Five Long-Time Families at the Heart of Boulder County

Agritainment at Anderson Farms

A hundred years ago the founding family of Anderson Farms had no idea that a legion of zombies would arrive to the farm in the 21st century, armed with paintballs. They would have never guessed that the farm would reinvent itself each October as a Halloween festival, complete with pumpkin sales and the headlining attraction “Terror in the Corn.”

In 1911, when Swedish patriarchs August and Josephine purchased the Anderson family farm near Erie, “agritainment” was a neologism from the future. Today, it’s what many rural families do to diversify their agricultural product and supplement the diminishing revenues of traditional farm activities. The Anderson family, now in its fourth generation of owning and operating the land, is in the business of drawing crowds.

Of August and Josephine’s four children, their two sons Edwin and Albert took over the farm trade. They cultivated wheat, alfalfa, barley, sugar beets and corn, later introducing cattle in the 1930s.

But in 1958, this second generation’s luck twisted when their land fell under the eminent domain of the government’s I-25 interstate project. The Andersons negotiated a good price for it, which they used to buy their current lot, known as the South Farm. Until 1996, the third generation of Andersons—Jim and his wife Brenda—ran it as a “tenant farm”, employing other farm families who also lived and worked on the land.

So where do the zombies come in? In 1997, Jim started a small pumpkin patch at South Farm. Those first few years, the family thought it would be fun to offer hayrides to the pumpkin patch each fall, offering Boulder and Denver urbanites a taste of farm life. Popularity grew, and in 1999, Colorado’s first corn maze was added. In 2001, “Terror in the Corn” was born, becoming Colorado’s only haunted hayride and ghost town experience. The Zombie Paintball Hunt was soon to follow, just as the living dead began invading mainstream popular culture.

Outside the autumn festival season, life at Anderson farm is quiet. The office opens in early April as a venue for weddings and events. The question remains open as to the Halloween-centric farm’s hauntedness, but it does attract a handful of extended family throughout the year, including Great Grandma Louise Anderson, who is still alive today.bring about a human impact (not to mention a little more traffic and noise) that the quiet old ranch has never known. Recreation enterprises could rub up against the terms of the Conservation Easement. Williams hopes that whoever manages the ranch in generations to come will at least consider the heritage of the 116-year-old barn. “I’m hopeful that the barn is unique enough that anybody who owns the ranch will respect that building.”