ST. ANTHONY (1908)

One of the raunchiest towns in pioneer Colorado, Julesburg needed a church. Originating as Fort Sedgwick, it became a stagecoach town, then a Union Pacific railroad hell-on-wheels that harbored such criminals as Jack Slade, who murdered the town's eponym, Jules Beni, after cutting off his ear as a trophy.

Mark Twain, who passed through Julesburg, described it in Roughing It as "the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town" where Jack Slade was "more feared than the Almighty." Indians burned down Julesburg twice, but the town, tough as a thistle, always sprouted up again.

Two pioneer settlers were Catholic: the Belgian Adolph Eeckhout who settled into a sod-house farm with his family; and Uberto Gibello, an Italian homesteader who quarried the town's "Italian Caves" and built Julesburg's Brown Hotel. Upon his death in 1910, Gibello left his land and caves, by then a tourist attraction, to the sisters at Denver's Queen of Heaven Orphanage.

Not until 1906 did Bernard J. Froegel, resident pastor of St. Augustine's in Brighton, begin visiting Julesburg to offer Masses. He used private homes, the Sedgwick County court house, and the Union Pacific section house. Father Froegel and Adolph Eeckhout, chair of the collection committee, raised $2,700 to build a small church in 1908. At the request of A.A. Hirst of Philadelphia, who gave $1,000 to the Catholic Extension Society for the Julesburg church, it was named for St. Anthony of Padua.

Parishioners planted cottonwood trees on the lonesome prairie around the rusticated concrete-block church, which was constructed by contractor John Wren, a Julesburg resident and convert. Despite six inches of snow, St. Anthony's parishoners warmly welcomed Bishop Matz at the dedication on November 29, 1908. For the first decade, railroad-riding reverends from St. Anthony's in Sterling served Julesburg. Henry A. Geisert arrived as the first resident pastor in 1918, and parishioners helped him build a two-story rectory beside the church. Father Geisert was remembered for his scholarly work on criminology and for his "open air forum" street preaching.

Then there was Andrew C. Murphy, a most colorful pastor described in the 1983 parish diamond jubilee history:

Father was a member of Teddy Roosevelt's "Roughriders" and periodically dressed up in his picturesque costumes. . . . To raise money Father Murphy bought a dozen or more piglets which he "farmed out" to various farmers to raise into marketable porkers. . . . Piqued when some of the farmers sold the animals "prematurely," he would walk on the opposite side of the street whenever he saw one of his disobedient flock. . . . During the fall fair in Julesburg, he set up his tent and made a few extra dollars for the church by telling fortunes.

Poor health forced Father Murphy to retire in 1941, when he was replaced by Andrew E. Warwick. Although extra pews had been squeezed into the front of the 1908 church, ushers still had to shoehorn the faithful into the Sunday services. To build a larger church, St. Anthony's parishioners, in the tradition of Father Murphy, went into show business, sponsoring bazaars, dinners, and carnivals with booths of chance--country store, bingo, and a baseball stand. With the proceeds, the congregation built a much larger church, designed by John K. Monroe and dedicated by Archbishop Vehr on June 21, 1949.

By 1989, the once wild town of Julesburg had become a peaceful agricultural center, and St. Anthony's a parish of almost 200 households. No startling episodes have marked the development of St. Anthony's, as Father Murphy put it fifty years ago, only slow and steady growth "like a little flower."