ST. MARY (1911)

Jared L. Brush, a pioneer cattleman who became lieutenant governor of Colorado, ran longhorns across the South Platte River as early as the 1870s. Brush, who later settled down on a ranch and began raising purebred cattle, lent his name to the town founded on the Burlington Railroad in 1881. After the Great Western Sugar Company built a factory in Brush in 1906, it grew into a town of several thousand souls.

J.L. Juily, the pastor at St. Andrew's in Wray, was the first Catholic priest to proselytize in this cattle and beet town. He celebrated Mass in 1909 in the cafe of the Desky Hotel (now the Cattleman's Inn). With encouragement from Father Juily, St. Mary's

was organized on April 11, 1911. Nellie (Grady) Wittwer and Clara (Lawless) Brubaker borrowed a horse and buggy from Grady's Livery and canvassed the countryside for donations to build a house of worship.

Nellie's husband, Charles Wittwer, and Bill Chandler constructed the church, which was so small that the big drum stove took up a fourth of the pew space. The white frame structure at the corner of Custer and Eaton had an open bell-less belfry when Bishop Matz dedicated it on April 11, 1912.

Missionary priests said Mass in Brush on the first, third, and fifth Sundays of every month until 1927, when John C. Erger became the resident pastor. Father Erger lived with the Brubakers, whose house was just across the street from the church. When Leo Patrick succeeded Erger in 1939, he remodeled the church, adding twenty feet. This $10,000 project modernized the once quaint interior and brought seating capacity to 250. A former Nazarene Church, acquired by St. Mary's in 1960, was refitted as a parish hall.

Building lots in the new Sunset subdivision on the outskirts of Brush were offered to St. Mary's in 1966, with the stipulation that a new church and rectory be started in three months. James L. Ahern, pastor from 1958 until his death on February 25, 1969, jumped at the opportunity. A new $163,000 church, dedicated on June 19, 1967, by Archbishop Casey, consisted of a modern brick and concrete façaade and a freestanding, skeletal bell tower.

Leo M. Blach, pastor of St. Mary's from 1976 to 1988, also tended the mission of St. John in Stoneham and, until it was closed, the mission in Grover. Father Blach introduced Archbishop Stafford to the rural parishes of northeastern Colorado in September 1986. Even with the patience of Job, as the archbishop noted, it was difficult not to despair when the price of a bushel of wheat fell below that of a box of breakfast cereal.

Despite poor wheat prices, poor beef prices, and the closing of its sugar beet plant, Brush has grown in recent decades, reaching a 1980 population of 4,082. St. Mary's, with its modern red brick church and rectory, also kept growing, boasting 202 registered families in 1988.