Hiking to a Homestead at Soapstone Prairie
Wow, what a week it has been. I’m not sure if it is the heat or the smoke or the solstice or what, but people have been extremely rude! One day this week I had been called almost every bad name you can think of, all before 10:30am! Yesterday afternoon I had a woman use the F-bomb no less than 12 times in a 5 minute span, along with many other instances of equally offensive language. Unlike most callers, she did realize she was rude and aplogized before she slammed down the phone. But dang, I am ready for this week to be over. In none of those cases was I in a position to do anything about what they were cussing at me for. *sigh*
So, onto happier things - I did go on the hiking program last Saturday and it was fantastic! Soapstone Prairie is an Natural Area owned by the City of Fort Collins which shares borders with Larimer County’s Red Mountain Open Space and Cheyenne’s Big Hole Open Space. It is located roughly 30 miles north of Fort Collins. Soapstone contains the Lindenmeier archeological site famous for its Folsom culture campsite. What was unique about this particular program at Soapstone was that we were allowed to wander off the trail at points to get a closer look at some of the homesteads on the property.
The Master Naturalist volunteer who lead our group, Brian Carroll, was a great storyteller and very knowledgeable about homesteading practices of the time (late 1800’s and early 1900’s) in this area. He and one of the NA employees are digging deeper into the history of the homesteads that were on the property and are unearthing many different tidbits. Of course, as is the case with puzzling out the history there are some more questions being raised and some conflicting information. It was all quite fascinating though - marriages, divorces, moves into Fort Collins, affairs and all manner of events not that different from today.
We hiked about 3 miles, much of which was on-trail to what is currently being called the “Lindenmeier Homestead” but some new information is making it sound like maybe the Lindenmeiers never lived in that particular building. We had some visitors keeping us company for our lunch too! Portions of Soapstone are still leased out to area ranchers for grazing.
One view of the homestead.
Parts are still standing.
Near by is a naturally fed spring. It has been so hot and dry that you can easily see where it flows! Looking for such things are always a clue to finding evidence of prior habitation! This particular spring also had the remains of an aquaduct very nearby, though that was no longer being used to bring water to the stock tank near by.
While I had my doubts about the weather when we were setting out on the hike, it ended up being just about perfect. The air was free of smoke. The temperatures were moderate and the sun very quickly came out. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a weekend day burning some calories and learning some local history. They’ll be repeating the program again in the fall and I’d definitely recommend it to any locals.
If you want to see more photos from the day, I’ve put up a set on Flickr. Though I haven’t yet gone through and appropriately captioned everything yet. If you have questions about any of them, feel free to comment!
With the forecasted temperatures this weekend and the rudeness of people I’ve dealt with this week I think I’ll be hibernating at home aside from the required weekly grocery jaunt. Hopefully I’ll be in the basement, perhaps in front of the sewing machine! What are your plans for the weekend?
