Alice Nihiser Denton and her husband, George Harvey Denton, arrived in La Junta in about 1907, driving two covered wagons. They were traveling from Garnet, Kansas, where they had farmed for several years. What took them to La Junta, I don't know, but according to their oldest daughter, Edna, the 500-mile trip took about a month.

Once in La Junta, "The money panic was on," Edna writes, "so he sold off everything again and rented a house and went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad as a freight car inspector. So I guess that's why we all turned out to be railroaders."

Filling up at least one of those covered wagons on the way to La Junta were the family's eight children. Alice must have been pregnant with her ninth child when she made that month-long wagon trip, since the ninth was born in December of 1907. Number ten, the last, came along three years later in 1910. Eight years after that, Alice became a widow when George Harvey died an early death from a bad heart, a condition that would plague many in this Denton family. Aside from what was probably a small railroad pension, Alice got along on contributions from some of her many children. One who evidently didn't contribute to his widowed mother's "upkeep" was her son, my grandfather, Cecil Denton. Cecil and his wife Margie both had widowed mothers who lived for decades beyond their husbands, and since finding the money to send to both families was evidently impossible, the couple sent money to none, creating for themselves somewhat of an instant "black sheep" status in both families. Or so my mother says, but who knows if anything she says is even close to the truth. She makes things up.

After she got all those kids raised, Alice must have had some time on her hands. Apparently she was a "joiner," one of those millions of women in early 20th century small town America who were avid clubwomen. Remember Helen Hooven Santmyer's novel, "...And Ladies of the Club"? Something like that. According to her obituary, she was a member of the Royal Neighbors of America, No. 2421, the Goldenrod Club, and the Lorean Rebekah Lodge (Daughters of Rebekah, the distaff side of the IOOF, or Independent Order of Oddfellows, which her husband belonged to). At the time of her death, Alice was also a member of the Carson Avenue Baptist Church in La Junta.