The Survivors
The eastern plains are a harsh and lonely place. Just ask Rosemary Brown Cannon and the others who have forged their lives in Colorado's outback.

Rosemary Brown Cannon reflects at the memorial in Kiowa County where her school bus stalled in a 1931 blizzard.

"I 'm going for help, and we'll all have pancakes for breakfast'' -- the last words of school bus driver Carl Miller as he stepped out into the blizzard, March 27, 1931.

She was 13 years old and had never seen anyone die. So when Rosemary Brown looked to the back of the bus and saw Louise Stonebraker sitting perfectly still in a pile of snow with her eyes wide open, she thought her friend was asleep. And the bus driver had warned the children not to sleep.

Another Southeast Colorado trailblazer: William Bent

Kenneth Johnson, age 7, tried to stay awake. On the morning of the second day he was walking in a tight circle, trying to keep warm, when he fell at his classmates' frostbitten feet. They carried him to the back and laid him near Louise.

"I didn't cry," says Rosemary Brown Cannon, now 81. "Not even after my brother died."

Bobbie Brown, 11, was huddled with the rest of the children when he began to drift off. They rubbed his body, slapped him. "Leave me alone," he said, and was quiet.

A memorial in Kiowa County on Colorado's eastern plains marks the spot where the bus carrying 20 children slid into a ditch and stalled during a fierce and sudden blizzard nearly 68 years ago. Snow powered by 75 mph winds flowed through two broken windows for 31 hours; the temperature fell to 31 below zero. Six died, including the bus driver, who had made a wrong turn in the white-out.

It was a simple mistake that could lead to death in this lonely expanse -- then, and now.

At a time when many feel that a flood of people and development has robbed Colorado of its solitude, the state remains to a surprising degree a place of vast open spaces.

Nowhere epitomizes this more than the plains, a Colorado few Coloradans know, an hypnotic carpet of brown where life always has been hard.

In the late 1800s, the plains were a magnet for homesteaders who were convinced by land speculators that the nation's "rain belt" was moving westward, allowing the Great American Desert to bloom. It wasn't, of course, and many farmers failed.

New dry-land farming techniques in the years to come brought people back. Between 1900 and 1930, the population of the plains rose more than four-fold, to nearly 170,000.

But a decade of drought and the Great Depression set off an exodus that continues to this day. Eastern Colorado has lost a third of its population since the spring when Rosemary Brown nearly froze to death. Only six Colorado counties -- Kiowa County among them -- have lost population in the 1990s during the state's spectacular boom. All but one is on the plains.

"The Californians haven't discovered us yet," Ken Baer, a crop-duster, says.

Kiowa County has 1,758 square miles and 1,779 people. A quarter of the population is more than 60 years old. Unemployment is low, but so are wages.

Eight towns dot Colorado Highway 96, which runs across the county's spine before disappearing into Kansas. Most are sliding into oblivion, littered with abandoned homes, schools and storefronts, their streets eerily quiet in the middle of the day.

"All sorts of things have just disappeared," says Betty Jacobs, 73, a local historian who remembers when every community had its own identity. "Out in the country, every mile or two there was a house. Now they're all gone."

David Stavely, a farmer and rancher, can sum up what's happened with two numbers: In 1947, wheat sold for $2.47 a bushel. Recently, a bushel fetched $2.42.

"A lot of people went broke over the last 20 years," says Stavely, who figures that most of the land in his part of the county is owned by just four interests -- all from out of state.

When people graduate high school, they move on. "There's nothing for them to do here," Stavely says. "Nothing to keep them around."

The consolidation of land has depopulated Kiowa County, but modern culture has torn the life from it. The Wal-Mart and Kmart in Lamar devastated country merchants an hour away. Videos, cable and backyard dishes killed off the only movie theater in Eads.

"The pace of life out here has gotten faster," says Gail Crawford, who has spent most of his 51 years on the plains, the last 31 as a football coach and teacher at Eads High School. "When I was a kid, we'd go to Denver once a year and it was a big thing. Now, we'll go several times a year. It's no big deal."

High school football is still a big deal, however, one of the few things that brings this far-flung community together.

Declining enrollment forced Eads to drop to 8-man football in 1980, and at first it bothered folks, Crawford says. Not anymore. On a crisp fall Friday evening some 600 people -- a third of Kiowa County -- came out to watch the Eads Eagles play the Springfield Longhorns in a conference championship game.

Real fans parked their pickup trucks on the sideline earlier in the day to ensure a good seat. "With some big games, you have to park it the night before," Crawford says. When the Eagles scored or recovered a fumble, the truck horns blared into the night.

The stadium lights can be seen 10 miles away. After that, it's as dark as the bottom of an ink well, the only sound the howl of the wind.

"I hate the wind," Rosemary Brown Cannon says.

She has never been able to get it out of her mind. The wind and the cold. Her feet so numb and swollen they burst the seams of her leather shoes. The children dying.

Why did she survive? "I've carried a lot of guilt about that," Cannon says. Carried it for nearly seven decades.

She never spoke of the ordeal with her parents because her brother's death was too painful for them. "I needed to cry to somebody, but I had no one to cry to." She waited to tell her own children until a few years ago because it was too painful for her.

Winter's the worst. Cannon lives alone and hates storms. So when the snow starts to fly across the endless plains, she heads for the kitchen, turns on the oven and cooks for hours on end. Bread, rolls, cookies, pies. Enough food for everyone.

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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