The "Potato Capital of the World" Is Now a the Forgotten Abandoned Town of Colorado

Abandoned house at EastonvillePhoto byEastonville, Colorado/Wikipedia

Eastonville was a community in eastern Colorado that thrived between about 1880 and 1935. It has failed to be incorporated. The former town limits are currently located in El Paso County, close to the Black Forest, in the Colorado Springs metropolitan region.

Around 1872, a post office was constructed in the region surrounding Eastonville, a mile to the south of where it would eventually be situated on Squirrel Creek. The area, which was discovered to be suited for potato farming and where many pioneers homesteaded, was situated in Colorado's Black Forest.

The Denver and New Orleans Railroad, which would later become the Colorado and Southern Railway, built tracks through the region in 1881 and established the "McConnellsville" stop not far from what is today Eastonville.

Up until the 3-foot-gauge Denver and Rio Grande were three-railed, this was the main standard gauge route connecting Colorado Springs to Denver.

After being transferred further north and given the name "Easton" in honor of a pioneer from the area, John Easton, in 1883. Eastonville was soon the name of the town. The town was forced to shift a short distance to its current location by the railroad.

Eastonville - the "potato capital of the world"

350–500 inhabitants called the town home by the 1900s. It was home to numerous companies, three churches, three hotels, a newspaper, a school, a ball field, and a racetrack. The expanding city could hear the incessant rolling of locomotives day and night as nine to ten passenger trains and at least that many freight trains passed by each day.

The self-described "potato capital of the world" struggled for a while to find enough laborers to harvest the harvests. Large advertisements promising work at reasonable rates on the Eastonville potato farms would be printed in Colorado Springs newspapers. It was one of the wealthiest farming communities in eastern Colorado that are now deserted.

Eastonville CemeteryPhoto byEastonville, Colorado/Wikipedia

Becoming a ghost town

Up until the 1930s, when the West was devastated by a drought and a depression, Eastonville remained a stable community. In 1935, the region experienced a potato blight and a flood that destroyed many structures in Elbert, the town to the north of the railroad, leading to the abandonment of the railroad.

Without the train, the town would never be able to recover, especially since Peyton still had the Rock Island railroad.

The United States Board on Geographic Names still identifies Eastonville as an inhabited place as of May 2013, even though only a few structures and the cemetery are left.