IT was with great sadness the Book Arts League learned of the death May 10 of Vernon Ewing.
Mr Ewing was born in 1916 in a little two-room house a few paces from the main house on the Ewing Farm. Vernon, his parents, and two brothers lived in "The Bunkhouse," as it was known to the family, for nine years before moving to the main farm house. The main house had begun as a simple structure of sawn logs in 1886. He was the youngest of five children, all born on the farm.
Vernon Ewing was a graduate of the University of Colorado School of Journalism, worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, and had a 30-year career as a writer of magazine articles and advertising copy. On September 11, 2008, Mr Ewing and his wife Gweneth celebrated 70 years of marriage. The couple lived most of that time in a brick house they built on what was then the farm land.
Today, The Bunkhouse and the main house can still be seen on 95th Street just north of Arapahoe, a location known as "Eight-Mile Corner" when the Ewing Family bought 40 acres of land there in 1883. One of two catalpa trees planted in the 1880s as a memorial now towers over the houses and flowers each spring.
The farm land was sold in the 1990s for housing development. Vernon Ewing was instrumental in preserving the Ewing farm buildings and submitted the nomination to place the Ewing Farmhouse and Bunkhouse on the State Register of Historic Properties. The farm was named a Colorado Centennial Farm in 1987. Today, the farm buildings, located on a small tract of park land, are owned by the City of Lafayette and are home to the nonprofit Book Arts League, which is working in partnership with the City to restore and maintain them, using State Historical Fund grants.
Top, Newlyweds Vernon and Gweneth stand outside the Ewing farm house in a 1938 family photograph.
Below, Vernon Ewing inspects a freshly-printed sheet at the open house marking the opening of The Bunkhouse as the new home of the Book Arts League's letterpress shop.
