I’ve always had a thing for things made by hand. Printmaking especially.

There’s something about it that still gets me: the carved block, the ink, the pressure, and that pause before you lift the paper and see what happened. It’s imperfect in exactly the right way.

I’ve always been an artist, and for a long time I wanted to be a printmaker. I didn’t think I could make a living at it. So, I went into photography and design instead. It turned out to be a pretty great direction for me, and I am thankful for the experiences I had with the medium. But, I never stopped being impressed by the people who make things the slow way. Who set type by hand and pull a heavy press. Who write things down because they believe they’re worth remembering. Who make a bookstore into a gathering place. Who spend years putting someone else’s story into a book.

Maybe that’s why this week’s stories feel personal. They’re all about the things we leave behind — words, pictures, books, newspapers, and the ideas within them. Physical stuff that carries a thought from one person to another, sometimes reaching farther than we ever dreamed possible.

This week, we celebrate ink-stained hands, type blocks, and the stubborn, hopeful belief that words are worth making — and sharing — with the world.

Let’s dig in!

– Megan

There are plenty of ways to write about a person after they’re gone. You can write about the day they died. You can list their accomplishments. You can build a timeline and fill in the blanks. But sometimes, the more important story is what they left in other people.

The book tells the stories of three people from Northern Colorado: Bob Drysdale, a Wellington Junior High teacher and coach; Nick Gaucher, a student; and Paul Gaucher, a Poudre Fire Authority firefighter. Three very different lives, but according to Mross, they shared something important: they had a way of making people feel seen, valued and capable of doing something good themselves. That’s a pretty powerful legacy.

And Mross doesn't seem particularly interested in turning these men into saints either. Instead, she’s interested in the ordinary things that make a person matter — the relationships, the small acts of kindness, the ways someone shows up for other people.

The book includes family photographs and original artwork by Wellington High School students, giving the stories a particularly local, personal feeling. It’s available in both black-and-white and full-color paperback editions, as well as an ebook.

There’s something especially fitting about a book like this coming out of Northern Colorado. We talk a lot about legacy as if it’s something enormous. Buildings. Companies. Monuments. Names on plaques. But most of us leave something much smaller behind. A teacher leaving an impression on a student. A kid who remembers somebody believing in him. A community that is a little different because one person cared enough to participate in it. Maybe that’s the real connection between these three lives. They remind us that you don't have to be famous to leave a mark. You just have to show up.

Read more about Three Sparks: A True Story
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Every contribution keeps us out in the field, digging into local history, and showing up for the towns we cover. We're grateful for every bit of support. Thanks for being part of this.

— Megan & David

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Johanna Mueller and Stan Scott spent two years searching for the perfect place to build their dream. Real estate in Northern Colorado was doing what it does, and they kept getting priced out. Then, in 2018, an old fire station in downtown Greeley went up for sale. The listing showed a blank white wall on the west side.

By the time they visited, that wall had transformed. Armando Silva and Wes Bruce had painted a mural across the building’s front — a kid peering through binoculars, a bold red heart, and the word COURAGE in block letters.

They bought the place anyway — maybe even because of the mural. It felt right.

If you’ve ever looked at a letterpress or an etching and thought, I wish I could try that, this is the place to learn.

Wonderhand Studios is a communal print shop in Greeley’s Creative District, built around a pretty wonderful idea: you don't have to own a print shop to be a printmaker. You can just come and make things.

The studio offers memberships, private studio rentals, drop-in use, classes and workshops, along with one-on-one instruction. And then there’s the equipment:

And the various rollers, tools, worktables and bits of beautifully specialized equipment that make a place like this feel less like a business and more like an artist’s clubhouse. This is the part I love.

We used to know so many things because we had to: Set type. Make a plate. Pull a print. Bind a book. Repair something instead of replacing it.

Most of us don't have to know how to do any of those things anymore, which makes the people who still do feel a little bit magical.

Printmaking is slow. It asks you to pay attention. It leaves evidence of the process behind. Ink gets where it shouldn't. Paper shifts. A line isn't quite perfect. And that's exactly the appeal. The finished thing carries a little bit of the person who made it. Wonderhand feels like a place built for that kind of making — not precious, or intimidating — just a room full of tools and people figuring out how to use them. And I’m here for it!

For someone like me who has always wanted to be a printmaker, that sounds dangerously tempting. 😳 I’ll see you there sometime soon.

Visit Wonderhand Studios

At 42, Watrous had some printing experience, inherited in part from his father’s trade, and in 1878 he and Elmer M. Pelton founded the Fort Collins Courier. It wasn't exactly a polished operation. Their old Washington Hand Press was in poor condition, and they didn't have enough pieces of type to print the whole paper. For a while, they printed two pages in Chicago, shipped them by rail to Fort Collins, and then combined them with two locally printed pages.

Imagine that. You're trying to publish the local newspaper in a frontier town, and part of your newspaper has to arrive by train!

Eventually they got enough type to print the entire paper locally. The Courier grew, eventually moving from a hand press to a power press and from a weekly into a daily. Watrous remained editor even after ownership changed.

But the newspaper wasn't really his lasting contribution. That came later. In 1910, at age 75, Watrous stepped away from his editorial work to write a book: History of Larimer County, Colorado. The book was published in 1911 by the Courier Printing & Publishing Company in Fort Collins. It runs more than 500 pages and became one of the county's foundational published histories.

There’s a detail about Watrous that always sticks with me: he never forgot the first time he saw the Rocky Mountains. He was just a boy, heading out west of the Batterson Ranch with his uncle to gather firewood. The journey itself was unremarkable, but the moment he caught sight of those snow-capped peaks, something changed. Even years later, Watrous wrote about that first view — it was something he had longed for, and something he would carry with him forever.

That’s what sets an old history book apart for me. It’s easy to think of history as a collection of dates, names, and crumbling buildings. But Watrous wasn’t just chronicling a county — he was capturing a place he’d fallen in love with. He recognized that someone needed to write things down and capture the people, the towns, the stories, and the little details that might otherwise slip away. And more than a century later, we’re still reading his words. Not bad for a man who once struggled to print a seven-column newspaper on a battered old hand press.

Read Ansel Watrous’s biography through the Fort Collins History Connection

Read his book for free!

Or buy your own copy.

And they named a campground after him. Check it out for a weekend getaway.

If you have not wandered down 6th Street in Windsor lately to step inside Words of Windsor, consider this your gentle nudge.

Run by folks who believe a bookstore should feel like an extra living room rather than a retail machine, this independent shop has quickly become an anchor for the eastern Weld County book community. They carry a carefully curated mix of new releases, local authors, and used treasures, but what really sets them apart is how they treat their neighbors.

Their cozy upstairs loft isn’t locked away for storage; they regularly open it up for local book clubs, poetry meetups, and quiet corners where people can sit and read for an hour without anyone tapping a watch. This month, they are leaning hard into the local teacher community, rolling out welcome-back specials and dedicated shelves to make sure the folks guiding our kids have a spot to decompress.

Words of Windsor is open Monday through Saturday at 631 Birch Street, Unit B. Go find your next read.