Pikes Peak is one of the highest places in the U.S. Move slowly or you'll pass out. While there, I ate a high altitude donut.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Arrival at Colorado Springs
Gas stop
The most interesting places on a trip are often the people and places along the way. They are a little bit of America that nobody really gets to see. And so it was that I made a gas stop at La Junta CO.
Not a soul was around. Just the sounds of clear fresh air and the song of a bird.
But, there was history here.
Four decades or so after the Bents built their fort, the fur trade era had passed into history. The Indian Wars and the buffalo had passed into history. So had the Bents. The railroads were pre-eminent, bringing commerce, settlers, and what passed for civilization to the American West. La Junta was one of the offshoots of the changing times.
On May 15, 1881, the residents of a small village at the side of the rails then running east and west on the south bank of the Arkansas River incorporated and formed themselves as "The City of La Junta." It is said that a herd of antelope ran down what passed for Main Street, leading to the presence of the animals on the city seal today. La Junta was a railroad town from the beginning. In the more than one hundred years since that day in 1881, La Junta has waxed and waned with the fortunes of commerce. In the heyday of rail travel, La Junta was a transportation hub for produce and cattle shipments. Residents in the early part of the century built a town of substance overlooking the low valley of the Arkansas, planting elm trees in profusion as they developed the city's resources.
And yes, there were Indians here too, and they might have been Jewish. Well, at least they were Koshare.
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