Alexander Joseph, Peak to Peak. A mountain dweller, and even those who call the mountain bordered plains home, may look up at the rocky peaks, the sea of sharp pines, the seamless flowing rivers, and forget that despite the seeming virgin nature which abounds around us, this land is full of stories. Many lives lived before our time. 

From some old timers at the grocery store or occasionally in the various papers, one may hear a snippet or two about coal mines or Chief Niwot or even hear whispers of the Colorado KKK era.

But it is rare to see such a well-researched, clear and concise version of history as one finds in Doug Conarroe’s 2020 book Lost Lafayette Colorado. 

The author, and fourth generation Coloradan, takes a captivated reader through the history of our local area with a deft hand and striking detail that will have you looking at places like settler’s park with new eyes. 

Starting with the Native Americans who lived here before the colonists swindled and stole the land that would become the front range sprawl, continuing to the lives of the colonists and how they made cities out of empty, dry plains. Conarroe masterfully presents the facts of the past in an honest and sober way, without white washing or minimizing any of the brutality or hardship. 

From the story of the colonists and the creation of the town of Lafayette, the book moves to the history of coal mines which eventually brought unions and foreign workers. Then bringing the rise of the KKK which dominated Colorado politics for many decades in the early twentieth century. 

And eventually concluding with a recap that leads up to the ongoing procurement of water rights which will be the next big era for Colorado, Conarroe does just what a historian and journalist should do: lay the facts out bare for all of us, presenting a true and vivid picture of the history of this era, no holds barred, no alternative facts. 

It may be easy to drive the winding paved roads beneath power lines, past houses with propane furnaces and electric cars, past wind turbines by Golden or solar fields on the way to the airport, and think that all that we have now is all it has ever been. But it is our duty as citizens of this area, as owners of the many thousands of small pieces that makes up these valleys and rivers and dirt roads, to understand who and what has come before us in order to emulate those who were brave and to understand and move past the petty hatred and bigotry of those who were weak and afraid. 

A book like Lost Lafayette Colorado allows us a glimpse at what was, and gives us some ideas of ways to and not to be, and is worth sitting down to read. 

Lost Lafayette will be available locally wherever books are sold and on www.arcadiapublishing.com.

(Originally published in the April 1, 2021, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)