Region
The Eastern Plains
East of the Front Range, Colorado turns into shortgrass prairie that runs to the Kansas and Nebraska lines — farms, feedlots, grain elevators, and small county-seat towns strung along the rivers and the old rail and trail routes. The plains carry a surprising amount of history, from the Santa Fe Trail and Bent's Old Fort to the Amache site, and a present built on water rights, agriculture, and wind. It's the affordable, wide-open, big-sky quarter of the state.
The places
Greeley
A planned irrigation colony turned cattle-and-college city, and the capital of Weld County agriculture.
Open the place page ->Sterling
The 'City of Living Trees' and the hub of the northeastern plains, on the South Platte.
Open the place page ->Fort Morgan
Glenn Miller's hometown — a sugar-beet and rail town on the South Platte.
Open the place page ->La Junta
A Santa Fe Trail junction town near Bent's Old Fort and the Comanche grassland.
Open the place page ->Lamar
The southeastern-plains hub — Santa Fe Trail history, Big Timbers, and prairie wind.
Open the place page ->Trinidad
A coal-and-trail town of red-brick streets under Fisher's Peak, at the foot of Raton Pass.
Open the place page ->Browse by county
Every city, town, and unincorporated pocket in this corner is reachable through its county page — each one gathers the local rules, rates, and notes tied to that county.
Notes from this corner
The small stories and useful rules tied to this part of Colorado.
Near Eads, the Sand Creek Massacre site is sacred ground the National Park Service cares for
The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Kiowa County is a place of mourning for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and the National Park Service is the agency that protects and explains it.
Read the note ->Amache, near Granada, is a place to visit with care
Near Granada in Prowers County, Amache is the site of a World War II incarceration camp for Japanese Americans, now part of the National Park System.
Read the note ->The Dust Bowl shaped Baca County's land and its people
Baca County was at the heart of the 1930s Dust Bowl, and that history still explains its grasslands, its small towns, and how the land is used today.
Read the note ->You can still find Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts in southern Baca County
The Cimarron Route of the Santa Fe Trail crossed about 14 miles of southern Baca County, and on the Carrizo Unit grassland you can still walk out to faint wagon ruts and old markers.
Read the note ->In the lower Arkansas Valley, farm water can be bought and moved away
In Bent County and the rest of the lower Arkansas Valley, irrigation water rights have long been sold to Front Range cities, which changes what a farm property can grow.
Read the note ->Rocky Ford melons and a fair that has run since 1878
Rocky Ford's cantaloupes and watermelons anchor the Arkansas Valley Fair, the oldest continuous fair in Colorado, whose mid-August Watermelon Day hands out free melons to everyone who comes.
Read the note ->The Eastern Plains porch kit
Where to next
See the other corners at Explore Colorado, browse every city and county in the place directory, or wander the stories in the Almanac.
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