Last Chance

Last Chance, Colorado is a tiny crossroads community on the High Plains of eastern Colorado, known more as a landmark on long empty highways than as a conventional town.

History

Last Chance took shape as a service point for motorists and local farmers in the mid 1920s at the junction of what are now U.S. Highway 36 and Colorado Highway 71. In 1926, entrepreneurs Archie Chapman and Essa Harbert opened a creamery, store, and filling station there, effectively founding the settlement that became known as Last Chance.The name “Last Chance” reflects the area’s isolation: for Model T travelers in the 1920s, this was the last chance to get gasoline and supplies before long, empty stretches toward Denver, St. Francis, Kansas, Brush, Limon, or Anton. Local accounts emphasize that skipping this stop meant 37–41 miles to the next fuel in several directions, which cemented the name in traveler lore and road maps.

Population

Historic mentions and popular culture references place the population at about 25–50 residents in the 1970s and 1980s, reflecting its status as a very small highway hamlet. A “Hee Haw” television segment saluted “Last Chance, Colorado (pop. 25)” on November 16, 1974, and modern descriptions still characterize it as only a few occupied homes and businesses, with a population likely well under 50.

Major Industries

Last Chance has never had a diversified urban economy; instead, it functioned primarily as a service stop for highway travelers and nearby farms. The main activities historically included fuel sales, a small motel, café, and creamery, with local residents otherwise engaged in dryland farming and ranching in the surrounding countryside.

Geography Coordinates

Last Chance lies in southwestern Washington County, Colorado, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 36 (east–west) and Colorado Highway 71 (north–south) in a very sparsely settled region of the High Plains. Its geographic coordinates are 39.7399° north latitude and 103.5937° west longitude. This places it on open shortgrass prairie at roughly 5,000 feet above sea level. Distances from Last Chance to the next fuel or services underline its isolation: about 41 miles west to Strasburg, 37 miles south to Limon, 38 miles north to Brush, and 20 miles east to Anton. The surrounding landscape is treeless rolling prairie broken only by scattered farmsteads, making the crossroads visually prominent despite its tiny size.

Obscure and distinctive facts

Last Chance never had its own official post office, but residents historically collected mail at the general store; the nearest post office was at Plum Bush, six miles to the northeast, which operated from 1910 to 1918. The community was “saluted” on the TV show Hee Haw in 1974 and later became known in meteorological and disaster reports for a cluster of five tornadoes in the Last Chance–Lindon area on July 21, 1993, and for the large “Last Chance Wildfire” of June 2012 that burned roughly 45,000 acres and forced short term evacuation of both Last Chance and nearby Woodrow.