Orchard City – Janice Cooper sells old gewgaws at her Bossy Women Antiques store in the heart of Eckert. Well, sort of in Eckert.
Bossy Women is listed in the phone book as being in Eckert. Its mailing address is in Eckert. But really, it’s in the town of Orchard City.
“It’s never even occurred to me to say it is in Orchard City. If I said it was in Orchard City, people wouldn’t even know where to look for me,” Cooper said.
Doing business – and just plain living – in Orchard City can be so darn confusing.
This 11-square-mile town of 1,300 residents is a sort of municipal amoeba that takes in the three communities of Eckert, Cory and Austin. Those three unincorporated communities each have a post office, while Orchard City has functioned mainly as a water district since 1912. Some residents didn’t even realize until recently that it is an incorporated town, because it has no ZIP code to call its own. It also has no Main Street.
As Orchard City Administrator Ike Holland summed it up: “We are very strange.”
The towns-within-a-town system worked just fine for almost a century as long as Orchard City stuck to collecting water bills. The three communities inside its boundaries maintained their separate histories and identities.
Now, some residents fear Orchard City government wants to swallow them up in a sprint to make itself over as a real municipality – complete with signs, a logo, a master plan, municipal codes and a real town hall.
“It’s enough to make you want to spit,” said Austin resident E.J. Verdahl, who has led a petition drive objecting to changes Orchard City is making.
Her drive was sparked by the recent removal of some highway signs that pointed to Cory, Eckert and Austin. Those signs are due to be replaced by new signs that will sport the new Orchard City logo and read, “Town of Orchard City, 1912,” with the name of the respective “neighborhood” of Cory, Austin or Eckert in smaller letters underneath.
The sign flap is the latest salvo in animosity that flared several years ago when a move was afoot to do away with the three post offices so that Orchard City might establish its own post office and ZIP code. Pressure that went all the way to congressional offices put the kibosh on that plan.
Holland pointed out, though, that some citizens wrongly believe that having a post office constitutes being a town.
“We recognize them as neighborhoods,” he said.
Orchard City has some other oddities that date back to its inception.
In 1910, residents of Surface Creek Valley southeast of Delta needed roads to get their fruit and vegetables to outside markets. They also were getting sick from drinking ditch water and decided a pipeline was needed to carry clean water from the Grand Mesa. Initially, the Austin community, which was thriving with a railroad, a canning factory and a commercial district, planned to incorporate so it could acquire a bond to fund the pipeline and roads.
But Austin did not have enough property value for a bond, so Austin and its two smaller neighboring towns decided to incorporate a new town that could be large enough to qualify for bonding. They named it Orchard City.
It turned out Orchard City also did not have enough property value, so Austin reluctantly agreed to annex into Orchard City to up its value. Later, Eckert and Cory followed suit in exchange for water taps.
In 2004, when local businessman Tom Huerkamp was elected mayor and Holland relocated from Ulysses, Kan., to be administrator, Orchard City’s obscure government underwent changes.
The seat of the municipal government is still a modular rural building in Austin. Before a sign was placed on it, residents said they did not even realize that it was the town hall.
Holland attends Colorado Municipal League meetings, where he initially had to convince skeptics that Orchard City really is a town. The town has been awarded grants that go only to municipalities. One of those grants will help build a new $700,000 town hall, which to the consternation of some Eckert residents may be located there.
“The mayor and I are trying to put some professional things in place,” said Holland, who stressed he wants the smaller communities to maintain their separate identities.
At Faye’s Café in Austin, 20- year owner Rufus Faye agreed that moving forward should be tempered with preserving the past of communities that residents think of as their birthplaces and homes.
“I never think of Orchard City except as far as water survival goes,” he said.
Dave Fender, an Eckert resident since 1985, said he liked things the way they were when Orchard City would simply “read your water meters and have a little meeting every once in a while.”
Fender said he now fears for the small Surface Creek Valley communities.
“We’ll be Aspen before you know it,” Fender said. “Why hurry it?”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
