEHAM - A wild sunflower inside the old stone house is illuminated by the morning sun, adding a splash of yellow to the darkened room. A half mile to the north, the rumble of a passing semi-truck on Colo. 14 sounds like distant morning thunder.

A meadowlark sings; a cloud of dust follows a farm pickup on Weld County Road 151; a hawk circles the sky. This is the far eastern edge of Weld County, the abandoned stone house a remnant of our history.

This house wasn't here in the late 1800s, when John Wesley Iliff established the largest cattle ranch in the history of Colorado. The story was that travelers could make the trip from Julesburg to Greeley and never leave an Iliff ranch.

Iliff would drive his cattle from the far eastern edge of Colorado Territory to Cheyenne, and that dusty cattle trail would evolve into a wagon path, then to gravel roads and, finally, the paved road that became Colo. 14.

But the old stone house along the far eastern border of Weld County captures the story of the early plains and Colo. 14 better than any cattle trail. The highway was just a dusty trail when this building was erected, likely around the turn of the century, by a family whose last name was Runyan, as far as anybody today can remember. According to people in Stoneham, the Runyans have been gone a long time.

After they left, a few families tried to establish a home in the old stone house, but each time they were forced to leave because of drought, dust storms and the difficulty of living on the eastern Colorado plains. Eventually, the roof of the house collapsed, some of the stones fell out of the walls, and sunflowers began to grow out of the floor.

<b>Bud Bartrum</b>

Bud Bartrum grew up south of Stoneham, just a few miles from the old stone house. "The Runyan family didn't stay very long," Bartrum said. "They homesteaded and stayed until the land was paid for, but then they starved out, like a lot of farmers. They left to find jobs in the cities."

Bartrum will always be a cowboy. Now 95 years old, he's living in a retirement home in Sterling. His room is a collection of cowboy gear, family photos, a few arrowheads and a thousand memories.

"My family homesteaded near Stoneham when I was about 5 years old," Bartrum said. "They thought I'd be a farmer, but I didn't like the taste of dirt. So I became a cowboy."

In those early days, Bartrum would catch a railcar passing by Stoneham and ride into Cheyenne for the Frontier Days, where he'd get $5 a race for riding race horses. He would sleep outside in Cheyenne and return home in a few days on another railcar. "I didn't take highway 14 in those days, because there wasn't any highway 14," Bartrum said. "It was a dirt trail."

He said it was a good life, most of the time. Then there was the dust. "In the 1930s, the dust clouds would come rolling in from the northwest ... big black clouds you'd see in the distance, and you'd know to get inside. Sometimes there was so much dust in the air, it would kill a cow."

<b>Mabel Baxter</b>

In the early 1930s, Mabel Baxter was a cowgirl, driving the cattle, fighting the prairie droughts. She died in 1997, but her granddaughter, Teresa Fassler, taped Baxter's voice years ago as she talked about prairie life.

"It seems like they just started to turn highway 14 into a road in the 1930s," Mabel said on tape. "They made a dirt road out of a cattle trail."

Mabel Baxter's parents were Ulrey and Evalyn Elliott, homesteaders, farmers, strong people who fought to survive. Their daughters wore flour sacks made into dresses, attended tiny schools, had farm chores that had to be done before and after school. She graduated from New Raymer High School in 1932.

"Daddy's challenge was to beat the elements," Mable Baxter said on tape. She distinctly remembers the year when the farm crop was especially good, and she and her father took the wagon to Greeley to buy a new tractor that would be paid for when they harvested their best crop in years.

"As we were coming back, we could tell something bad happened," Mabel said. "And we could see that hail took out the whole crop. When we got to the house, Daddy just left for awhile and walked out into the field.

"A few minutes later he came running back to the house, yelling `We've got to get back to Greeley to buy some seed. We can still put in millet for this year.'

"That was Daddy. He had the attitude that we'd always have a better crop next year."

<b>Marion Franks</b>

Thirty-six miles west of Stoneham, the little town of Briggsdale perches on the prairie like an oasis. Marion Franks, 87, was born on the prairie, went to a one-room school until high school when she graduated from College High. Her grandfather homesteaded the land, which Franks still owns.

"I just remember highway 14 as a muddy road," she said from her home in Briggsdale. "But we didn't get much rain, so I don't know how often it could have been muddy."

It was a wagon trail then, and the family would take the horse wagon to Greeley or Cheyenne for groceries, seed and feed for the farm. "Later, we'd go in my uncle's Model T Ford. You could always count on two or three flat tires on the trip to Greeley, and it would take all day to get there and back."

She also remembers the '30s, when the dust rolled through and nothing would grow. "We'd go out and burn the spines off the cactus so we could feed it to the cattle."

Franks will tell you she doesn't know why her family settled in such a difficult place. She left home twice as an adult, but came back twice, married Willard Franks in 1950 and stayed on to farm.

"I love the prairie. ... It's home. Sometimes it's hard, but it's worth it."

<b>Ernest Nelson</b>

In 1900, Nels Nelson's grandfather, Ernest, homesteaded a plot of land just south of Colo. 14, not far from Fort Collins, but inside the Weld County line.

After five years, the land was "proved up," which meant he'd met the government requirements to own the homesteaded land. He started to raise sheep then, and it was only the beginning, according to Nels Nelson.

Nels is now the owner of the Cactus Hill farms, arguably the largest sheep feedlot in the world. Today it has a capacity of 150,000 head of sheep.

His grandfather started it all. "After he proved up the homestead, he bought some more land for a sheep ranch. He paid for it after the first year. Then he bought the land where our house is now, up on Colo. 14, which was just a dirt road back then."

But as the sheep ranch grew, Ernest Nelson began turning to feedlots, much like the cattle feedlots that were starting to fatten up cattle for the slaughter.

Later came World War II and a contract to supply lamb meat to the soldiers in the war.

Under Nels Nelson's leadership, Cactus Hill is a success today.

From the success at the western end of Colo. 14 through the towns of Ault, Briggsdale, New Raymer and Stoneham, the highway leaves Weld County near the abandoned, dilapidated stone house on the plains.

The successful feedlot at the west end of Colo. 14 is the economic opposite of the old stone house at the east end and, seemingly, the opposite ends of time.

While most of the highway is surging into the 21st century, the stone house still hangs onto the memory of homesteads, the dirt farmer, and the deadly, black clouds of dust that would blow in from the northwest.