Editor’s note: This episode contains some explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.
A town with no mayor, no trustees, no clerk, and no publicly funded water system.
In our seventh episode this season, we travel four hours east of Denver to Hartman, Colorado, where a modern-day "Hatfields and McCoys" feud drove the entire town board to quit.
After years of bitter infighting, contested elections, financial disputes, and a physical altercation at a town meeting, the tiny plains community's government effectively collapsed. Hartman has become an unlikely case study in how a century-old abandonment law leaves residents to confront what happens when a town can no longer govern itself.
Can Hartman be saved, or has it already become a ghost town in waiting?
This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.
Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.
