One hundred years ago, the Colorado town of Keenesburg was surrounded by prairie. It was a collection for businesses that supplied nearby ranchers, and a depot for the railroad that passed through.
Today, the railroad is still there. And Keenesburg is still surrounded by prairie, but a drive down Interstate 76 shows it’s maybe 15 miles past the border of ever-growing suburban sprawl on the northeast end of the Denver metro area. The town still supplies ranchers – it has its own locally-owned grocery store – though some of those businesses have been replaced with antique stores and a gas station for travelers headed to and from Nebraska.
Keenesburg’s official motto is “home of 500 happy people and a few soreheads” – which was coined in the 1960s, when there were just over 500 people within its limits (and a barber who may or may not have been the sorehead).
The mayor and two longtime residents say they don’t think that motto will change, even though the population is currently closer to 1,300 people.
That number could more than double over the next year-and-a-half. A new development is coming to the town that is slated to bring 346 new homes to the Eastern Plains community, and another is in the works that could bring more than 100 more.
To put that into context, the town has roughly 470 homes right now.
“The town’s been growing, but slow and steady,” Mayor Ken Gfeller said, adding that this is about to drastically change. “The floodgates will open.”
This story is part of our weekly #9Neighborhoods series. Join us on the 9NEWS Instagram starting at noon on Friday for a photo tour of Keenesburg. Have a community you think we should check out next? Email webteam@9news.com.
How a dispute with Nebraska led to the Keenesburg we know today
What we know now as Keenesburg was just “Keene” back in the early 1900s. The name was a tribute to a rancher who lived nearby, and it spring up on the side of the railroad – its first structure (built in 1906) was actually a railroad depot. Unlike other nearby towns, Keene wasn’t a water stop for the railroad; instead, it was a place where trains picked up livestock.
The year after the depot was built, Keene got a post office. And that’s when folks realized there was a problem in the form of a letter from the mayor of Keene, Nebraska. The two names made for mail mix-ups, and since the Nebraska Keene was there first, their mayor asked that Keene, Colorado change its name.
The postmistress was clever, and didn’t change the name that much. This is how Keenesburg as we know it (in name, anyway) was born. For what it's worth, Keene, Nebraska is no longer a statuary town -- it's unincorporated and in Kearney County. The Wikipedia page is very short.
Over the ensuing years, more businesses opened in town. One of them belonged to Rob Pippin’s great-grandfather, who started Keenesburg’s first freight service.
His family has had ties to Keenesburg since the beginning. Pippin recently retired from his job at the bank first started by his father. Between the two of them, he said the Pippin family has 67 years of banking experience in Keenesburg.
It’s a business he said is “big enough to serve you, but small enough to know you.”
“It’s a solid community,” Pippin said, when asked why his family has stayed in the area after all these years.
Helen Sirios, though, might have the Pippins beat when it comes to living Keenesburg history. She was Rob Pippin’s fourth-grade teacher, and her son was his best friend. She has the distinction of being the living person who has lived in Keenesburg the longest, having spent 89 of the 92 years of her life in the town (her family moved there from Arvada when she was 3).
“I had the most wonderful classes,” Sirios said of her first year of teaching back in the 1940s, when she was genuinely excited about her $1,800-a-year salary. Sirios’ mom was a teacher and her dad was a rancher, and she joked that she’d never be a teacher or marry a rancher, and she ended up doing both.
Over the years, Sirios said she’s enjoyed living a community where everyone knows one another.
“They’re just so genuinely nice,” she said.
In the next year-and-a-half, Sirios could get 1,000 new neighbors. The development of 346 homes is right next to where she lives now.
Celebrating this and the next 100 years of Keenesburg
Gfeller has an eBay alert for “Keenesburg.” This has gotten him everything from old fair ribbons with names that he hopes belong to longtime Keenesburg families to advisements for businesses that used to be in town.
“All sorts of strange things pop up,” he said.
These artifacts, and others belonging to Sirios and Pippin, could be housed in a museum in the building that used to be occupied by the town’s high school. The goal, Gfeller said, is to turn that into a museum and community center.
“We don’t have any attractions,” he said. “It will be a destination point.”
This weekend, Keenesburg will be a destination point all on its own. The town is celebrating its 100-year anniversary, and hundreds of people are expected to gather in Schey Park from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. for everything from live music to historic exhibits (read more about the event here: https://www.townofkeenesburg.com/)
Most notably, the town is burying a time capsule to be open at the next Centennial celebration. This is unique, because it will be housed inside of a safe that’s sat in City Hall for years but no one knew how to open.
Gfeller was recently able to find a locksmith who could open the historic safe, and though it was empty, it will now be full of mementos of Keenesburg’s last 100 years.
The next century could bring new challenges for the city.
Gfeller said the I-76 corridor northeast of Denver is ripe to be developed – especially Keenesberg, since it’s only a 45-minute drive from Denver (that’s comparable to the commute from places like Castle Rock and Erie). Once an “in-betweener” that was too close to Denver for a truck stop but too far away for suburban amenities, Gfeller said that’s poised to change for his town.
“The I-76 corridor is the most unused corridor in Denver,” he said.
Pippin said he understands that businesses will greatly benefit from more people in town, but also knows that many residents moved Keenesburg to get away from crowds.
“It’s a tough road to straddle,” he said.
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