lamar colorado – U.S. Highway 50

First things first: According to Wikipedia, Lamar, Colorado is one of just three spots in the U.S. (I assume they mean cities or towns) that is globally opposite, as they put it, “another landmass on earth.” In Lamar’s case, it’s an island in the southern Indian Ocean, called Ile Amsterdam.

If, as a kid, you imagined digging all the way through the earth and coming out the other side, Lamar would have been a good place to be when you grabbed your shovel.

That aside, Lamar, which is on the great plains in eastern Colorado, got a big boost in the late 1800s when the railroad decided to put a station there. Today, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief makes stops in Lamar, and the town still celebrates its railroad heritage. This gleaming steam locomotive with its tender (which held coal or other fuel) is next to the railroad tracks and station in the center of town.

But Lamar also celebrates another technology.

This wind turbine blade, placed by Lamar near the engine in the previous photo, is longer than the engine and its tender combined.

William Bent built what came to be called “Bent’s New Fort” at this location, just west of Lamar, Colorado, and near the Arkansas River, when circumstances rendered Bent’s Old Fort unusable.

As you can see in the photo above, today there is little here to commemorate the fort’s existence. There are some National Park Service signs, explaining that Bent’s New Fort was a trading site on the Santa Fe Trail beginning in 1849.

Even though William Bent maintained good trading relationships with Native Americans at his fort, exchanging goods and food for buffalo hides, changes in the fur trade and the ecology of the area limited his financial success. He sold the fort to the U.S. Army in 1860.

In 1905, John Squire Semmons purchased four and a half acres here, including the site once occupied by the fort. He made a down payment of $5.00 and paid a total of $46.60. His descendants have said they plan to preserve the site because of its archeological importance.