Civil War veteran Chester Leach and his wife, Lucy, were among the early settlers in Denver, brought here by a team of oxen. Their son Clarence was born in 1872. Anna Katrina Foss, Clarence’s wife-to-be, was born about the same time in Norway. She came to the United States in 1893.

Clarence and Anna Katrina met and married in 1898, settling first near today’s Berkeley Lake, northwest of Denver. In 1909 and four children later, the Leaches homesteaded on Garber Creek in Sedalia. It was Woodrow Wilson who signed their homestead papers!

The Leaches were not the first to their homestead; earlier settlers had come and gone, abandoning a sawmill. Housed first in a tent, the males of the family, including sons Floyd and Kant, got to work quickly, building a family cabin with cottonwood logs on the old mill foundation. A bit isolated, the family made weekly provisioning trips into Sedalia on Saturdays. They road by burro and it was one hour each way.

Anna Katrina, now called by her Anglicized name, “Katherine,” was a natural educator who homeschooled her four children while making learning great fun. Using a map on the cabin wall, she taught them all the capitals of the countries of the world.

Clarence worked at many things. As a result, Floyd and Kant became quite versatile from their upbringing. Floyd especially, was a Renaissance man.

Owners of a large truck, the Leach family traded in lumber for a while as well as flowers, seeds and even honey. Their largest customer was the City of Denver. Many of their trees were planted along Speer Boulevard, some also finding their way into city parks.

Floyd and Kant began work in 1933 at the DuPont Company Dynamite Production and Cleanup in Louviers. Floyd became bored, quitting in 1945; Kant remained.

The word eccentric, while not used in any historical account, seems to fit Floyd to a “T.” What set him apart was his imagination; he was an inventor extraordinaire and a mechanical genius. Friends say there was nothing Floyd could not conjure up, being especially adept at welding.

Examples of his projects were a water turbine on Garber Creek to generate electricity, a locomotive constructed of abandoned parts, and a newfangled style of coat hanger and a machine to fabricate them. Floyd also worked well with his hands and spearheaded needed improvements at their Indian Creek School.

Floyd never married, and though his extended family moved on from Sedalia, he remained in that rustic hand-hewn cottonwood cabin the whole of his life, calling it “home place.” Those who visited found him to be an impeccable housekeeper.

He was creative in so many other ways, proficient on both guitar and banjo though bereft of musical education of any kind. Despite his bachelorhood, he also curiously produced a book of love songs. An example, “When I Toss My Lariat at You,” follows:

Floyd was also an avid reader and free thinker, an atheist with a very simple outlook on life: “The good deeds and thoughts you leave behind are the hereafter.”

 

By Joe Gschwendtner