Colorado Preservation, Inc. assisted the project development, State Historical Fund staff provided guidance, and BAWM&HC Board members and others formed the Dearfield preservation committee.
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Colorado Preservation, Inc. assisted the project development, State Historical Fund staff provided guidance, and BAWM&HC Board members and others formed the Dearfield preservation committee. |
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Dearfield African-American Farming
Colony
The O.T. Jackson House is the oldest building in the town site of Dearfield,
and needed stabilization to prevent further deterioration. Now on the
National Register (5WL.744), the Dearfield town site is the only example
in Colorado of the colonies or town sites established in the West to provide
black Americans with the opportunity to own and work their own lands.
Inspired by the national colonization movement lead by Booker T. Washington, sixty African-American families worked 15,000 acres in this experiment in dry land farming. Oliver Toussaint Jackson began the project in 1910 by filing for the original 160 acres. Alyson McGee and Erik Logan were the construction project managers for the O.T. Jackson House preservation project for the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, (BAWM&HC) owners of the property. The Colorado State Legislature provided a direct appropriation for the funding of this project
Photographs of Oliver T. Jackson and the Dining Hall in 1920-1930 courtesy of the Denver Public Library Western History Department.
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