By Mike Bowen
Many from Lamar, CO have heard the story about how the town came to be with moving Blackwell station in 1886. But you may not have heard how Lamar got its name.
Our town of Lamar is named after Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar who was Secretary of the Interior from 1885-1888 and a southern statesman (The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States by Henry Gannett, 1905). He promoted the growth of railroads across Kansas and into the Arkansas River Valley in Colorado.
A. R. Black, a pioneer cattleman, owned much of the land on both sides of the railroad. His headquarters was located three miles east of present-day Lamar. The depot was named Blackwell, after Black and his foreman, McDowell. The foreman and his family lived on the second floor of the depot.
Black was requested to have a Land Office there, but he refused. He feared a loss of loading fees from cattle shippers. He threatened an injunction when the Santa Fe Railroad threatened to move the station.
A Kansas businessman and a man with the Santa Fe Railroad bought a quarter of Section 31, Township 22, Range 46, in southeastern Colorado, about three miles west of Black’s headquarters.
The land was made available for a town site and plans were made to move Blackwell station.
Black received a fake urgent telegram on Saturday, May 22, 1886, calling him to Pueblo. Once he was gone, this provided the opportunity to steal the station. Blackwell station was loaded up and moved to the new site, three miles west where the Lamar Depot stands. Tracks were laid through the deeded property and it was named Lamar.
It’s quite fitting that after the Blackwell station was moved, the town of Lamar was named after a man who promoted the growth of railroads.
Other towns named for Lamar are in Mississippi and Missouri. A county in Alabama is named for him and the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park is named after him (The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States by Henry Gannett, 1905).
We’ve often heard the expression, “it’s a small world”—it’s common to be connected to people we’ve never met or from places we’ve never been.
Lamar is buried in Oxford, MS, in the same cemetery as Chuck Bowen’s great-great-grandfather, William Bolivar Bowen. Their plots are about 200 yards apart.
Lamar served in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U. S. Senate, as a member of the President’s Cabinet, and as an Associate Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court. President Grover Cleveland nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1887 (https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/lamar-lucius-quintus-cincinnatus ). He joined the Confederate Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and helped draft the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession. He organized soldiers from Oxford, probably including William Bolivar Bowen.
See information about the L.Q.C. Lamar House Museum here: https://lqclamarhouse.com/index.php/house-history.
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