Historic Douglas County, Inc.

The year of 2020 will likely become known as the “Year that Wasn’t” by many of us, dramatically impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the cultural cancelling focus stemming from the George Floyd death caused by Minneapolis police, out contentious political strife, what seems to be the demise of law and order along with stability in some of our big cities across the Nation and the sweltering of July and August’s 90 degree days with little-to-no moisture, driving wildfires and Colorado into an official drought condition. Wow! The fusion of all these impacts has caused extraordinary changes to our normals not only in Douglas County and Colorado but across the entire, populated world! The key word in what we are experiencing isn’t chaos, which immediately comes to mind, but change something poet Jake Harris addresses in his popular poem on the right. Harris pens that change is “Inevitable and optimistically concludes that “…change is the light at the end of the tunnel.”

All the prelude on change leads me to address our HDC website operation. This HDC website, after ten and a half years in its current operation format, is changing. Although the website will look visually the same, we are going to manage and maintain it a bit differently, shifting to being a bit more compact, eliminating a few seldom visited menu items (left sidebar) and combining others. Likely, the biggest change you’ll notice is that our homepage for the site will become more stable and not completely changed every month. The second major change you will note is that HDC has now combined the News and Around the West menu items into one menu item, News of Douglas County & Around the West. These changes reflect a more efficient website and also recognize that our longstanding webmaster, Larry Schlupp, is retiring from that position. Other than what I’ve mentioned, you may see a few more changes as we move into the future.

Good news! Douglas County Open Space is readying to open their gorgeous Sandstone Ranch property for hiking. For those of you who have driven on Highway 105 in southern Douglas County, you have seen that Open Space has the entrance, driveway and parking lot just about finished. Jackie Sanderson of D.C. Open Space tells me that in mid-September, they will open three trails in the northeast corner of the ranch. Great news for all of us loving the great outdoors and wanting to get some good air.

Jim Weglarz
President