H.W. Potter Building 101 Colorado Ave.

The H. W. Potter Building was built for Hezekiah Wright Potter and Margaret Nancy (Smith) Potter in 1919. born in McFall, Missouri, on February 12, 1859, Hezekiah was the son of farmers James Wiley and Louisa (Enyart) Potter.

The family moved to Colorado in 1870 when Hezekiah was a boy. In 1892, H.W. Potter was elected county sheriff, a position he held until 1896, and remained a leader in the La Junta community after he was replaced by A.A. Frost.

In 1902, reports show Potter was involved in the tragic lynching of Washinton Wallace, an Army veteran and Black porter, after he was accused of assaulting Henrietta H. Miller, a sixty-seven-year-old white woman traveling from Los Angeles to Denver via train. After Wallace's arrest, then Otero County Sheriff George Barr feared mob violence and attempted to take Wallace to Rocky Ford for his safety. Barr and Wallace were intercepted by a gang led by Potter and returned to La Junta where Wallace was later hung from a lamppost near the Park House, which does not exist today, at Santa Fe Avenue and West 3rd Street and shot repeatedly as he died. 

The H.W. Potter Building was completed in 1919. The Potters moved into an apartment on the building's second floor. Located on the corner of East 1st Street and Colorado Avenue, on the west side of the Plaza Block, the building was designed to house an auto dealership, with display room facing Colorado Avenue and a garage area that could accommodate 100 vehicles. 

The three lots on which the H.W. Potter Building stands were occupied by three one-story wood-frame saloon buildings and a wood-frame dry goods store as early as 1886. By 1889, the saloons had been replaced by a new wood-frame double-storefront building and two smaller buildings at the rear of the parcel that faced Colorado Avenue. All the buildings housed various commercial enterprises. By 1900, the buildings facing Colorado Avenue, and the dry goods store had been removed and the remaining corner building remodeled to house a new and secondhand furniture business. Outbuildings once again stood at the rear of the property by 1911 and the larger building was remodeled again, while the adjacent lot to the east remained vacant. 

During World War II the building housed the local United Service Organizations (USO) Club from around 1942 to 1946, the United States Army Air Force took over the local La Junta Airport to serve as a training facility for army pilots, expanding the airport to accommodate the increased number of aircraft and training flights. 

Founded by Mary Ingraham in 1942, the USO provided entertainment and social facilities for members of the armed services in an effort to boost morale and engage volunteers in support of the war effort. 

USO centers and clubs opened across the United States and throughout the world as a "Home Away from Home" for solidiers and their families, offering dances, movies, music, and other social events, as well as coffee and doughnuts. It has been reported that the Potter House had a ballroom located on the property.