A lazy summer drive drive along the lush banks of the winding Platte River is the closest you might get to a time machine in this part of the world. Al’s Service sits at the edge of Orchard, Colorado like a beacon for a forgotten world. A lonely filling station in a lonely town on an old spur long since bypassed by the freeway, perhaps the purest, most romantic vestige of a brand of Americana long since displaced by reed heads, land rapers and other human jackals.

Turning back the clock another fifty years finds you in Dearfield. So named because the original colony of former slaves believed the fields would indeed be dear to them. It is difficult to think of a more powerful alegory for the plains than freedom. In the contemporaneous plane the dilapidated wooden husks of Dearfield’s last few structures won’t last forever and such a unique and thought provoking place deserves a visit before it is no longer possible (although you should keep your eyes peeled for rattlers).