This photo postcard shows a festive crowd in Limon the day after Independence Day, and it’s clear that something above them has gotten their attention. I doubt it’s fireworks, since it’s daylight, and barnstormers were not really popular until the early 20’s. Maybe it was a hot-air or gas balloon. Note the boy in the foreground to the left of center who appears to be holding up a slingshot. (To his right and behind him is another boy, standing next to a man with a beard, who appears to have his arms cocked in the position for letting go with a slingshot, but there’s no evidence of one in his upraised left hand.) One very big, juicy tempting target for a kid with a slingshot would be a hot-air or gas balloon. Whatever it was, the crowd seems to be enjoying it.
The people visible at the upper left are sitting in the windows of the United States Land Office, evidence that homesteading was still in play in the area at the time. The Land Office sits above a business with the name “Geo. A. Everett” in the window. To the right of Everett’s business is the “Lamar Drug Co.,” and to the right of that is “The Brown Palace.”
I’m always struck by how much more clothing people wore back then, especially in hot weather. When you consider that Lamar’s average high temperature in July is 93 degrees, it’s probably safe to assume that July 5, 1909 was hot. In fact, in mid-July of 1909, S.I. Borton, chief agriculturalist for Lamar’s American Beet Sugar Company factory, described that summer as “extremely dry and hot.”
Lamar is the seat of Prowers County and sits about 122 miles east and a little south of Pueblo on Highway 50. Intervening towns on Highway 50 from west to east are Fowler, Rocky Ford, La Junta, and Las Animas.
REFERENCES:
- The American Sugar Industry and Beet Sugar Gazette, Volumes 11, August 1909 (Google books)
- “Lamar, Colorado,” Wikipedia.org at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar,_Colorado
- Social Networks and Archival Context at http://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w64z05n9
- Weather Atlas at https://www.weather-us.com/en/colorado-usa/lamar-climate
