A Medley of Recent and Ancient Events

The month of May in Colorado is rainbow weather! Every day we see beautiful cloud formations that bring scattered rain showers and many rainbows to our front range location.

May is also the month of our last snowfalls on the front range. We sometimes wake up to trees covered with snow and by the middle of the day, when the sun is hot, everything has warmed up and melted.

The deer are hungry and enjoy all the new leaves on our shrubs and all the newly sprouted green grass. 

I took a blog break last week, as May is the end of the school year in our county and is full of school events, sports, and dance recitals. and I knew my computer time would be limited. We also attended the opening night of Opera Colorado's "The Marriage of Figaro," in Denver at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. It is always a fun opera with Mozart's lively music.

Another exciting event we attended last week, as members of our community's historical society, was the History Colorado Center, Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation nomination process that took place for a 97-year-old barn in our community to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Our historical society president worked for quite a while researching and compiling the necessary nomination requirements. It was reviewed by the Colorado State Register Review Board and the Colorado Historic Preservation Review Board at the meeting and approved unanimously to be sent to the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., for final approval.

This is the nominated John C. Schaffer Barn, both front and back views. At one time a cattle barn for Ken Caryl Ranch owner, John C Shaffer, it now is part of the community's equestrian center which boards horses. 

A slide show of the history and the archetectural details of the barn was presented to the review boards. If accepted, this will be the second property on Ken Carly Ranch that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The first is the pioneers' Bradford Perley House. You can read the interesting story about this house on my blog: The Bradford Perley House

Our community has a very long history of human presence, dating back to prehistoric times. Paleo Indians, Native Americans, explorers, pioneers, and ranchers have all left their mark along the Colorado front range. There have been many archeological digs in our area over the years and new discoveries are made all the time.  In the photo collage above you can see two display cases that are in one of our community centers, which show artifacts found on our community grounds.  The large piece of mandible bone is from a pre-historic mastodon and found by neighborhood boys in a creek. Dinosaur bones have also been found in our area.

An archeologist who is a member of our historical society brought the arrowhead to one of our meetings recently.   I am showing the back and front in the photos above. It is made from a piece of petrified wood and was carbon dated to 5,000 years ago! Many arrowheads have been found here but this one was unique. It was a thrill to be able to hold such an ancient man-made object in my hand.  We certainly live in an interesting place full of history and beauty!  May has certainly been an exciting month for many reasons.


If you'd like to read more about the dinosaurs that lived in our vicinity you can see more on this post: Dinosaur Ridge.
If you'd like to read more about mammoths and mastodons in our area, you can see more on this post: Lamb Springs--Where Mammoths Roamed.
If you would like to see what a front range archeological dig looked like you can read this post: Digging Up The Past

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