Hall Station, Sanborn, Kutch and Pierces – Colorado Ghost Towns
by local author & historian: John LaBorde
Driving along State Highway 94 one passes a highway sign for Hall Station. One looks and sees not much of anything. Here at the junction with County Road 11 is where Hall Station used to be. There is no mention of any kind of town being here but by lore/myth, a gentleman by the name of Hall operated a gas station on the SE corner of the junction.
On Lincoln County Assessor maps from the 1940’s, Hall Station is shown as a community/school district. On the south end of this vacant lot are some relics and rubble piles. Here, there may have been a school house. There were numerous small districts that covered 20 to 50 square miles. A township was 35 square miles but that didn’t always work.
To the south is Sanborn, at the corner of CR 11 and CR X is where the map shows the Post Office being located. The Sanborn sheep ranch was the Post Office in 1878. To the west of this intersection is where the US Geological Survey map shows another location for Sanborn. Going west on CR X one passes an old ranch location. Here may have been the Sanborn sheep ranch.
Sheep ranching conjures up the Hollywood conflict between cow punchers and sheep men. Nearby is Horse Creek and along this route was the Goodnight Cattle Trail. Talking with a few old timers there are stories of these two groups mixing like oil and water. There were the conflicts and the separation between the two groups. Sheep ranching was a major business across the eastern plains and there are the myths to go with the early days of ranching on the high plains. Today the sheep have all but disappeared and it is cattle that now graze on the prairie along the fields.
The Post Office at Sanborn lasted until Ira Kutch got the contract for the Post Office in 1899. Kutch had its beginnings in a dugout on the banks of Horse Creek on the Lincoln and Elbert County line. The post Office lasted in the dugout until 1905 when it was moved again. Ira Kutch moved his Post Office north on CR 11 a few miles. Here a small community sprung up. Gas station, store, blacksmith, dance hall, baseball filed and dance barn plus some neighbors. Here the Post Office lasted till 1971.
Go north from Hall Station on CR 11 to CR 2A, turn west up the hill. At the crest of the hill one can look back at the far bank of Horse Creek to the NE. In the ranchers pasture there is a small depression and a rubble pile where the dugout used to be. Below the ridge cattle graze, a stream trickles along through the trees and some homes are tucked in the groves of trees in the stream bottom.
Going further west on CR 2A one comes to the Pierces. On the USGS map it is listed as being near here. Somewhere in the vicinity of CR 2A junction with CR 5 was Pierces. Not sure if it was a store or what. Pierces would have been on the Goodnight cattle trail. A trading post is possible or it just may have been a ranch
There is a large home in the area reaching towards the clouds, looks like a small castle but it is on the wrong side of the road. On the other side is a stand of trees and ruts leading towards the creek. Who knows but it is fun to speculate. Sit there and imagine what it would have been like over 100 years ago driving cattle up the stream, headed for the goldfields.
Out over the vast prairie of southwestern Lincoln County numerous ghosts of days past, frolic or idle their time away. On SH 94, travelers whiz by.