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This community is up for adoption This is a story about Vollmar that appeared in the Longmont Times-Call, Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007. Here is a link to the original story. I don't know how long the story will remain on the Times-Call website, but if it is still there, be sure and watch the slideshow. Some wonderful images of the people and life of Vollmar. Here is a link to the
St. Francis Cemetery,
which is the cemetery mentioned in this article. Publish Date: 2/25/2007
Another time By Douglas Crowl VOLLMAR — One year stands out for Leonard Vargas when he recalls his family’s time in Vollmar, once a small town near the South Platte River east of Firestone that nearly disappeared over the past half-century. “It was 1934. I know that date. That’s when he passed away,” Vargas said, sitting in his Brighton home. Vargas, who was born in 1940, showed an old photo of his grandfather Felix Vargas, in a casket surrounded by family. Leonard Vargas’ father, then-16-year-old Leo Vargas, is one of the few people in the image looking directly into the camera. Somehow, the family managed to save enough money to buy an 80-acre farm in Vollmar in the late 1930s, a rare occurrence at a time when Mexicans were farm workers, not farm owners, Leonard Vargas said. The Vargases were among a handful of Hispanic families that once breathed life into a vibrant Vollmar community — the Gonzaleses, Buenos, Chavezes, Garcias and Trujillos, to name a few. But only a few descendents of these families remain in the settlement, which was once set to become an established town. Most people driving down Weld County Road 23 might note the refurbished old Vollmar School as they look east down WCR 20, but the reminders of one of the purely Hispanic communities in the region are disappearing. In its heyday, Vollmar had dozens of homes, an active Catholic church, ballfields, a dance pavilion and the school. The church, once a centerpiece for the area’s Hispanic community, sits in ruins, though the pews and an altar are still intact. The Vollmar Cemetery sits on a hill above the town, with 50 or 60 graves — the headstones all bear Hispanic names, according to a book of Weld County tombstone inscriptions. The cemetery is no longer maintained, though locals say they occasionally see fresh flowers on some graves. The Vollmar School has been refurbished and today is a private residence. “Vollmar is just dying out,” said Leonard Vargas, who still owns part of his grandmother’s farm, which was leased out to a local farmer until recently. “When these people pass away, that will be about it.” In 1923, a grade school brought Felix and Fortunata Vargas and their two children at the time from Mead to Vollmar, where other Hispanics had settled. The family found a place right next to the Vollmar School. “They wanted a school that (the kids) could walk to,” Leonard Vargas said. Felix also was able to keep a good farm job in Mead, where he stayed and worked through the week, coming home on weekends. Eleven years later, he died just days after coming down with an unknown illness, leaving four children — Leo, Rosie, Longina and Lucio — with the strong-willed Fortunata Vargas. “She was the matriarch of the family,” said Felix Rojas, 55, another grandson of Fortunata and son of Longina. “She was the one to say what was going on and what would be planted.” Her oldest son, Leo, went to work in the fields and later in construction to help support the family. Fortunata Vargas also adopted four babies in Vollmar — one of them mentally disabled — and raised them as her own. Everyone worked on the farm, which included a large cash-crop field of beets, cucumbers and corn, and a vegetable garden. “It would be all day until we got the whole field done,” Rojas said. The Loveland resident also owns part of the family farm, including his grandma’s old home, which is probably the most prominent ruin in Vollmar. Her home also briefly served as the post office and general store, he said. “There’s a lot of memories there. A lot of good times, but a lot of bad times,” Rojas said. “Grandma, my dad and my mom all lived there when they passed away.” A town planned A Weld County plat map from 1911 shows the new town of Vollmar with named streets, 390 home lots and several small farm lots. The Denver-Laramie and Northwestern Railroad Co. built a Denver-Greeley line through the townsite in 1910. The line, built for freight and passenger trains, provided a natural opportunity for growth. “You could get from Vollmar to Denver or Vollmar to Greeley,” said Ken Jessen, a local historian and author. “There was a quite of bit of convenience living there.” The Denver-Laramie Realty Co., a subsidiary of the railroad company, sold 160-acre small farm lots in Vollmar, according to author Richelle Cross in her book “Pioneer Families of the South Platte Valley: Then and Now.” “Basically, a lot of this was land promotion of subsidiaries of the railroad themselves,” Jessen said. The Vollmar School opened in 1910, named after George Vollmar, a farmer who settled nearby in the late 1800s and was prominent on an area school board. The town also adopted his name. “It wasn’t his land, but it was named after him because of the school,” said Jean Bangert, George Vollmar’s great-granddaughter, who lives in Fort Lupton. Bangert, who attended the school for a year, said it served both white and Hispanic children from local farms. In 1917, seven years after the railroad was built, the Great Western Railway took over the line to serve its sugar beet farmers. The company continued to run passenger trains through Vollmar. According to Cross’ book, the company began housing Mexican immigrants working the beet fields near town. A sugar company in Brighton also used the area for a beet dump where farmers would deliver their sugar beet crops to be weighed and hauled by train to a sugar mill. A good home When Felix and Fortunata arrived around 1923, Vollmar may have had more than 100 residents and a thriving Catholic church. Though still rural, it was a place where migrant workers could find a home, work locally, save money and eventually own land. “Everyone got along real good, and everybody owned property,” said Charles Bueno, 67, who still lives in Vollmar in the house in which he was born. “It was better then than it is now.” Henry Chavez, 83, the oldest living Vollmar resident, still lives in the house into which his family moved in 1912. Chavez remembers the town’s dance pavilion and baseball field. Adults played on Vollmar baseball teams that traveled to neighboring communities for games. Hundreds of people from as far away as Denver and Fort Collins gathered in Vollmar for religious holidays at the church and for regular dances and celebrations. “It was pretty nice living here,” Chavez said. “We really liked it.” Rojas remembers the dances and parties. He remembers the adults staying up late listening to records and partying. “They would cook up all kinds of Mexican food,” he said. The food of his childhood stands out. He recalled the corn tortillas and eggs his grandma made for breakfast. “I even remember grinding the corn for the tortillas,” he said. “We had the stone and everything that we brought from Mexico.” Times change Great Western abandoned the rail line and sugar beet dump in the late 1940s. The community began to decline. “Once they took the beet dump out, there wasn’t much work in Vollmar anymore,” Leonard Vargas said. The school even closed in the late 1950s, and people began moving away to take construction jobs in surrounding towns and cities, he said. The Vargas family kept the family farm, but Leonard’s dad often worked a full-time construction job in Denver at the same time. The women and the children worked the fields. “As a kid, it was a lot of fun, because I just ran everywhere,” Rojas said. “But it was hard, too, because I worked on the farm.” Rojas spent his first 15 years on the farm. He spent most of that time with his Aunt Rosie, while his father and mother were away working on the railroad. Farming couldn’t support the whole family. When Leonard Vargas graduated from high school in 1957, he had to find a job and eventually moved away and became a meat cutter in Denver. He still longs for the rural lifestyle. “It was just different growing up then,” Leonard Vargas said. “I see my grandkids, and I think they are missing something. They are in front of computers, and they don’t get out and play. They don’t know adventure.” Douglas Crowl can be reached at 303-684-5253, or by e-mail at dcrowl@times-call.com.
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