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Photo postcard of Buckingham, CO, ca.1915. (Photo by B. Benson)

Buckingham, named for C.D. Buckingham, a superintendent of the McCook Division of the Burlington Railroad, is a town that saw two lives.  Its first life began in 1888, when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad built a branch line (abandoned in 1973) from Sterling to Cheyenne, thus giving life to five towns in northeastern Weld County – i.e., Raymer, Buckingham, Keota, Sligo and Grover.   Those towns, in the order given, marked the route of that line as it made its way due west from Sterling along what is now Highway 14 and at Raymer began its gentle curve northwest to Cheyenne.    The railroad tracks in the foreground of the photo are probably those of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy line.   Buckingham sat northeast of Greeley, about 39 miles east of Ault. 

Just like she does today, Mother Nature had her way back then, too.   Birmingham was just getting its walking legs when it and the surrounding area were hit by a severe drought in the years 1889 to 1894.    It brought down not only Buckingham but the town of Raymer and the nearby town of Stoneham.   It probably explains the closure of Buckingham’s post office in January of 1890.   What’s ironic is that many of the farms that went under had been acquired from ranchers, who themselves had gone under due to the bitter winter of 1886 – 1887, which had felled thousands of cattle from starvation or freezing, and a big drop in Chicago beef market prices.

Buckingham was given its second life (as were Raymer and Stoneham) when the rains returned in the years 1905 to 1910.  This brought settlers to the area in big numbers.  A 1917 Greeley Tribune newspaper article reported that the three previous years had seen a large increase in the number of settlers in the Buckingham area, proclaiming they “have replaced huts with houses, lean-tos with barns, and have caused windmills to spring up all over the district.”   It reported that area land values in that period had increased from $3.00 to $8.00 per acre up to $25.00 per acre.  These developments probably explain the re-opening of the Buckingham post office in 1910, which for about a year also served as the Buckingham school house.    To remedy the latter situation, a one-room frame school house was erected In 1911, with a wing added on a couple of years later.  1919 saw the building of a brick school building for Buckingham’s students. 

In its second life, Buckingham could boast of a school building housing grades one through twelve; the Buckingham Cornet Band; Buckingham Lumber; the “East Weld” American Legion post;  the Buckingham Garage, which did auto repairs and sold parts, including spark plugs and “blowout patches;” the Buckingham Sunday School, which, like the church services, was held at the school; a hardware store; a farmers’ COOP grain elevator; and, for a while, the Buckingham State Bank (which was closed by its board of directors in 1920 for over-loaning and failing to collect debts).

I don’t know what caused the town of Buckingham to breathe its last gasp, but I’m sure the Depression and the Dust Bowl conditions of the 1930’scontributed to the town’s downward spiral.   One indicator of the price paid during those years was the number of high school graduates coming out of Buckingham.  In the early 1930’s, its graduating classes had reached a high of 13 students, but by 1941 there were none.  By 1949, there were only 43 students in all 12 grades.  In 1950, the Buckingham school closed, with its students farmed out to Briggsdale and Raymer. 

[It’s interesting to note that Weld County was not designated by the Federal government as a Dust Bowl area, but it didn’t mean Weld County’s citizens were immune to the “black blizzards.” There is an interesting Dust Bowl story from Weld County involving the now-defunct town of Cornish, which was located 15 miles east of Eaton.   At Cornish and in the surrounding area, those awful winds, which smothered crops, lifted topsoil and left farmers ruined, left behind unexpected historical treasure.  According to the Smithsonian Institution, Cornish was at the center of one of the largest scatterings of prehistoric camps in the United States.   Laying exposed in the wind-scoured ground were Native artifacts, including arrowheads, spear points, scraping knives, bone awls, matos and metates.  (The latter two items are, respectively, a smooth, hand-held stone and a large stone with a depression or a bowl.  The movement of the mato against the metate grinds substances such as wild plants, seeds and nuts.)    

Many Cornish residents went out to collect these early artifacts and amassed a large collection.  This led to the creation of a “Stone Age Fair” in 1934, located in Cornish’s two-room school house.  It was spearheaded by George Bowman and his wife Frieda, both Cornish teachers, with participation by several other adults and 28 Cornish students.  George Bowman was a natural and quite successful promoter, and the popularity of the fair took off.  By 1939, thousands were attending the fair each year, and it outgrew its Cornish facilities.  In 1940, the event was moved to Loveland, where it remains today an annual event.]

In researching old newspapers online, I came across a remarkable story from 1914.  It involved Frank Cameron and Mary Hardy, each of whom was a homesteader in the Buckingham area.   Frank was 45 at the time, and Mary was two years younger.  They met each other at a literature reading of some kind.  Although their homesteads were 15 miles apart, they subsequently courted, fell in love and got engaged.   After a year of courtship, on Saturday, February 21, 1914, the day of the big event, Frank came to Mary’s home, from whence they would go to be married by a justice of the peace.  Then she noticed a decorative fob on Frank’s watch chain that she had not seen him wear before.  It was a small gold ring with an unusual setting, which looked very familiar to her.  She asked Frank where he had gotten the ring, and he told her it was a ring his sister gave him  to remember her by the last time he saw her 34 years previously.  Mary promptly fainted.  After Frank revived her, she went into another room and came out with a ring carved from a dime, which her brother had given her before they were sent, as orphans, to different families in Iowa.  It was a ring Frank had given her.  They were brother and sister!  Born with the family name Howard, they had been orphaned at ages eleven and nine.  Needless to say, the wedding was off.  They were both devastated.   

In July of 1966, the Buckingham post office closed.  With the passage of time, more and more buildings were abandoned.   As of 2013, the only remaining identifiable structure was the 1911 frame school house, the rest having been flattened and shriveled by weather and prairie fires.  Here is a link to a photo of the school house, circa 2013:  https://www.reporterherald.com/2013/01/18/buckingham-prairie-country-school-outlived-its-town/

REFERENCES:

  •  Colorado Post Offices – 1859 to 1989, by Bauer, Ozment & Willard, 1990, Colorado Railroad Historical Foundation

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