Lamar, Colorado: The Stolen Depot

You are passing through Lamar, the seat of Prowers County, and local lore says it was born in one of the more audacious real-estate moves on the Colorado plains. In May of eighteen eighty-six, a land-office promoter named Isaac Holmes wanted to relocate a Santa Fe Railroad depot three miles west to his new townsite. The local cattleman who owned the existing station threatened a court injunction to block the move.

Holmes arranged a telegram luring the cattleman to Pueblo on urgent business. The moment he boarded the westbound train, a fully crewed work train pulled up, and in a single night the crew loaded the depot, onto flatcars and hauled it to the new site. By morning, Lamar existed.

The town was named for Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.