For generations of local families, especially the kids, the intersection of Fillmore Street and Templeton Gap Road in Colorado SPrings was where everyone honked their car horns and waved each morning or maybe even stopped to bring carrots and apples to the little donkeys waiting nearby outside their barn with its murals of inspirational sayings.

In what is now an always bustling, long-ago-grown-up part of the metropolitan area, it was a tiny urban farm scene, Taylor’s Acre, filled with history of the Taylor family.

In 1960, C. Bob and Dessie Taylor bought the 1-acre ranch and its stone ranch house where they could raise four sons and two daughters in a fun-filled area they packed with their friends, neighbors and the kids’ partying school friends. And there were roosters, horses and donkeys, a special Samoyed dog, chickens and ducks and even turtles.

Gazette journalist and columnist Bill Vogrin, who followed the family’s story, learned during a visit with Dessie Taylor in 2002 that she gleefully remembered many visits over those years by the police who regularly received calls complaining about raucous sounds and loud music. “Cantankerous,” was how she was frequently described by friends and family as they laughed knowingly.

Dessie and her C. Bob, who died of cancer in 1996, were married 56 memorable years resulting in six children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. They were both heavily involved in civic and service organizations.

After Dessie faced off against a possible death sentence with major brain tumor surgery in the 1970s, saying “I’m too mean to die,” there was a 1972 party, a wild one as was tradition, when some of the rowdy participants apparently decided to paint the barn for the first time, according to the family. “We are proud to be Americans” were the words on the first art, done to face those passing by on the streets.

Years later, Taylor son Cecil told a Gazette reporter, “Little did I know we’d still be doing it all these years later.” It was a four-decade project of creating barn-mural themes every summer, sometimes gentle nature like hummingbirds and butterflies (“What the caterpillar thinks is the end of life, the butterfly knows is the beginning”) and other times motivating people to “VOTE!”

Neighbor, classmate of Taylor children and recognized “extended family” member Kass Johns was one of the major barn muralists and she chronicled the whole history of the art, its words and the family’s story.

One of the sweetest murals, “What we do in life echoes in eternity,” was in memory of Dessie’s beloved childhood sweetheart C. Bob. They had met when their families lived in Limon all those years ago.

Other poignant memories came after their daughter Dessie Bob was victim of a murder-suicide by her estranged husband, a police officer, in 1980. A devastated Dessie had this special sign: “Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play. And to look up at the stars.”

When government officials in the growing city decided to outlaw large billboards starting in 1984, which would have included the art on the barn, Dessie rallied forces and got it stopped by going straight to Colorado Springs Mayor Robert “Bob” Isaac and several City Council members.

Dessie told writer Vogrin that all the special animals on Taylor’s Acre and Dessie’s invitations to “city kids” to see her “critters” were a motivation to move forward after her daughter’s death.

In the barn’s corral first, starting in the early years, were horses, remembers Kass Johns: “a paint pony, Gorgeous the Palomino, Buttermilk the white horse. and Taylor daughter Tamara’s Fantasia, a brown quarter horse.” Next came the first donkey, Rainbow, followed by her daughter Twinkle Star. Pancho arrived as a companion for Twinkle Star after Rainbow died. Next to arrive was Apple Jack, renamed Applejuice by Dessie because Apple Jack “sounds like alcohol,” she thought. Then it was the sweet duo so many later people remembered, Twinkle Star and Applejuice.

Twinkle Star died around 2006, leaving Applejuice, 12 years old, alone and lonely, braying for her and for people to come visit. Dessie, 89, was ill and was moved to a nursing home and hospice where she died in 2009. The brain tumor from the past had returned twice more during the years, family said.

The barn was painted “Happy Trails, Dessie and Bob.” Flowers were on the fence around the corral.

A family friend, Dwane Baker, had a place for Applejuice to live out his life on his farm in Fountain Valley where there were other donkeys and animals.

The final art on the barn in 2011: “Vaya con Dios” (Go with God)

All the children and grands and great-grands were living in different parts of the country, except for son Cecil who lived in Pueblo. They made the decision to sell their special family acre to a medical office building being built near a number of similar ones now nearby.

In 2012 the Taylor’s Acre buildings were demolished.