Bennet visits historic Black town, UNC amid U.S. preservation effort
U.S. Sen Michael Bennet visited the University of Northern Colorado on Friday to learn more about Dearfield, a one-time allblack town in eastern Weld County that’s being studied for possible inclusion in the National Park Service.
Bennet met with representatives from the Dearfield Preservation Committee, which serves as an advisory group on the town site to the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center in Denver. The museum owns about 70 acres of land in Dearfield, about 25 miles east of Greeley on U.S. 34.
Retired UNC professor of anthropology Bob Brunswig moderated the conversation Friday afternoon in a conference room in the Michener Library on the UNC campus. UNC President Andy Feinstein sat in on the discussion along with representatives from the Greeley History Museum.
Bennet later joined Brunswig and representatives from the Black American West Museum and National Park Service on a visit to Dearfield, where two structures remain.
At the site is a former lodge and later the home of Dearfield founder O.T. Jackson and his wife, Minerva, and a filling station.
Brunswig said this month both buildings are undergoing or will be undergoing renovations with grants worth more than $600,000.
“It was an opportunity to check in with the people who have been working on this for so many years,” Bennet said Friday before leaving to visit Dearfield. “To have the park service here, as they’re going through their study based on the bill that we passed, and hopefully to get us to the next stage, which is going to be figuring out what the most useful way to memorialize Dearfield is, and to make it really a living expression of the history of the Eastern Plains and the history of Colorado that’ll be there for our kids and for our grandkids.”
In September 2022, Bennet and fellow Sen. John Hickenlooper introduced the Dearfield Study Act, legislation that directed the Department of the Interior to conduct a special resource study of Dearfield to determine its suitability as a unit of the national park system.
The senators’ bill followed the companion bill introduced in the House of Representatives by U.S. Reps. Ken Buck and Joe Neguse in January 2022.
During remarks at the beginning of the meeting at UNC, Bennet recognized and thanked Buck, Neguse and Hickenlooper for their work on behalf of Dearfield.
In January the members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, sent a letter to the National Park Service advocating for Dearfield to be included in the national park system.
Brunswig and UNC professor of Africana studies George Junne, who has been studying Dearfield since the late 1980s, hope the park service decides to recommend Dearfield as a National Historic Site.
The National Park Service will consider congressional criteria, public input and comments as part of its study.
Daphne Rice-allen, who leads the board of directors of the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, was among the attendees at Friday’s meeting at UNC and the Dearfield tour.
Rice-allen was joined by fellow museum and heritage center board of director members Denise Leadon and Earnest Reese.
Rice-allen said the interest from the National Park Service in studying Dearfield and the site’s overall raised profile is exciting. Rice-allen wants to understand the relationships surrounding Dearfield between the park service and the Black American West Museum as conversations continue on the site’s future.
“It’s important for the museum, for our relationship, how we maintain forward motion,” Rice-allen said. “As the owners of the land, the keeper of the culture, it’s wanting to make sure there is a level of communication and respect of the whole process.”