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Eastonville, Colorado
Country	United States
State	Colorado
County	El Paso
Elevation	7,234 ft (2,205 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Mountain Standard Time)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (Mountain Daylight Time)
Area code	719

The former town of Bijou Basin was located in eastern Colorado from c.1860-1935 near what is now the town of Peyton.

History

Located about seven miles north of Peyton, Bijou Basin takes its name from Bijou Creek. "Bijou" means "little jewel" in Breton, a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, now a part of France.

The basin is surrounded by bluffs and mesas on its west, south and eastern sides; all dotted with pine trees. Bijou Basin is known for Fremont's Fort, a cone-shaped geologic formation with a flat top that stands on the basin's eastern side, flanked by Eagle Rock (or Rick) and Kelly's Butte. The formation gets its name from John Fremont, who explored Colorado in the 1840s. On the first of five expeditions, Fremont and a band of scouts left the main group for a side trip to what would become eastern El Paso County. Fremont may have followed a tributary of the Platte River, following smaller and smaller streams until he came to Bijou Creek, where he was set up by Indians. Legend has it that Fremont and his band sought safety at the top of Fremont's Fort. Under the cover of darkness, one man was sent on foot to get help from Denver, 60 miles away. Fremont lived to tell the story and conduct four other expeditions, so it's thought that help arrived in time. The first settlers in Bijou Basin included Lewis Haden, D.M. and Steven Holden, who arrived in 1860; followed by Jim and Litt Johnson, Dan Maxon, J.O. Phillips, Jim Bruce, Sol Boyd and John Bell. First names of four other earlier settlers have been lost to history: Petty, Peterfish (a blacksmith), Smith and DeWitt.

A Mrs. Z. L. Holden claims the basin was the site of El Paso County's first school, a log cabin built in 1874. The site of the log cabin was described as seven miles south and two miles west of Fremont's Fort. In the 1880s, the log cabin was moved to the Colbert Ranch and replaced by a white clapboard building. It still had one schoolroom but the building also had a two-room "teacherage" (teacher's living quarters) beyond a connecting door. Unlike many of today's schools, the children could look outside, as this school had six tall windows, three on each side. A Mr. Holden remembers the schoolroom had three rows of double benches with attached writing shelves. Underneath the shelves were others for storing books.

In addition to a school, Bijou Basin had one general store, owned by Mr. Petty - and stocked by wagon from Denver. When someone needed flour or sugar, they ordered it and it came in 100 lb. bags. It was not unusual to place an order for 1,000 pounds of flour at a time. Everyone raised their own meat, vegetables, chickens and cows, so they also had their own eggs and milk. Bell and his family lived on the Colbert Ranch. He's remembered for his disappearance. One day, he hitched his wagon up to his team of horses, loaded the wagon with his camping outfit and headed off to a mining camp, never to be heard from again. Bijou Basin had its own post office, and D.M Holden was its first postmaster. Mail arrived by a tortuous route, going from Monument to River Bend (another town that has vanished), near Limon. Then, it was carried to the basin by cart or horseback, depending on the weather. Despite the distance and rough nature of the route, mail arrived daily. When the mail route was changed to Peyton in 1914, Mr. Banta became the basin's last postmaster. Bijou Basin also had a cheese factory founded by Mr. Cappelle, but it was later moved to Peyton. The factory included a tavern and also sat on the stagecoach route. At one time, a train crossed Bijou Basin and there was a train station, but it and many other buildings were swept away by the Memorial Day flood of 1935, which also took the town of Eastonville, never to be rebuilt.

Information for this article is from the writings of Inacio Castro, pupil, and Marion McLaughlin, teacher for School District 15, written sometime before 1949 and published in "El Paso County Heritage," a collection of local history stories published by Juanita and John Breckinridge in 1985. To visit Bijou Basin, take Highway 24 to Peyton Highway. Turn left on Peyton Highway and follow it north until it turns sharp right at Steeplechase Drive and becomes a dirt road. Follow Peyton Highway through Bijou Basin. Today, recently built houses are sprinkled on the basin's western hillside, and a few older ranch houses remain. Return via Peyton Highway or follow it until it dead ends at an old homestead. Bear left for a couple of turns to reach Elbert Road. Turn left on Elbert Road to head south to Highway 24. According to www.MountainZone.com, Fremont's Fort has a height of 7,123 feet, and its GPS coordinates are N 39.122212 and W -104.414689.

History OLD

Eastonville was a town in eastern Colorado from c.1880-1935. It is no longer incorporated. The area in which it occupied is now taken over by urban sprawl from Colorado Springs. The former town limits now reside in El Paso County, in the Colorado Springs metro area, near Black Forest.

Eastonville Cemetery

The area around Eastonville began settlement around 1872 when a post office was established a mile to the south of its eventual location on Squirrel Creek. The area was found to be suitable for potato farming and many pioneers homesteaded in the vicinity. In 1881 the Denver and New Orleans Railroad (later the Colorado and Southern Railway) laid their tracks through the area and created a stop named "McConnellsville" near what is now Eastonville; this was the main standard gauge line from Colorado Springs to Denver until the 3-foot-gauge Denver and Rio Grande was 3-railed. Shortly after, in 1883, the area post office was moved north and named "Easton" for a local pioneer, John Easton. The town soon became Eastonville. At the behest of the railroad, the town moved a short distance to its current site.

Abandoned house at Eastonville

By the 1900s the town had 350-500 people. It had three churches, three hotels, a newspaper, a school house, race track, ball field,and many businesses. Nine to ten passenger trains passed through everyday, and with at least that many freight trains using the tracks a constant rolling of locomotives could be heard day and night in the burgeoning city. It had become the self-proclaimed "potato capital of the world" and some years couldn't find enough workers to harvest the crops. Colorado Springs newspapers would print large advertisements offering work at respectable wages on the potato farms of Eastonville. It was one of the most prosperous farm centers in eastern Colorado that are now ghost towns.

Eastonville continued as a stable town until the 1930s when drought and depression hit the west. In 1935 the area endured a potato blight and a flood which washed away many buildings in Elbert, the next town north on the railroad; the railroad was then abandoned. The town couldn't recover without the railroad, especially since Peyton (6 miles away) still had the Rock Island railroad. Although little remains but a few buildings and the cemetery, as of May 2013 the United States Board on Geographic Names still lists Eastonville as a populated place.

As the town died, the Eastonville school district was merged into the Peyton School District 23jt. Eastonville is, however, in the Falcon fire district.

References

Category:Unincorporated communities in Colorado Category:Unincorporated communities in El Paso County, Colorado