Tarryall Creek Homesteads (June 2010)

Written by ceddammit

This is it. The last of its kind. The end of ThrowBack Thursday (TBT) as we know it. Y’see, I added TBT to the content of this blog as a way to share pictures from places I had previously visited. I figured I had about a year worth of material in my “backlog” of digital photos. That was over three years ago. At the end of today’s post, I will have finally cleared that backlog. So, let’s all clamber aboard the Way-The-Hell-Back Machine one last time…

Our destination this time is the Tarryall Creek valley in June 2010. This valley skirts the eastern edge of the geological feature known as South Park, Colorado. South Park is basically a high plain, relatively flat and mostly treeless, surrounded by some of the most picturesque mountains in the Rockies. Exhibit A, Your Honor…

And if you’re looking for cool rock formations, the area around Tarryall Creek is the place to go. Exhibit B, Your Itchiness…

I didn’t bring you here just for the mountains and/or rock formations, heavens no! We came for the homesteads. Unlike Homestead Meadows, which I’ve posted about on multiple occasions, there is no hiking required to visit these old homesteads. In fact, you don’t even need a high clearance or 4×4 vehicle: all the homesteads of the Tarryall Creek valley can be viewed from the side of a paved road. So, this is one place in Colorado that I can actually recommend for most Parkinson’s patients. But do be careful. The road is narrow and there aren’t a lot of good places to pull off. Also, be aware that nearly all of the homesteads are on private property, meaning you can’t explore the insides of the dead buildings. And now, here they are…the homesteads:

Some of the old homesteads appear to still be inhabited.
Look closely…this building was originally a single story. The 2nd floor was added on top of the existing building.
This building sits very close to the road…
…it has no fences or trespassing-related signs, and it’s not boarded up. So, I assume it’s OK to explore this one.
A few scraps of flooring remain…
…along with this cupboard / cabinet…
…and some scraps of what once passed for insulation.
A giant wooden harmonica?

I don’t know the names of any of the people that settled in any of the homesteads we’ve seen so far, but I do know a little of the history of the homestead in the few pictures below. This plot of land was originally homesteaded by one Albert W. Bradley. During the 1880s, Bradley sold the land to John E. Williams, who established a very successful ranching operation. The boarded-up, two-story house seen in the photos below appears to have been built by the Williams family around 1927…

And now our (probably) last ThrowBack Thursday is through. What shall become of TBT? I suspect that I may have missed a few photos, hiding in the nooks and crannies of my hard drive. I also have (somewhere) photos that I took back in the day using FILM, if ya can believe it. If I ever find and scan them, I may compile them into a future TBT post. But don’t count on that ever happening. I think in the short term, I will convert ThrowBack Thursday to Thymptom Thurthday, where I will talk about more of the symptoms / side effects of Parkinson’s Disease. Come back next week to see what that looks like.

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