LAMAR STEPS BACK IN TIME

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(Lamar, Colorado, September 21, 2011)  On Friday and Saturday, September 30th and October 1st, Lamar Community College will again host an extraordinary history event.  During LCC’s biannual “Frontier Living History Encampment” some of the country’s best re-enactors and living historians will set up residence at LCC.  An opportunity to “bring history to life,” visitors will step back in time as they begin their journey in 1800 and view what life was like in the American West, continuing their journey all the way to 1890.  The encampment will be open to visitors on Friday from 12 – 5 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm.  Admission is free to this extraordinary historical presentation, which is held on the campus lawn of LCC in between the Residence Hall and the Bowman Building.

Visitors will experience Indian encampments, fur traders, trappers, and explorers of the early 1800’s – the earliest recorded years of our region’s history — where they will learn about everyday hardships of early frontier life.

Traveling through the 1830’s and approaching the 1860’s, visitors will speak with blacksmiths and settlers embarking on a life changing journey across America in covered wagons.

1861 found America in the great and terrible Civil War; confederate and union re-enactors will be in camps identical to those that existed at the time. Life in both armies will be illustrated with cavalry units as well as firing demonstrations from both infantry and artillery.

After the war, America’s great cattle drives began.  A chuck wagon, trading post and a frontier “saloon” will come to life, including reenactments of historic gunfights.  Buffalo hunters and Native Americans of the 1880’s will show their camps, tools, and weapons.

Visitors will then enter into the late 1880’s and early 1890’s and the era of the homesteaders.  Traveling in every kind of wagon imaginable, resolute men and women settled the land, experiencing great hardships as they carved a new life out of the wilderness.

Visitors can also go on free wagon rides and see longhorn cattle and buffalo.

For further information, please contact LCC History Professor Kelly Emick at 336.1532 or kelly.emick@lamarcc.edu.

Press Release – Lamar Community College
Photos from Lamar Community College