Author sets down 150 years of Broomfield history

Managing EditorBROOMFIELD — When Broomfield became its own city and county Nov. 15, copies of author Sylvia Pettem’s history book about the city named after its crops of broomcorn were handed out at the celebration.

“Broomfield: Changes Through Time” pieces together the history of the area from the mid-1850s, when it was homesteaded by coal miners and farmers, to the present, when it is home of a growing population of urbanites and high-tech companies.

Pettem divides Broomfield’s history into three eras: 1850 to 1900, when the area was considered a howling wilderness through which people traveled by stagecoach and the first railroads were built; 1900 to 1950, a period of prosperity and depression for farmers and miners; and 1950 to 2001, when the Denver-Boulder Turnpike (U.S. 36) was built in 1952 as a toll road, and a city came of age with its first big housing development, Broomfield Heights, in 1955.

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It’s always intriguing to see the faces, attire and landscape of earlier times, and Pettem managed to gather 101 photographs that span the past 150 years. She introduces readers to the first 11 households in the area, including William Brown, an Englishman, who settled in his 12-foot-square cabin, and Adolph J. Zang, who was the first to buy a large parcel of land. Other noteworthy settlers who started families here were the Burgesses, Colmans, Keenans, Nissens and Scheurns. They all came in the late 1800s from England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Germany.

Pettem used an assortment of government documents, newspaper articles and first-hand accounts culled from the personal diaries of early settlers to string together Broomfield’s story. The firsthand accounts mixed in throughout give the various times a voice. In the 1870s, when the first railroad lines were built north of Denver, Earnest Pease wrote, “As I was at work in the field, I chanced to look to the east, and there coming over the hill, on the prairie where the cattle were accustomed to feed, was a steam engine and cars. They were laying track just ahead of the train.”

Frances Cron, stepdaughter of William Brown, wrote in her diary in 1910 about the area’s first church, the Methodist Episcopal Church on Allison Street: “The church has a new minister named Johnson. He is a married man.” A couple of years later Cron wrote about an event at the Clarkson Dance Hall: “Halloween party at Clarkson last night. The program was just splendid. They gave a play to represent a husking bee.”

As the book moves through time, Pettem mentions about 700 names of people, places and businesses that helped shape Broomfield.

Of the first edition’s 1,300 copies, 300 were bound in hardcover and passed out at the ceremony celebrating Broomfield becoming Colorado’s second city-county entity. The city and county of Denver was the first.

Pettem was hired by the city of Broomfield and given one year to write the book. She said she was paid “more than $10,000” to research, write, design and publish the book through her company, The Book Lode. A 36-year resident of Boulder County, Pettem writes a weekly history column for The Daily Camera and has 10 book titles to her credit, the most noteworthy being “Separate Lives: Story of Mary Rippon,” a biography, and “Boulder: Evolution of a City.” Contact Doug Storum at (303) 440-4950 or e-mail dstorum@bcbr.com.