Yessir, in the early years it was a unique and wholesome place to live and raise a family. Pisses me off too. I loved the area, both the prairie grasslands and the mountains. Felt like you were in a different time than the rest of America and we was, but boy did it evaporate quickly. Pretty much in one generation. Sadly mine and sadder yet, because of the better money to be made, most of us boys turned to the jobs and businesses that destroyed it. Kodak moved in up by Wellington bringing a bunch of New Yorkers and other easterners to the area and from then on it was downhill. Us boys took them construction jobs. Pipelines, roads, houses, new businesses and the infrastructure to them offered up a “better” life for us. The country had been and was in a depression more or less, mechanized farming didn’t require so many hands on deck anymore, the big beet factory shut down and along with the flood of people from all over moving in it turned out to be a perfect storm to destroy. Just like that and it was all gone. Farm lands and ranches turned into subdivisions and shopping centers and malls on both hill and dale. In my lifetime it went from standing on Longs Peak on New Years Eve at fourteen years old and looking out with awe over the prairie having just a cluster of lights here and there to standing on Longs Peak on New Years Eve at forty five years old and seeing with disgust an ocean of lights north to south out towards the east for as far as one could see.