I started listening to stories about the Poudre River and the people of the Poudre when I was a young boy.
My grandparents sat in the evenings and told stories at Sunnyside, riverside property they bought for $100 in 1929 in Poudre Park, a hamlet in the lower Poudre Canyon in the northern Colorado Rockies. There, they built a cabin.
Gary: pre-beard
Their neighbors stopped by at dusk and drank coffee or soft drinks. More stories were told.
Before long, I was collecting their stories in what I imagined as a special collections library in my mind.
Decades later, I filed away more stories during the years when the local water district tried unsuccessfully to dam the Poudre River.
Gary: Current
In 2000, I received a federal grant to write a history of the Cache la Poudre-North Park Scenic and Historic Byway, a 101-mile stretch of Colorado Highway 14 that starts in the east in Fort Collins, Colorado, and ends in the west in the high-mountain town of Walden. The byway goes along the Poudre River and through the Poudre Canyon–and right by Poudre Park, where we live at Sunnyside.
In addition to this blog, I write a personal blog, GaryKimsey.com. I also edited and write for WritersWithNoBorders.com, a blog for writers around the nation.
Well, that’s my personal story, in the proverbial nutshell. Please feel free to contact me at poudrewolf@aol.com.
