Chivington, Colorado
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chivington is an unincorporated town located in Kiowa County, Colorado, United States. The U.S. Post Office at Eads (ZIP Code 81036) now serves Chivington postal addresses.[1]
Chivington was named for the Reverend/Colonel John Chivington, who commanded the Volunteer Militia of the Colorado Territory that perpetrated the Sand Creek massacre, an infamous slaughter of peaceful Native Americans in a nearby gulch during the American Civil War. Chivington was lauded as a hero at first, but as details of the massacre became known, he was officially reprimanded and Territorial Governor John Evans lost his job for encouraging Chivington.
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[edit] History
Chivington (est. 1887) was one of several railroad towns in Kiowa County on eastern Colorado's plains along the Missouri Pacific Railroad line, and in the late 19th century, eastern Colorado had a lot of agriculture and related commerce. Railroad workers also briefly contributed to the local economy as the Missouri Pacific extended into Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Palmer Lake, and eventually brought service into Denver.
As new towns along this railroad line formed, they were named alphabetically, which might explain why "Chivington" was chosen--with the massacre site only about 9 miles away, "C" brought the name "Chivington" to mind. And in Colorado, the massacre was not as infamous as in the rest of the nation.
During Chivington's early days, it supported a number of local businesses, the crown jewel being the $10,000, 60-room, 3-story Queen Anne styled Kingdon Hotel--but when the railroad realized that Chivington's water had too high an alkali content to use in the locomotive boilers, a nearby town in Kansas (Horace) instead became an important watering stop for the railroad. The Kingdon Hotel was disassembled (its intended purpose was to house railroad workers), and it's materials shipped to two other Colorado communities for constructing buildings there--a common fate in Colorado, in the era.
The dust bowl and Depression days of the 1920s and 1930s proved sustained agriculture on Colorado's eastern plains unsupportable, and Chivington (like many other nearby towns) mostly died somewhere in those decades.
[edit] Today's Chivington
A couple of more-modern homes are still occupied in Chivington, but the town is mostly comprised of a few abandoned but still-standing ruins, more partially-collapsed buildings (the once beautiful school house degrades, year-by-year), and many piles of bricks mark where the town once stood.
Standard green highway markers ("Chivington") identify what these ruins once were. The post office existed into the 1980s but nearby Eads today offers the nearest postal service and amenities like stores and gas stations.
Lamar is the closest remaining "significant" town on Colorado's eastern plains. Chivington appears to be returning, like much of eastern Colorado, to its sparse grassland and prairieland origins.
[edit] Geography
Chivington is located at (38.436649,-102.542095).
[edit] External links
- Chivington, Colorado History
- Modern Photos of Ghost Town Chivington
- Kiowa County, Colorado History
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
[edit] References
- ^ ZIP Code Lookup (JavaScript/HTML). United States Postal Service (January 3, 2007). Retrieved on January 3, 2007.
