Adam & Bessie Arnet Homestead

The Adam and Bessie Arnet Homestead stands on the high, wind-swept plains east of Model in Las Animas County, roughly twenty miles east of U.S. Highway 350. The property was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey, which photographed the residence, outbuildings, and associated structures as a record of the small-scale dryland adobe homesteads that took shape across southeastern Colorado in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Arnet residence reflects a vernacular adobe tradition that traveled north out of New Mexico with Hispano sheepherders and homesteaders, then merged with the homestead-era building habits of Anglo settlers working the Purgatoire and Apishapa drainages. Walls were laid up from sun-dried earthen blocks cut on site, set on shallow stone footings, and finished with mud plaster that was renewed each season. Low, single-story massing with a flat or shallow-pitched roof, deep window reveals, and modest fenestration helped the structure shed the constant wind and retain warmth through cold winters and hot summers.

By tradition, the Arnet homestead operated as a stock and dryland ranch typical of the region, with the main residence anchoring a cluster of working outbuildings. Like many homesteads of its kind, it was assembled by family labor over a period of years rather than built in a single campaign, which accounts for the additive plan recorded in the HABS drawings.

The property remains in private hands and is not open to the public, though the Historic American Buildings Survey documentation preserves a detailed record of its plan, elevations, and surroundings for future study. The structures stand as a reminder that the Model and Trinidad area was, in the early twentieth century, one of the northernmost frontiers of the New Mexican adobe building tradition.

Within Colorado's broader adobe inventory, the Arnet Homestead belongs alongside other Las Animas County earthen dwellings that mark the upper edge of a continuous Hispano building culture stretching from northern New Mexico across the Sangre de Cristo crest into the Arkansas Valley.