Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. Binx Rugg used to sit on his porch at his cabin in Eldora and tell his daughter Cindy that someday he’d like to live on a ranch and sit on a front porch and watch calves play in the spring, watch his grandchildren ride their horses.

Binx may not have seen that dream come true, but Cindy is now living it for him on a 150-acre ranch in Delta, where newborn calves frolic in the warm April air.

Cindy’s grandchildren, Rylee Kutscher and Payton McCollum spent their spring break from Nederland Elementary School and Nederland High School walking among the 32 pairs of Black Angus cattle, the 90 horses, the pigs, the chickens and ducks and the dogs and the cat of the Z Barn Ranch.

They had on the job training as their grandmother, grandfather Harvey and uncle Steve McCollum prepared the irrigation systems in the hay fields for the growing season.

At the edge of the meadows, stands of giant cottonwoods have a hint of green sprouting in their branches and the Gunnison River flows steadily along the property border.

It has been just a little over a year since Cindy moved her herds of horses and cows from the eastern slope, from Gilpin County, to the lush farmland of Delta and she says she is happy she made the move, even though most of her family history began in Eldora.

Binx was one of seven children who grew up knowing hard times, helping his father run a pair of workhorses, hauling lumber down from the Fourth of July. The Rugg family worked hard but invested wisely, buying over 50 mining claims which became known as Eldora Mountain and included over 500 acres of land.

Binx attended the two-story school house in Eldora but didn’t like it much and ran away from home at the age of 14 to operate a bulldozer on the highway outside of Silverton. He then returned to Nederland where he worked in the Wolftongue mine. Later, Binx worked for the Boulder Valley School District as an electrician. In 1953, he and Joe Smith took over the Conger Mine.

As the mining boom dwindled, Binx kept busy helping his neighbors with his bulldozer and watching his grandchildren grow up.

He was such an ingrained part of the Eldora culture that residents started the Binx Fest, a summer concert held in Eldora in his honor, often featuring Vince Herman and his gang of musicians.

Cindy grew up in the small mining town and began her career with horses as a teenager, taking tourists out on the trails, learning how to be a businesswoman. She attended Nederland High School and then began her career of running trail rides in the mountains. Over the years, she started Horses R Us, which was located at the Sundance Stable and in Meeker.

She married Harvey McCollum and the couple developed McCollum excavating. Their children, Steve and Stephanie, grew up in Eldora and eventually Stephanie, after running the Sundance Stables for a few years, bought a house in Gilpin County and opened the Underground Liquor Store in honor of her grandfather. Steve ran the excavating business.

Change was taking place in the foothills of Boulder County though. New residents wanted the rules and regulations they were accustomed to, to apply in the rural neighborhoods, in the gulches and the forests.

When the Sundance was sold two years ago, the lease with the forest service was discontinued. Although Cindy continued her contract with the Fly Fishing Club, most of her horses were pastured on the plains, a long commute. By this time, she had accumulated 90 horses, some of them used for trail riding, some Belgians and Percherons used for carriage rides and parades, some retired and all of them, in Cindy’s eyes, deserving of a good home.

She began to look around and finally Paula, a long-time friend, said she found a property that Cindy had to take a look at in Delta. In the farming Mecca of Colorado, the tropics on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains.

At first the price was out of reach but then it came down and the Z Barn was a viable prospect. The 12-stall barn, various outbuildings and two-house spread was once a dairy farm. The large structure is now filled with workhorse tack, probably a hundred saddles and a wall filled with bridles and blankets.

When the dairy closed down, the Z Barn became an auction facility and then a feed lot. It had been known as the Old Morgan Place.

In February of 2017, the sale was finalized, and Cindy began the daunting transfer of her horses and cows from Wellington.

“We had nine loads of horses in the stock trailers traveling over the divide,” she says, not to mention the vehicles, farm equipment and personal belongings. Then she got to work, prepping the fields for the first cutting of hay in June.

“It is a big project, prepping 150 acres for the summer, getting the pipes laid out, putting in the furrows and creases that hold the water, harrowing the clumps of cow and horse manure, turning the soil.”

It’s a lot of work but Cindy is happy with the move. She says it is a more relaxed community than Boulder County, the people have welcomed her and there are no traffic jams. She still owns four rental houses in Gilpin County, eight acres across from the KOA, two houses and many acres of land in Eldora which she says she will never sell, a promise she keeps for her dad.

Since moving in, Cindy has tied in with the Delta Montrose Partners, a non-profit organization that works with at risk kids, offering horse camps and work opportunity.

Her son Steve now owns and runs a hay farm in Hotchkiss and lives in a ranch house on Cindy’s property along with his dad, Harvey.

Having the grandchildren spend spring break brought great joy to Cindy, watching them and their friends from Nederland schools play with the calves and four-wheel around the property. The kids slept in one of the RVs on the property, their own fort for a week-long sleepover, swam at the local recreation center and even spent time at the chocolate factory, trying to choose among the discounted Whitman Samplers, fudge, truffles and hot fudge sundaes.

“I hated to see them go,” says Cindy. “I love to have them here and meet their friends and show them what a real working ranch is like.”

She’s come a long way from the girl who started out with seven mountain ponies in Eldora, but somehow it looks as if she has ended up on the front porch of her ranch, watching her grandchildren play with calves, just like Binx always dreamed of.