OUR LADY OF THE PLAINS (1972)

Byers was founded in 1870 when the Kansas Pacific Railroad reached that point near West Bijou Creek. It was named for Rocky Mountain News editor William N. Byers, who helped coax the railroad and settlers onto this high plains stretch of Arapahoe County. Byers was incorporated in 1889, but, though Alphonse C. Keiffer occasionally offered Mass at the Curry home, it did not become a mission of St. Pius X parish in Aurora until the 1960s. In 1972, John C. Kelley of St. Pius's consolidated the Deer Trail and Byers missions as Our Lady of the Plains parish.

A little church was constructed in the 1970s and received a resident pastor with the arrival of Andrew E. Gottschalk. Father Gottschalk, who was reared on a Kansas farm, took a lively interest in the declining fortunes of his farmer parishioners. He joined the American Agricultural Movement, a protest group organized by long-suffering eastern Colorado farmers, and declared that "next to my Roman collar, the AAM cap is the proudest thing I've ever worn."

Father Gottschalk and his flock forgot, at least for a while, their tractor motorcade protests, after the birth of the Miller quintuplets in St. Joseph Hospital in Denver. Parishioners Greg and Kathy Miller were the proud and astonished parents. Father Gottschalk visited them in the hospital to present $500 donated by parishioners and subsequently kept his congregation posted on the famous Miller quints in weekly church bulletins. Our Lady of the Plains rejoiced in its five new members. At their September 8, 1985, baptisms, beaming parishioners watched as Father Gottschalk showed up with four blue roses and one pink one for Mallory, Joseph, Timothy, Michael, and Tyler.