IN THE LATE 1700s, Panama Redd’s ship, The Annoyance, was anchored near New Orleans, then a sleepy delta town not much bigger than Delta Burke, in the traditional stomping grounds of the Mardi Gras Indians. One blustery day in May or June or September of 17-something, Redd, first mate Monterey Jack, and several of his crew set out on a rum run in one of those, whatchcallum, little boats that you row. They missed their landing and continued up the Mississippi River, at that time mistakenly known as the “Amazon,” hung a left at the Missouri, a Native American word for “big-river-on-the-left-if-you-are-going-upstream.” From thence they entered the South Platte, which is how it was known even then, although nobody could say why.

They paused only long enough to sack the town of Niwot, then located near the site of present-day Wiggins, and then known as Galt. (After the sacking of Galt, Wiggins, which had been a successful town in western Kansas, applied for, and got, the vacancy.) Then they proceeded up Saint Vrain Creek, and then Boulder Creek, at that time believed to lead to the fabled Seven Cities of Orange County.

The sack, even after dividing all Galt into three parts, was way too heavy, however, and nobody wanted to carry it, so the freebooters abandoned it at the site of the present town’s location very neigh to the town of Wot, which soon expressing disgust at the cold winters and increasing crime in the neighborhood, retired and became a suburb of Miami.

On a blustery day in the late 1700s, or maybe 1800s, as they weren’t known for their punctuality, Redd and the survivors of his crew rowed their boat ashore near the location of the present day Silver Saddle Motel, with many a foul curse and bloodthirsty oath, for The Silver Saddle did not have indoor plumbing in those days, but was still charging high-season rates. Archeologists are fairly certain that this was the location where the crew paused to get baked and slick back their mullets before going out to meet some girls.

But what became of the crew remains one of the enduring mysteries of Colorado history. Later settlers found no trace of the crew, except for a single word, “lambada,” carved on the trunk of one of the Boulder Courthouse Maples, which were then known simply as “some trees.” Some historians speculate that the crew members interbred with the fierce Realtorosaurus® that roamed the plains at that time, and point to the existence of “origination fees” and the many thousands of dollars worth of other rapacious, bloodsucking crap fees that are tacked onto any purchase of real estate as proof that the genes of these hardy and feared corsairs of Boulder Creek yet survive.