Old and Abandoned

What is it about old and abandoned barns and buildings that is so alluring? Is it that they stand steadfastly through the elements, refusing to allow abandonment and neglect to prevent them from telling a story? (All photos and photo collages can be enlarged for easier viewing if clicked on)

Do they show a pioneer spirit that proudly attests to a time of hard work and spartan simplicity? While others are more recent abandonments from hard times?

Are they the vessels that hold on to lost dreams?

Were they left to rust and rot because they wore out their usefulness...

...or did they meet with a disaster?

Whenever I see one of these sad vestiges of the past in my journey's around Colorado, I try to stop to take a photo of it. I want to show it a little love and attention before it disappears from the landscape. 

There are also entire "ghost towns" in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, which are mostly abandoned mining towns. I blogged about our visit one recent spring to Independence Ghost Town which you can read about on this link.

Also, a few years ago I blogged about Southpark City in Fairplay, Colorado.  It was created in the late 1950s by a group of citizens concerned that the old mining and ghost towns of Park County were being dismantled and destroyed, so they decided to save as many buildings as possible, move them to one area, and recreate a replica 1800s gold mine town. Buildings were brought in from the Mosquito Range, Alma, Leavick, Buckskin, and Montgomery. Click here to read that post and see these treasures preserved for all to visit. Thankfully, these original buildings from America's early Western frontier history were preserved, including many artifacts that are displayed inside them.

One of my favorite buildings of all in Colorado are the ruins of the historic pioneer Bradford Perley House that is located in the heart of my own community of Ken Caryl Ranch.

The back of the structure is the ruins of the original house that Robert Boyles Bradford built in 1860 on land he obtained along the foothills of the front range, where he had hoped to establish his "Bradford City." Bradford left the Russell, Majors and Waddell partnership (founders of the Pony Express) in Denver in 1861, and lived full time in his stone cabin, where he raised cattle and turnips, potatoes, apples, and peaches. Bradford also ran an enterprise from this location of his Bradford Wagon Toll Road that led up into the mountains. Miners and ranchers would travel from Denver, stay at the Bradford House, then travel up the Bradford Toll Road, at a cost of $1.50 per wagon, into the mountains.

In 1872 Bradford added on to the house, with a larger eastern entrance, and patterned it after a southern style mansion. It featured eighteen-inch walls made from locally quarried hand cut sandstones and had board floors and a shingled roof. Bradford remained in his house until his death on December 29, 1876, and his wife Fannie gave up the ranch in 1878. Later, James Adams Perley purchased the property in 1895. He was a direct descendant of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Perley was a dairy farmer from Vermont, who came west with the gold rush. He eventually returned to dairy farming, when he bought the Bradford property. Perley died in 1926 when the house was then sold to John C. Shaffer, who already owned some of the surrounding lands.

Sadly, a fire destroyed the wooded aspects of the Bradford Perley House in 1967, and only the stone frame was left standing.  I wrote more about the history of the Bradford Perley house on a prior blog post which you can read on this link.  

Today, the Ken Caryl Historical Society members are the stewards watching over the Bradford Perley House and its surviving apple orchard. We help maintain the properties and conduct tours for interested parties and schoolchildren who are learning about their local history. We are preserving it for future generations to learn about those who came to this area of Colorado in pioneer days.  It may be old, but it is no longer abandoned. We've kept its stories alive!

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