Dearfield

Inspired by Booker T. Washington’s “back to the land” movement which aimed to give African Americans property ownership and self-sufficiency, O.T. Jackson founded a self-sustaining Black settlement 30 miles east of Greeley in 1910. People who saw the potential headed to the prairie, built homes and farms, a school, restaurant, churches and a cement factory. The land was dear to them, so they named the settlement Dearfield. Minerva Jackson ran the thriving town. Picnics, fishing parties, and dancing enlivened Dearfield. Land value increased astronomically over a decade. But the good times did not last. Just two decades after its founding, the community collapsed under repeated droughts, the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Today, it’s a ghost town, but there are efforts to make Dearfield part of the National Park System, to help tell the story of America’s Black experience.

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