Holly: after the storm: two years after a tornado killed two people and destroyed or damaged more than 160 homes, the town angles for revival.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: WHO OWNS COLORADO

Holly, Colo., seems to be going through a long, uncanny bad spell.

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Holly seemingly has always acted as a magnet for trouble, attracting some of the worst kinds of misfortune in the economic, demographic and acts-of-God categories.

Greatness has brushed by Holly, then moved on. In 1541, the explorer Coronado marched over the site of today's Holly Public Library, according to the Holly Historical Society. In 1806 Zebulon Pike, too briefly explored what became Holly. Former Gov. Roy Romer, today chairman of the nonprofit Strong American Schools, grew up in the town but moved on and up.

Holly's economic and demographic troubles seem rooted in the land. In southeast Colorado by the Kansas border, the town suffers from the secular decline of ranching and farming. In the past two decades, the farm and ranch depression halved Holly's population from about 1,600 to the current 800.

Today's economic and real estate fizzles aren't helping: Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association in mid-June shocked Holly by putting off plans for a nearby coal-fired power generation plant.

"That was kind of depressing to us because we were expecting a little bit of a boom," said Kammie Cathcart, president of the city's branch of Colorado East Bank & Trust.

Holly also has been cruelly tested by catastrophes coming out of the sky. Perhaps it is noteworthy that the Holly Historical Society divides its website pages into categories including "Dust Bowl," "Floods" (five major floods, from 1904 to 1965), "Blizzard," "Tornado" and the Towner Bus Tragedy of 1931.

In 2006 and 2007, Holly answered the perennial existential question, "Can things possibly get worse?" by following a freak four-day blizzard with a freak half-hour tornado that grew stronger as it tore north through town, reaching wind speeds of up to 199 miles per hour, obliterating a path 600 feet wide.

"Holly had literally just finished putting the blizzard behind us when the tornado hit," says town administrator Marsha Willhite.

The Holly Tornado killed two, injured many and destroyed or seriously damaged more than 160 homes.

Today, many say the town has healed, or at least turned the most difficult pages of these sad chapters.

One sign of recovery was the recent closure of the Holly Recovery Task Force, which for two years had helped with distributing donations, aiding rent and mortgage payments, and gathering volunteers for home repair and rebuilding.

Task force...