Colorado Border Country

Colorado Border Country. . , The last major Indian-white conflict on Colorado’s eastern plains took place on July 11, 1869, at Summit Springs Battlefield, south of Sterling. The U.S. Fifth Cavalry defeated Chief Tall Bull’s Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, killing Tall Bull and fifty-two-warriors, and capturing seventeen women and children. , The Overland Trail Museum in Sterling contains an impressive collection of items relating to all aspects of the region’s history. Visitors also can tour a general store, church, school, and other buildings located on the museum grounds. , Encompassing nearly twenty miles of the South Platte River, the Tamarack Ranch State Wildlife Area, just south of Crook, offers visitors a chance to see greater prairie chickens, once a Colorado endangered species. , The South Platte River Trail Scenic and Historic Byway includes Colorado’s only Pony Express Station, the site of old Fort Sedgwick, built in 1864 to protect the Overland Trail route, and highlights four different Julesburgs, since the town moved repeatedly in the nineteenth century. Come learn why., A one-room school house and a 1927 service station complete with vintage gas pumps are just two of the highlights of the Phillips County Historical Society’s museum in Holyoke. The Holyoke Public Library is located in the former home of W. E. Heginbotham, a local businessman and philanthropist who upon his death in 1968 left his entire estate to Phillips County. Both the gas station and library are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. , Located near Lake Yuma on US Highway 59 is the Yuma Museum. On the museum’s grounds are a Burlington Northern caboose and a two-room schoolhouse built in 1920. Inside the museum is a variety of collections relating to life on Colorado’s eastern plains including vintage emergency medical equipment. Yuma also plays host to an annual Old Threshers Antique and Machinery Show every September., The site of a legendary battle between fifty U.S. scouts and a large force of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota Sioux warriors in September 1868, the Beecher Island Battleground is today listed on the National Register of Historic Places. , The Wray Museum features an exhibit on permanent loan from the Smithsonian Institution highlighting the Jones-Miller Archaeological Site. This site, located southeast of Wray, was the scene of a large buffalo kill approximately 10,000 years ago. The museum also displays prehistoric and Indian artifacts and interprets the history of white settlement in Yuma County. , Committed to conserving the Ogallala Aquifer and enhancing the region’s farm production, the Irrigation Research Foundation is a private nonprofit demonstration farm located two miles north of Yuma.