Leader is a populated place in Adams County,

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

, in the United States. Leader was once the site of a post office, school, and the Leader Community Hall.

Geography

Leader is located at (39.8994277,-104.056341667), 12 miles northeast of Byers.

History

The Leader post office began operations in 1910 and ceased operating in 1940. A chapter of the Colorado

Grange Grange may refer to: Buildings * Grange House, Scotland, built in 1564, and demolished in 1906 * Grange Estate, Pennsylvania, built in 1682 * Monastic grange, a farming estate belonging to a monastery Geography Australia * Grange, South Austral ...

was organized in Leader in 1916, founded by area resident J. F. Girardot. The grange in Leader was known as United Farmers #288. In the early years, Leader was noted for its

prairie dog Prairie dogs (genus ''Cynomys'') are herbivorous burrowing ground squirrels native to the grasslands of North America. Within the genus are five species: black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah, and Mexican prairie dogs. In Mexico, p ...

s and

ground squirrel Ground squirrels are members of the squirrel family of rodents (Sciuridae), which generally live on or in the ground, rather than trees. The term is most often used for the medium-sized ground squirrels, as the larger ones are more commonly known ...

s; the later were said to be highly destructive to

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible Seed, seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small ...

, and

bean A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...

crops in Leader. Leader Community Hall was built in the 1940s, and served as a gathering spot for community events, and as a polling site for that part of Adams County. Leader Hall was still being used in the 1970s, with the women forming the Leader Community Hall Ladies auxiliary. Leader's population was 19 in 1940. Oil drilling near Leader occurred in the 1950s, with the discovery of what the Brush, Colorado ''News-Tribune'' called "major" new oil reserves in the Leader area. Drilling commenced at the Burkhart Ranch in 1954. The Leader School, a one-room schoolhouse, operated until 1956, when Adams County's schools were consolidated; students were afterwards bused to Byers, 12 miles to the south in Arapahoe County.

Geography

History

References

See also