Dearfield: The Most Successful Black Town In Colorado

People must have thought Oliver “O.T.” Jackson was nuts for wanting to build an all-Black town in the desert. But when he filed the claim for this patch of Colorado land in 1910, he was already planting the seeds of success.

Jackson traveled all around the Midwest to recruit settlers for Dearfield. People bought in, but life in the middle of nowhere was tough. They lived in dugouts and burned buffalo chips for fuel. It took over four years to build 44 wood cabins for them to live in. These hardships eventually paid off.

By 1918, Dearfield’s farmers had grown more than  $50,000 worth of crops, which would be sold for more than $1 million today. Three years later, Dearfield’s land was worth over $750,000. Women were responsible for these successes, because they ran the farms while the men worked jobs outside of town.

In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl wiped out many towns across the Midwest, including Dearfield. But this Black community wanted to do the impossible, and they accomplished their mission.

The perseverance of Dearfield’s people reminds all of us to keep doing the impossible as we keep building and running our own systems.