is 
| Vor.. VIII 
A Collecting Trip to Southeastern Colorado 
BY EDWARD R. WARREN 
I N April and May of last year, 1905, the writer made a collecting trip to the 
southeast part of Colorado. With the exception of a few days’ stay at 
Lamar the entire period was spent in Baca County, which is the extreme 
southeastern county of the State. I arrived at Lamar at midnight of April 4, and 
remained there until the morning of the 10th, when I took the stage for Spring- 
field, the county-seat of Baca County, fifty miles away, reaching there late that 
afternoon, and securing quarters at the hotel kept by Mrs A C. Bruner, who was 
kind enough to put up with a collector and his traps. 
Leaving there on the 26th, I drove east almost to the Kansas line, where I 
stopped at the ranch of Mr. J. M. Johnston, at which Monon Postoffice is located. 
Mr. Johnston and his family took me in, a perfect stranger, unintroduced, gave me 
the best they had, in fact treated me white , and I shall always remember my stay 
there with pleasure. I stopped there until May 9th, when I returned to Spring- 
field and remained until the 17th. I then went nearly thirty miles in a north- 
westerly direction, and located at the ranch of Mr. E. J. Gaume, in the northwest 
corner of the county, where I remained until the 26th, being also hospitably 
treated there. Then I again returned to Springfield, and left for home on June 
2, but doing my last field work May 31. 
The country about Lamar is a prairie country, but not as level as in Baca 
County. The Arkansas River flows by the north side of the town, and its bottom 
is well wooded with cottonwood trees with some underbrush. The land along the 
river is largely taken up and cultivated. To the south the ground gradually rises 
until it culminates in a nearly level mesa or prairie. A ditch winds around on 
this rising ground and below it the land is cultivated, above not. In places the 
soil is very sandy. 
The road between Lamar and Springfield is over a monotonous, nearly level 
prairie. Two streams with a little water are crossed, Clay Creek and Two Butte 
Creek; also Bear Creek about two miles north of Springfield, but this has only a 
little water here and there in holes. 
Baca County is a typical prairie country, very fiat and level, tiresomely so to 
one accustomed to the mountains. No trees except along what few water courses 
there are, and not always along them. These trees are mostly broad-leaved cot- 
tonwoods, with a few willow, wild plum and cherry trees. Bear Creek north of 
Springfield has quite a good many trees along its banks, and it is a good collect- 
ing ground. 
Mr. Johnston’s ranch is also on Bear Creek, but with comparatively few trees 
about, tho a short distance east, at about the state line, there is quite a little 
grove of small cottonwoods which I found full of birds. And an afternoon spent 
on Buffalo Creek three miles north showed many birds among the trees there. In 
fact wherever one could find trees along these creeks he would find birds. Bear 
Creek, instead of emptying into some larger stream, has an easterly course in Kan- 
sas for a little distance then disappears in the ground. Locally they say it 
"empties into Kansas.” 
The country around Gaume’s ranch is quite different as it is on the edge of 
what is known as “The Cedars,” which name covers the extreme western part of 
Baca County, and the eastern portions of Las Animas and Bent Counties. It is a 
