Colorado’s early 20th century African American historic town of Dearfield was platted and first occupied in 1914, four years after founding of the Dearfield Homestead Colony in 1910. Both the town and colony grew and prospered until their demise in the late 1920s, due to the onset of the Depression and Dust Bowl. Denver’s Black American West Museum and Heritage Center began historic documentation and acquiring townsite’s land in the 1980s and successfully nominated for a National Register of Historic Places District of the National Park Service in 1995. In 2008, the Dearfield Preservation Committee, a group of preservation non-profits, local government, and universities was formed as a standing committee of Denver’s Black American West Museum, to oversee preservation, restoration, and interpretation of the townsite’s historic structures and promote its historical and archaeological research in the form of the Dearfield Dream Project (est. 2012). Today, the site’s two standing buildings, its former Filling Station, and the colony and town founder’s home, the Jackson House, are being restored and converted into a visitor’s center and museum.

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Bob Brunswig holds a doctorate from the University of Colorado-Boulder and served as a University of Northern Colorado Anthropology professor for twenty-six years, retiring in 2012. On  retirement, he was appointed a UNC Research Fellow and continues research and grant projects. During and after his UNC career, Bob was a University Distinguished Scholar, served twice as a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland), and was a Wzrost (European Union) Fellow at Nicolaus Copernicus University (Toruń, Poland). In his professional career, he has produced more than seventy books, book chapters, and journal articles, with his most recent (2024) publication being a being a contributing chapter in the Oxford University Handbook of Mountain Archaeology.