History

Raymer's 1909 Grocery Just Got

24,687 to Come Back to Life

History Colorado is putting nearly $6 million into 33 preservation projects, and the biggest stories are in Raymer and Pueblo, not Denver.

By Derek Schulze · August 18, 2026

Raymer's 1909 Grocery Just Got </div>24,687 to Come Back to Life

There is a town in Weld County called Raymer. New Raymer, if you want to be technical about it. You have driven past the turnoff on the way to somewhere else and never thought twice. And here is the thing most people do not realize. There is a 1909 building out there that was the entire social life of a farming town for decades, and it just landed a

24,687 grant to keep it from disappearing.

That is the Truxaw & Kruger Grocery. And on August 6, 2026, it became one of the headline stories in a big statewide announcement.

"Pueblo, CO Union Station" by kla4067 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

What History Colorado just did

History Colorado runs something called the State Historical Fund. Twice a year they hand out money for preservation work. This round, they announced nearly $6 million going to 33 projects across the state. That is a lot of buildings getting saved at once.

And look, the easy move here would be to funnel all of that into Denver. Big landmarks, tourist stuff, the projects that photograph well. But that is not where the marquee stories landed this time. The two that actually stop you are in Raymer and Pueblo. Tiny places. Overlooked places. The kind of towns that do not usually make the list.

This is the state's 150th year. And they are marking it out on the Eastern Plains, if you ask me, more than anywhere else.

"Historic Goodnight Barn near Pueblo, Colorado" by ForgottenColorado is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The store that was the town

Let me tell you why the Truxaw & Kruger building matters.

Built in 1909, it was the first commercial building ever constructed in Raymer. Not one of the first. The first. It is listed in the State Register of Historic Properties, and once you know what it did for that town, you get why.

This was not just a grocery. Sure, it carried groceries. But it also had farm equipment, grain, feed, all the stuff a farming community actually needed to survive out there. And more than that, it was the social center. This is where people came for their mail. For the newspaper. For the news and the gossip and the whole business of being a small town. You wanted to know what was happening in Raymer, you went to Truxaw & Kruger.

Now here is the part that gives it weight. Raymer is one of the few remaining towns along the old Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. That line got abandoned in the late 1970s, the rails pulled up, and most of the buildings that used to sit along it are just gone. Vanished. So this grocery is not only Raymer's history. It is one of the last physical pieces of an entire railroad corridor that used to hold that part of the plains together.

Who is actually doing the work

The people saving it are the neighbors. That is what I love about this one.

Back in 2022, a group called The Friends of Raymer, Inc. took on the job of reviving the building, which had been sitting vacant. They got a $50,000 grant that year. The rehab itself started in 2021 with money for comprehensive construction documents, which is the unglamorous paperwork stage where you figure out how to fix a 115-year-old building without it falling down on you.

This new

24,687 is the next phase. It funds interior accessibility work on the front half of the building. And they are not turning it into a museum piece you look at through glass. The High Plains Library already runs a satellite library inside there right now. The plan is to make it a community museum and resource center too, with 24/7 internet access. Out on the Eastern Plains, that internet piece is a bigger deal than it sounds. That is real infrastructure for people who do not have a lot of it nearby.

So the building that was the town's gathering spot in 1909 is about to be the town's gathering spot again. Same walls. Same purpose. Just a hundred-plus years later.

Pueblo almost lost its bath house

The other big one is down in Pueblo, and it came even closer to the wrecking ball.

The City Park Bath House was slated for demolition. Done. On the list. And it is getting

34,300 to restore it to its original grandeur instead. That reversal happened because a group called Friends of City Park, working with Historic Pueblo, Inc., pushed city officials hard enough to get the building recognized as a Local Historic Landmark. That designation is the thing that changed its fate.

Same pattern as Raymer. Regular people organizing to save something the paperwork had already given up on.

There is also $50,000 going to support the Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation 2026 National Forum, which is happening right here in Denver and Aurora. So the metro is on the list. It is just not the whole list.

Why this matters if you own a building

Here is a fact that reframes the whole thing. According to History Colorado, the State Historical Fund has directed more than a quarter-billion dollars in grants to all 64 Colorado counties. Every single one. And the money comes around twice a year.

If you own or love an old building in Colorado, that is worth your attention. This is not some closed door where only the famous landmarks get in. A vacant grocery in a town most people cannot find on a map just pulled down a bigger check than a lot of Denver projects will ever see.

The 150th year is being marked in the places nobody was looking. And that is exactly where it should be.