The Broomcorn Express, Quarterly Publication of the Friends of Broomfield History
Vol. 3, No. 4, October–December 2023
This park with a spectacular view of the Front Range was dedicated in 2013 to longtime community activist and volunteer, Anne Crouse. Anne was a woman of many talents and interests. She settled in Broomfield with her husband, Pete, in 1957 and together they raised four children in the new Broomfield Heights neighborhood. A partial list of her accomplishments includes working as a reporter for the Broomfield-Star-Builder and The Broomfield Enterprise; helping found theUnited Church of Christ, FISH, and the Broomfield Community Foundation; and serving on the Broomfield Town Council. The park site with its sweeping vista is an appropriate location to commemorate this woman who held such an expansive view of community.
The park overlooks an area of presumed prehistoric and Native American campsites. Preliminary archeological investigations in the open space area below discovered a woodland projectile point and evidence of Native American campsites. Scan the vista in front of you and imagine a long ago past.
Explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long’s early 1800s expeditions to Colorado’s Front Range gave a false impression of an unoccupied wasteland. Their reports created the myth of “The Great American Desert.” In fact, this land has been the home of many different peoples, beginning most likely with the nomadic hunters who crossed the land bridge into Alaska from Asia as long as perhaps 25,000 years ago. They gradually migrated onto the northern Great Plains and then southward along the Rockies.
By the end of the ice age, around 10,000 B.C., early inhabitants, designated Clovis peoples, occupied the now wetter and cooler plains. They were excellent hunters who took advantage of the abundance of game in the Pleistocene era including Mammoths.
As the climate became drier and warmer, the type of flora and fauna that could flourish here changed and the inhabitants appeared to have moved on. After about 8,500 B.C., another group, the Folsom peoples were found on the plains hunting the Bison antiquus, a much larger version of the modern Bison. Evidence of their hunts have been found in several Colorado locations.
Beginning around 5,000 B.C., as the climate became even warmer, Paleo-Indian hunter gatherers continued to live along the Front Range. The land at the base of the mountains was lower than the high plains to the east so some protection was provided from winter winds. The wetter conditions there from mountain streams also meant more vegetation available for food sources and fuel. They hunted the Bison bison, a smaller version of the earlier animal, and ventured into the mountains for other game.
From 500 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. the nomadic Plains Woodland peoples ranged over this area following the game and flora through the seasons and creating projectile points like the one found here. They traveled in small family groups, living in temporary camps, and traded with other groups further east and south.
Around 700-800 A.D. the weather changed, becoming wetter. Early forms of agriculture emerged, including variations of the “three sisters” cultivated by native peoples across North America: maize, beans and squash. This was a short-lived period. As the climate became drier again, new migration patterns arose among the various peoples, some moving further east, others south.
According to their oral traditions, the Ute peoples have always lived in Colorado. When the Spanish explorers arrived in Colorado in the 1500s, they found the Utes already here. Various Ute bands occupied an area stretching from what is now Utah to across the Nebraska and Kansas border. Unlike many tribes, they have no migration story as part of their culture. Apache bands also roamed the eastern plains at this time.
Native peoples were greatly impacted by European and American incursions into their homelands; from the Spanish explorers to French trappers, early American explorers, miners, the railroads and farmers. As white settlement moved westward, native peoples were displaced, leading them to migrate west into territory occupied by other native groups. By the 1600s the Commanche tribe had moved onto the High Plains. They were joined by the Lakota Sioux in the 1700s and in the early 1800s by the Arapaho and Cheyenne. The adoption of the horse by these groups gave them great mobility and the ability to more effectively hunt buffalo and other game. However, as more white settlements occupied the land, inevitable conflicts arose with the native tribes resulting in their eventual expulsion. By 1869 the native peoples of Colorado had been forcefully removed to reservations.
Sources:
MacMahon, Todd. Archeology In Broomfield: A Gateway Landscape. History Colorado, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, 2015. [PowerPoint]
O’Meara, Sean. Indigenous Connections: Native American Ethnographic Study of Golden, Colorado and the Clear Creel Valley. Anthropological Research, LLC, 2022
Rock Creek Grasslands Management Plan. Boulder County, Open Space Department, 2011.
Turner, Carol. Legendary Locals of Broomfield. Arcadia Publishing, 2014.
Ubbelode, Carl, Duane Smith and Maxine Benson. A Colorado History, 9th ed. Pruett, 2006.
Virgo, Vincent and Stephen Grace. Colorado: Mapping the Centennial State Through History. Globe Pequot, 2009.
West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. University Press of Kansas, 1998.