Culture and Agriculture Along Highway 50

Pulling out the threads of a story, you wind up finding more and more of history and the connections between culture and agriculture. The history of pioneers and wagon trails starts and stops, and where it stops are rows of melons and sugar beets. It's as if the pioneers had their eyes on the Pacific Coast and were wonderfully surprised by the fertile land and the people who welcomed them to Colorado and the Eastern Plains. From Holly to Lamar and the Eastern Plains up to the high mountain passes of Monarch that follow the Arkansas River Canyon towns of Colorado, sometime between the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression, it started out at the Kansas/Colorado border. By November of 1926, the early transcontinental drivers were testing their Model Ts and As, or the Buick and Plymouth Six.

Searching for Opportunity and Finding Their Way Home

They were laborers, migrant workers, and miners working their way across Colorado with a dream of the Pacific or Atlantic Coasts. On their way, they stopped for a rest and wound up settling and starting new farms, ranches, shops, and practices. They met folks who were from these communities—residents, ranchers, local musicians, and clergy—utilizing the Highway 50 connection between the cultural and agricultural hubs and small mountain settlements. The home-work-community economic system connects food and service with produce and family.

Ahead of Their Time

Traveling salesmen and freight haulers were early marketers and distributors of goods and services. These were the truckers and freight railroaders before the interstate highway system. Many of these folks found home economics and services integrated with agriculture and culture. There became a rhythm to community: the rodeo, the music, the square dance, the home porch picking, and the seasons.

The Tales from the Trail

The melting pot of farming, ranching, writing, and community is what Colorado was settled on. The stories and the songs, the new meeting the old, the homesteaders, the stories and the songs merge with the cost of goods sold. This is the story of Highway 50. The homestead and the farm, the flower bed and the small-town charm come together to pick songs and stories fresh off the vine. Welcome home, all ye travelers—to Colorado.

Richard Beattie is capturing the stories and songs of the Colorado stretch of Highway 50, as well as the sights and sounds of the culture of the towns along the way. What he has found is that there is a common union between the cultural and the agricultural. And while he cannot recreate the communities that were formed and fused in the homes and the work, we can revisit and revive them through recreation, arts, education, entrepreneurship, and good journalism.

For more information or to share your own stories, contact Soundcenturyoriginals@gmail.com.