ST. PETER (1924)

General George Crook, a U.S. Army Indian fighter, was the eponym of the town platted in 1909 near the South Platte River and the Union Pacific Railroad. Charles H. Hagus, pastor of St. Anthony's in Sterling, acquired a block of land in Crook in 1924 and with a $1,000 donation from the Catholic Extension Society built St. Peter Church.

This little frame mission was attended from Sterling and then from Iliff until 1947, when Joseph E. Bosch became the first resident pastor. Father Bosch moved the church to a better site along the highway (U.S. 138) and built a $15,000 rectory next to the church. Charles J. Salmon became the second resident pastor in 1951 and worked with parishioners to support the church with steer auctions, dances, and bazaars. In 1962, Father Salmon enlarged the 1924 frame church with a $4,500, twenty-four-by-twenty-four-foot addition. Subsequently, Crook's Catholic church with its stalwart membership of about twenty families became a mission tended by priests from St. Anthony's in Julesburg.