Showing posts with label Activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Activities. Show all posts

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Our Historical Society's Open House of a Pioneer's Home


 I've written before about the ruins of the Bradford/Perley pioneer house in our community, built in 1859-60 and expanded in 1872, which was an integral part of the Colorado Gold Rush and was honored with placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

You can read the fascinating history of this house in prior posts I wrote,  here and here.


Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

This placard outside the home is a condensed timeline of the house's history.


The front of the house faces east and has a view of these large red rock formations, which are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to major archeology digs that have taken place in this area that show these rocks were used by early natives for shelter and hunting for as far back as nine thousand years! One native who was a frequent visitor to this area in the early gold rush days was Chief Colorow, whom I blogged about in this post. 



When my husband and I moved to Colorado, we joined our community's historical society and the History Colorado Center to learn more about our new state. We have remained members, and each year our historical society hosts an open house event where members of our community are invited to enter the home and learn more about it. That event took place this past weekend on a beautiful morning.

 
Our historical society's open house coincided with another community event taking place, called Nature Day, where families can gather in a nearby open space area to see a wild bird demonstration by Hawk Quest, take a short guided hike, participate in a nature scavenger hunt, and engage in fire safety education provided by the local fire department.


Inside the pioneer's home, our society members displayed photos and photo albums from our archives of the home and the surrounding land. This home had two owners before this area became a cattle ranch and eventually developed into a residential community. 
We also answered questions and directed visitors to other points of interest on the land.


There were archeological displays...


...and my husband demonstrated an ancient native hunting instrument called an Atlatl. This way of hunting predated the bow and arrow and allowed a spear to be thrown further and with more force. 
He showed interested visitors how to use the tool and aim at the bullseye target.
You can view a YouTube video about this instrument on this YouTube link.  


Another historical society member is also a hobbyist beekeeper and had a bee display with a tray filled with bees. She answered questions about beekeeping and how to have us all improve pollination efforts in our community.


Another historical society member was in the pioneer's apple orchard, located in the rear of the house, answering questions about the remaining trees that are still producing Ben Davis heirloom series apples one hundred and sixty-six years later! 
Our historical society maintains the trees, and starting in 2010, we undertook a program, with the aid of a horticulturist, to clone the trees by carefully taking cuttings and grafting them onto a sturdy root stock to grow new trees. This way, we hope to perpetuate the old orchard.


Our historical society also has a garden committee that works hard to plant and maintain flowers and planters around the house to beautify it for the community.


The weather was beautiful until the very end of our event, when rain clouds and wind rolled in, and we all scambled to gather our displays and run to our cars! 
It was another successful open house event, and it was a joy to share some of the early history of our community with other residents.

PS: One of the new members of our historical society, who lived in our neighborhood for many years, asked me why we joined the society as relatively new residents. I told her my husband and I always loved history, and for many years we volunteered at a very historic cemetery in Brooklyn, New York called Green-Wood Cemetery in a multi-year Civil War Project where as a group we identified over 3,000 veteran soldiers and sailors of the Civil War, many sadly lying in unmarked graves, or under gravestones that have been so badly weathered that the stones have become unreadable.
We also filled out more than 1,200 applications for new markers since the Department of Veterans Affairs supplies them if originals are unreadable or lost. If you'd like to read more about this project and see some notable graves, click on this blog post.






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Sunday, September 22, 2024

A Visit to the National Center For Atmospheric Research



 

This past year my husband and I, along with a group of friends, visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research also known as "NCAR," located in Boulder, Colorado. NCAR was established by the National Science Foundation in 1960 to provide the university community with world-class facilities and services beyond any individual institution's reach. It was the National Science Foundation's first federally funded research and development center, managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, "UCAR". a nonprofit consortium of more than 120 colleges and universities. This building was their headquarters, with additional facilities located in Wyoming and Hawaii.

*All photos on this blog spot will be enlarged for easier viewing by right-clicking on them.


We were a group of 9, so we had an NCAR member as a guide for our visit who explained their mission, showed us the exhibits in the visitor's center, and answered our questions.

She explained the NCAR Mission:

  • To understand the behavior of the atmosphere and related Earth and geospace systems
  • To support, enhance, and extend the capabilities of the university community and the broader scientific community, nationally and internationally
  • To foster the transfer of knowledge and technology for the betterment of life on Earth


One of the first exhibits we saw was a model of the NCAR building and its location. The Mesa Laboratory the headquarters of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is considered by many to be an architectural masterpiece. The NCAR site was designed by world-renowned architect M.I, Pei  



Pei was greatly influenced by the Colorado landscape and other architectural marvels to create his design. He considered the NCAR Mesa building to be one of his favorite designs and a major turning point in his illustrious career.


There were many exhibits to observe and read in the visitor's center.



An explanation of Meteorological Optics. They consist of varied atmospheric optics such as the phenomena of rainbows, halos, atmospheric corona, mirages, and sundogs (Parhelia).



We saw actual webcam images of the sun...


...as well as many other fascinating sun exhibits.




We saw many informational placards about weather...


...as well as many hands-on weather exhibits




There was information about the growing concern about air quality and ozone and pollutants.

Did you know that in the US one can go to the website airnow.gov, enter your zip code and the reading of your local air quality will be revealed?



This exhibit of a car fender with a giant icy hailstone on it made us chuckle, as Colorado and other areas of the US can get significant and damaging hailstorms.




More interactive weather displays.




Our tour guide told us that the hundreds of scientists who work in NCAR research all things atmospheric — which includes everything from the microphysics of cloud formation and the chemistry of air pollution to large-scale planetary waves and the impact of increased greenhouse gases on our climate.


Upstairs we viewed a long corridor of exhibits mainly pertaining to the study of the effects of Climate Change



Click on to enlarge to read the topics being studied



We saw example models of weather balloons and satellites that are adding to the knowledge of the atmosphere, weather formations, and warning systems.



An example of a dropsondes and what it is used for.

A dropsonde is an expendable weather reconnaissance device created by NCAR, designed to be dropped from an aircraft at altitude over water to measure and therefore track storm conditions as the device falls to the surface. The sonde contains a GPS receiver, along with pressure, temperature, and humidity (PTH) sensors to capture atmospheric profiles and thermodynamic data. It typically relays this data to a computer in the aircraft by radio transmission.




Many areas of atmospheric science are being studied and explored ...


Much is being learned about the impacts of our modern environment on our atmosphere...


...and causes and effects of those changes.




Our atmosphere is a blanket around our earth and all of life depends on it! Let's all do our part in caring for and preserving it as best we can.  

"We believe this work is more important than ever. As society struggles to deal with rapidly changing environmental conditions, the need for relevant information and services continues to grow. The hazards of long-term atmospheric and climate changes, air pollution episodes, extreme weather, geomagnetic storms, and related impacts such as drought, storm surges, and wildfires take a significant toll in terms of human life and economic loss."


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Sunday, September 8, 2024

A Geology Field Trip In My Colorado Front Range Neighborhood!


 

I live in an area along the Colorado Front Range rich in geological features and natural beauty!




We can hike in many areas and see geological formations called the Permian era Lyons Formation (whitish compressed sandstone area), the Pennsylvanian era Fountain Formation (red rocks), and the Cretaceous era Dakota Formation  (sandstone, clays, and shale) which were formed many hundreds of millions of years ago.  

A nearby national landmark Dinosaur Rridge, which was once the home of many stegosaurus dinosaurs is also a Dakota Formation. You can see a prior blog post on this link where we visited Dinosaur Ridge for another geologic tour by a geologist that we attended.




Our community's historical society hosted a "Geology Field Trip" one day this summer with our members and three residents with scientific backgrounds in geology and paleontology. They volunteered to take us on an educational three-hour tour of our area to learn more about its geologic history. They made a wonderful multi-page handout for each member with scientific definitions, geologic timelines, and definitions which was very interesting and helpful during our tour.




An example of Precambrian Metamorphic Rock

They first discussed the geology of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado

The Rocky Mountains took shape during an intense period of plate tectonic activity that resulted in much of the rugged landscape of Western North America

In the southern Rocky Mountains, near present-day Colorado and New Mexico, the Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks were disturbed by mountain-building shifts which produced the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The uplift formed two large mountainous islands, located roughly in the current locations of the Front Range and the San Juan Mountains. They consisted largely of Precambrian metamorphic rock, forced upward through layers of limestone and laid down in the shallow sea. The mountains eroded throughout the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras leaving extensive deposits of sedimentary rock.



We moved to another area where we examined whitish rock formations among red rock.




Stromatolite formations

We learned that the white-colored rock was a product of the late Permian era of about 250 million years ago, in which a great extinction took place of many land and sea-bound life. In this post-extinction scene along what was then a slimy slimy mounds known as stromatolites formed. The stromatolites were located in shallow and salty pools and were an unlikely partnership of bacteria and algae. The ones in our area are Permian/Triassic era Lykins Stromolites.



 
A hogback formation

Across from the stromolites, we could see a familiar sight in our area a hogback formation.  Hogbacks are a typical regional topographic expression of outcrops of steeply dipping strata, commonly sedimentary strata, that consist of alternating beds of hard, well-lithified strata, i.e. sandstone and limestone, and either weak or loosely cemented strata, i.e. shale, mudstone, and marl.






We now moved to another area and saw a Late Jurassic Morrison Formation where dinosaur quarries are often found, such as those in the aforementioned Dinosaur Ridge. The geologists went over the different combinations of geologic formations in this area which were formed 150 million years ago and the paleontologist held up a dinosaur Apatosaurus bone that he had unearthed on a scientific expedition in Wyoming.  We were all able to hold the bone and feel its weight and size.




Finally, visited a creek bed where young residents found a prehistoric Mammoth jaw and tusk in 2009. The original specimens were donated to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but we were able to hold a model. Look at those giant molars! The Colorado Front Range area has been the location of extinct Ice Age animals and artifacts from later human occupation from 11,000 years ago. We visited an area called Lamb Spring Archeological Preserve a few years ago--you can read that blog post on this link. There, in 1960, the land's owner and rancher, Charles Lamb, was digging a stock pond at the site of a natural spring. He found several large bones that were identified by geologists with the US Geological Survey, as the remains of mammoth, horse, camel, and bison

Our tour guides could have explained more, but our three-hour time limit was up. They promised to organize similar tours in other areas in the future, and we all eagerly expressed our appreciation for all we learned this time and our enthusiasm for taking a future tour.



It seems appropriate that a premier engineering and applied science Colorado School of Mines is located in Golden Colorado. The university has a spectacular geologic museum with samples from Colorado, as well as samples from around the world. We often visit, and if you enjoy geology you can see a two-part blog post I wrote about one visit to their museum on this Part One link and this Part Two link.


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Monday, January 13, 2020

Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary



Isn't the world fortunate that there are kind-hearted and compassionate people who devote their time and energy to care for the helpless? One such person is Andrea Davis who owns and runs Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary--a sanctuary for abused, neglected, unwanted, and slaughter-bound farm animals that she rescued.  Located at 8640 Dahlia St. in Commerce City, Colorado, Davis cares for goats, pigs, cows, turkeys, roosters, rabbits, ducks, llamas, horses, mules, cats and dogs. She nurtures them back to health, feeds them, and gets them veterinary care when needed, and most of all she gives them love!


This past fall my husband and I and our daughter and granddaughter attended an Open Sanctuary Snuggle and Feeding event at the farm, where we donated a small fee to enter and brought approved food to feed to the animals, such as lettuce, carrots, and pumpkins.  The animals were so happy to see us! Our paper bag full of vegetable treats was emptied fairly quickly as they crowded around for bites.


The pumpkins we brought were especially well received and enjoyed! 


Open house events at the farm are announced on the farm's Facebook page --click here and here--and on the website events page--click here.   You can also follow them on Instagram at this link and see more delightful photos and videos of the animals and learn about their needs and personalities.


As you can see by the rules posted at the farm this is not a petting zoo, and the animals' safety and comfort are always a priority. 


Our granddaughter was smitten with the friendly horses on the farm, so my daughter sponsored one of the horses on the farm as part of my granddaughter's Christmas gifts this year, so that she knows this horse will be getting special treats all year long that are from her. 

  If you'd like to sponsor an animal or buy seed for the chickens or a bale of hay you can find links to do that on the website--click here. I'm sure any donation would be appreciated. As you can imagine it costs a lot to feed and care for so many animals!


We loved visiting the farm on their open house day and hope to return again this spring or summer for another event to see and help feed the animals.  Thanks to Andrea and her family for all their hard work and dedication!
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