In 2010, Dearfield, Colorado, will be 100 years old. Nowadays, it’s a ghost town. Between May 5, 1910, when it was founded east of Greeley, and the Depression, its residents managed to survive, and even thrive, as dryland farmers. In its prime, it had 700 residents; in 1940, the census counted 12.

Dearfield was one of many black towns founded in the United States after the Civil War. When black people in the South realized that Colorado would allow them to homestead, they began moving west (see “The Exodusters,” a note from the BAWM). The problem was that, by the turn of the twentieth century, most of the productive land had been claimed. Oliver Toussaint Jackson, the founder of Dearfield, tried to buy land but was unable. After he got a job as messenger for the governor of Colorado, he sold the governor on his idea and established his town on government land that had recently opened up.

The homesteaders were poor, and their first winter was difficult. But by 1916, 53 families farming 5,000 acres brought in their first marketable crop, worth $50,000.

One of the remarkable stories I learned from the Dearfield documentary (shown at the Black American West Museum in Five Points) is that the local school was integrated—and that during a time when the KKK was gaining power in Colorado. White residents interviewed for the movie remembered that race didn’t matter at school, but black residents recalled feeling slighted at times. (And here we are today in the “postracial” era…)

Water usage, however, was not integrated. Dearfield residents had no rights to water flowing through the local ditch. Luckily, one homestead had lakes on it, and before the white residents could make good on their threat to pump that water for their own use, the owner took the train to Denver and filed a claim on the water in her lakes.

Today the Black American West Museum owns most of the lots in Dearfield and is exploring ways to preserve the site. In 2010, the museum plans to have a celebration in Dearfield to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of its founding.

“There’s no such thing as a black cowboy,” Paul W. Stewart was told as a boy. But years later, as an adult, he met a black cowboy, which inspired him to scour the American West for evidence of their existence. The artifacts he collected can be viewed at the Black American West Museum (BAWM), which he founded in 1971. In the 1980s, his collection came to rest in Justina Ford’s house. As in any other “house museum,” the exhibits have been squeezed into the space as best they can.

When I visited BAWM last week, I was given a brief tour by a docent and then encouraged to watch a 30-minute film about Dearfield, an all-black farming community founded in 1910 east of Greeley. I’ll write about that tomorrow.

Today I want to talk about what I learned at the museum, which is “dedicated to collecting, preserving and disseminating the contributions of Blacks in the Old West.”

One room upstairs is dedicated to African American military service, and in addition to the Buffalo Soldier exhibit, I noticed a plaque from the University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies to Lieutenant Colonel John Mosley, thanking him and all the 1 million African Americans who served in World War II for helping to fight Nazism.

I hadn’t realized that number was so high. It must have been quite a shock for those men and women to return to the United States after World War II—and to Jim Crow. No wonder the civil rights movement grew so strong in the decades following World War II.

Another corner holds household items, including an ivory-colored wedding shirtdress and the oddest item I saw: a mirror decorated with deer hooves. After that, the tools no longer used (grinding wheel), or the rodeo equipment unfamiliar to me (bosals), seemed positively commonplace.

The museum offers so much that I could not absorb it all, but here are a few other notes I jotted down:

• The Five Points neighborhood in Denver was one-half built out by 1890; the rest was finished by 1914. It was a white community until the 1920s.
• The Atlas Drug Store, at 27th and Welton, was the only one in Denver where African Americans could sit at the counter. I wonder if that is where Blackberries coffee shop sits now.
• From a picture upstairs: “Bill Pickett invented the art of bulldogging. Pickett would jump from the horse onto the steer’s neck, twist its neck and sink his teeth into its tender nose or lips, driving the steer to the ground.” That sounds mean, I think.
• J. H. P. Westbrook, a black man who passed for white, infiltrated the KKK in Denver in the early 1900s and informed the black community of their plans.
• Lloyd Hall filed 100 patents for food preservation and sterilization.
• Lonnie G. Johnson’s company invented the Supersoaker.
• The wrench was invented in 1922 by a black man named Jack Johnson. [See comment below for correction. The first wrench was invented in 1835; Johnson patented a new version.]
• Among the many pictures of historical figures and donors on the wall, I noticed a picture of CU Professor Charles Nilon. When I worked for Fiction Collective Two at CU-Boulder in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the press instituted the Charles N. and Mildred Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction (now defunct, as far as I can tell from the FC2 website). The first award went to Melvin Dixon for his novel Trouble the Water.

I like going to a new place and finding a connection to some bit of my past.

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Note: The museum’s executive director, La Wanna Larson, allowed me to show some photographs on this blog, but in general, the museum does not allow cameras inside.

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Check out the Earthworks Expo at the Merchandise Mart this weekend.

Museo de las Americas is holding its Spanish happy hour Friday from 5 to 8. This month it’s hosted by Rebecca Caro of the blog From Argentina with Love.

For years I’ve wanted to visit the Black American West Museum (BAWM). Last Tuesday, I finally set foot inside Dr. Justina Ford’s historic home, where the museum’s collection is now located.

Justina Ford was Denver’s first female doctor, as well as the city’s first female African-American doctor. She was the only female doctor in Denver from 1902 until at least 1930. She graduated from Chicago’s Hering Medical School in 1899, quite a feat for a woman in those days.

(Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn a medical degree, graduated in 1849. According to encyclopedia.com, “In 1864 Rebecca Lee became the first black female to receive such a degree when she graduated from the New England Female Medical College [now Boston University School of Medicine].” There are several African-American men credited with various firsts in medicine: James Derham was the first to formally practice medicine in the United States, in the late 1700s, but he did not have a degree.).

After Ford’s house was threatened with demolition in the early 1980s and then preserved with the help of neighbors and the BAWM, it was moved from 2335 Arapahoe to its current location at 3091 California (near the Downing and 30th station on light rail). The downstairs room where I watched a movie about the black pioneer town of Dearfield, Colorado (more on that later this week) was her office, and she slept downstairs in order to hear patients ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night. Her husband slept upstairs.

Dr. Ford said she had delivered 7,000 babies during her years as a practicing physician. She treated patients at her home, and if they needed services she could not provide there, she sent them to Denver Health Medical Center. If they mentioned they had seen Ford, however, the hospital would not treat them (at least, in the early part of her career).Toward the end of her career, she was awarded hospital privileges, but until then, she cared for the underprivileged at her home.

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In the next installment of this series, I’ll talk about found BAWM founder Paul Stewart’s search for memorabilia relating to black cowboys. Historically, about one-third of cowboys were black, one-third were Latino, and one-third were white. I’m not sure what percentage of cowboys and cowgirls were American Indian, but some Indian tribes, such as the Navajos, began running sheep and cattle on their lands soon after the Spanish introduced those animals to North America in the 1500s.

I’m unfamiliar with the history of Asian Americans in ranching, but the website of the Oregon Historical Society has this to say: “According to the 1890 census, there were 55 non-white stock raisers, herders, and drovers in Oregon. This number included African Americans as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Native Americans.”