Most of Colorado’s high plains towns in this area were founded around the arrival of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1870, and five of them—Watkins, Bennett, Strasburg, Byers, and Deer Trail—became busy agricultural shipping centers. Through the first half of the twentieth century, these five communities along the east I-70 corridor were rural, self-sufficient, distinctive towns with strong local identities, but after World War II Denver’s steady advance increasingly threatened the line between town and country. In November 1996, the five communities formed the High Five Plains Foundation to promote local economies, manage growth, and preserve the region’s traditions and quality of life while carrying an important part of Colorado’s history into the future. The Kansas Pacific Railroad was central to the transformation of the West after its completion in 1870, supporting cattle culture, prairie homesteading, and industrial mining, while also running through the heart of the Plains Indian nations, dividing buffalo herds and expediting wars against them. On August 15, 1870, with the tracks pushed to within fifty miles of Denver and a second crew working eastward from the city just over ten miles away, the two construction teams closed the gap in ten hours and laid ten miles of track, a feat not matched before or since, helping make continuous coast-to-coast rail travel possible without leaving the rails.