The site of the Julesburg Pony Express station is nicely off the beaten path, about one-and-a-half miles southeast of Ovid, Colorado. You'll find the official markers for it on County Road 28, a gravel road in the hinterlands of South Platte River territory. This was the original setting of the town of Julesburg (Julesburg #1 — there have been four of them!)), but since a party of Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux Indians burned the village down in 1865, the actual station no longer exists.

Four Towns — One Name

This area has a long and fascinating history, and if you're into western lore like I am you'll want to spend some time here exploring. Knowing a little bit about the town(s) of Julesburg helps put everything into perspective.

Jules Beni, a trader of French-Indian descent, set up a trading post in 1859 at the spot we're talking about now. Rather immodestly, he named it Julesburg. Later on, after a pitched battle between the U.S. Army and the Indian tribes mentioned above, the village was burned to the ground. And so Julesburg #1 came to an end on February 2, 1865.

The next year, in 1866, Julesburg #2 was established a couple miles east, up the road. Slapped together primarily as a stage coach stop, it was abandoned in 1867.

If you've been noting the years, you might guess that the railroad had something to do with the changes and you'd be right. This was the height of the locomotive age. Like so many other places out west, towns followed the rails and villages too far away from the railroad evaporated. The Union Pacific passed several miles north of here, and #2 became obsolete with the new Julesburg #3 rising close to the terminus. However, this was just a temporary setting as the Transcontinental Railroad pushed further west.

The Union Pacific laid a Denver branch line shortly after this, and so once again the inhabitants abandoned the previous village and moved several more miles eastward to be near the tracks. Originally called Denver Junction in 1881, the name reverted to Julesburg once again. This is the present day town (#4) located at the intersection of I-76 and US 385.

The Pony Express in Julesburg

But back to Julesburg #1. The Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company took on the trading post as a stage coach station in 1859. The company also hired Jules Beni as station master. The following year, when the Pony Express started up, this became a Home Station, where both riders and horses could be exchanged. By the way, I should probably mention that some sources in my personal library show his name as Reni (with an "R.")

The picture to the right shows me standing near this site. Some official monuments erected by the Overland Pony Express Trail Association mark the spot. As mentioned above, this is on County Road 28, just southeast of Ovid.

Apparently the business relationship between Beni and the Pony Express wasn't an amicable one. For not much later the company's district manager shot and killed Beni. Local legend has it that he then sliced off Beni's ears, nailing one to a fence post as a warning to other malcontents and making the other into a watch fob!

When we drove down the country lane to get here, I jammed on the brakes and leapt out of the car. Hey! There was a snake crossing the road. Maybe I would finally be lucky and get to see a rattler in the wild. As I've mentioned several times in this Web site, that has long been one of my unfulfilled goals out West. But I wasn't fast enough...by the time I bolted from the car, the serpent had rapidly slithered across the road and into the grasses.

We did get a pretty good close-up view of a white-tailed jackrabbit, however. Its enormous feet and ears were quite comical looking.

The Pony Express Ran Where?

When we were camping in the Pawnee National Grassland earlier that week, my companion Marie met another camper from Golden (close to the Rockies). She claimed that her house was on the old Pony Express Trail. Ahem...there was only one station in Colorado...Julesburg...just barely across the border from Nebraska.

I don't know if people make it a practice of going barefoot in northeastern Colorado, or if someone was simply unlucky. But two of the fence posts behind the Pony Express plaques in the picture above were uniquely adorned. Someone had plopped a boot over each one. Maybe this is a western custom I'm unfamiliar with, and in fact has special meaning!

A Scenic and Historic Byway

We spent an excellent day exploring all around this area. Let me tell you how it came to pass, and mention some of the other historic sites nearby.

After leaving Pawnee National Grassland, part of our great 2001 getaway, we were working our way homeward and pulled into the State of Colorado Welcome Center at Julesburg for a break. This is a beautiful building (with nice landscaping too!), housing all sorts of interesting artwork and displays. And, of course, there were racks and racks of free literature and maps.

Now my compatriot and I knew that we wanted to see a bit of Julesburg, since it figures into one of our favorite books, Centennial. However, we still didn't know much about the town or what there was to see. A couple things came to our rescue, though. First, we met some kind locals brimming with inside information; see the sidebar below. Next, I picked up the two excellent brochures shown in the photo here. Be sure to click the [footnote] for details.

The one on the left, Discover Colorado: Colorado's Scenic and Historic Byways is a 40 page booklet describing all 21 auto tours available in the state. A bundle of maps, descriptions and pictures make up this glossy keepsake. Since it covers all of the Scenic and Historic Byways, the information is fairly general in nature.

The booklet on the right, however, is specifically for the South Platte River Trail. This is the Scenic and Historic Byway that encompasses the towns of Julesburg, Ovid and Sedgwick, and took us to the Pony Express site. You've got to get this! Adorned with beautiful pictures by artist Mickey Schilling, it describes a 19 mile loop, with descriptions for the eleven stops. On the trail itself, there are award winning interpretive plaques at each of the stops, adding to your understanding of what went on here.

I suppose it took us two or three hours to make the loop, since we paused often to snap pictures, read some of the history and simply soak in the view. Besides the Pony Express stuff mentioned above, this auto tour brochure guided us to a number of other fascinating sites. Outstanding in my memory was the locale of Fort Sedgwick. Does that name ring a bell? Well, if you're a fan of Dances with Wolves like I am, then you'll remember it as the ramshackle, dilapidated dump of a fort that John Dunbar posted himself to. Obviously, the story was fiction, and Dunbar was probably in South Dakota, but there's no doubt the author drew upon the real Fort Sedgwick when composing his story.

Another great stop was the defunct Great Western Sugar Factory in Ovid. You might be wondering why this would be interesting. Read Centennial and you'll understand how sugar beet farming played an important part in Colorado's history. I feel certain that Michener (who knew this area well) had this factory in mind when he created Central Beet.

And speaking of Centennial, we crossed the South Platte River on this auto tour, the river that runs throughout Michener's epic tale. It was staggeringly beautiful, and my partner and I could easily visualize Pasquinel paddling down it. It's still wild; no dams, developments or any signs of humanity corrupt its appearance.

I'll be devoting some separate pages to the places I've just mentioned. In the meanwhile, consider laying your hands on the two guides described above and planning your own auto tour of this authentic western territory.

Behind the Scenes of Centennial

There were three very friendly, older ladies running the Welcome Center I mentioned earlier. When they found out we were interested in Centennial, they fell over themselves giving us local, inside information. For example, we found out that there really had been a murder out here in which the corpse was stuffed down a well, and in fact the beet farmers did import Japanese workers to hoe the fields, and lots of other tidbits that Michener incorporated in his book.

• State
  • Colorado Scenic & Historic Byways
  • South Platte River Trail Scenic & Historic Byway
  • State of Colorado Tourism
  
  
• Municipal
  • City of Golden
  • Town of Julesburg
  • Town of Ovid
  
  
• Other Interesting Sites
  • Fort Sedgwick Historical Society
  • Great Western Sugar Factory
  • History of the Union Pacific Railroad
  • Jules Beni: The Showdown with Jack Slade
  • The New Pony Express Statue at Julesburg
  • The Transcontinental Railroad
  • White-Tailed Jackrabbit