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(Originally published April, 1986.)
 One of Cheyenne County's earliest pioneers, a stockman whose memory remains alive in the JOD brand still in use today, was Joseph Ottmar Dostal. Dostal's story is typically American, a story of an immigrant boy who forged a life for his family out of the raw material of the plains, while earning wealth and some renown in the process.
Dostal's story is of added interest because historians have been able to trace his pioneer Slavic-American family through four generations.
Dostal's grandfather, George Dostal, was born in the late 1700s in Ricany, Bohemia, on the outskirts of Prague in what is now Czechoslovakia. George Dostal was a millwright and builder, but his son, George Jr. (born in 1811) became a manufacturer of woolen cloth. George Jr. married Jennie Blazek, the daughter of a fellow Ricany cloth maker, and they had eight children, including Joseph O. Dostal, born November 16, 1842 in Bohemia.
In the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution conquered Europe. Unable to compete with mass production, the Dostal family set out in 1856 for America. As did many others like them, they traveled first to Hamburg, Germany, then to Liverpool, England, where they booked passage on a sailing vessel.
The trip across the Atlantic Ocean required nearly five weeks, a time chronicled in the Dostal diary, according to former JOD resident Evelyn Hockett.
The Dostals disembarked in New York City, and moved immediately to a homestead near Iowa City, Iowa. Cloth finisher George Dostal went to work felling trees for 75 cents a cord, and young Joseph found a job in a brickyard. He later obtained work on a ranch for $6 per month and board.
At the age of 15, young Dostal learned the butcher's trade, cutting meat for $15 per month and board. But before long, his career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War.
Still a teenager, Dostal joined Company K, 22nd Iowa infantry attached to the 19th Army Corps. His regiment participated in the siege of Vicksburg and Jackson and was in the Shenandoah Valley campaign under General Phil Sheridan. Dostal tramped as far south as Alexandria, Louisiana, and in the winter of 1864, he was attached to the Commissary Department at De Croist Point, Matagorda Bay, Texas. As one of the butchers there, he helped slaughter 16,000 sheep and thousands of cattle to help supply the needs of the Union Army.
Eight months after his August, 1865 discharge, Dostal moved to Central City in Colorado's mountains, where he was employed by William Nicholson as a butcher. He worked for 18 months, saving his money, then he returned to Iowa City in 1868 to marry Mary Hamllik.
Also a Czech, Mary had moved with her parents to America from Prague. An ethnic tradition, their marriage served to preserve their Czech culture and heritage, considered important in ensuring domestic tranquility.
The newlyweds returned to Central City, and Dostal opened his own butcher shop. A fire nearly destroyed the entire town in 1874, but Dostal pooled his capital with that of two other businessmen to build a new 50x69 foot building, two stories high. Identified in stone as "1874 Dostal Block", the building still stands on the east side of Main Street near its intersection with Gregory Street.
Successful in business in Central City, Dostal served a term on the town council. He finally sold his meat market in 1876.
During this same period, Dostal became increasingly involved in livestock operations in the plains area, particularly at Godfrey (later know as "Beuck" and as "Buick") and at Aroya, communities created following the arrival of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad.
("Buick" still is seen on maps southeast of Agate in Elbert County. In Cheyenne County the JOD was based about three miles from the present site of Aroya, which is between Wild Horse and Hugo near Highway 40/287.)
In 1873, Dostal went into partnership with Conrad Schafer, a German who had come to America in 1870. Dostal and Schafer became acquainted in Central City, where Schafer lived three years before moving to eastern Colorado.
At Aroya, Dostal and Schafer were in the sheep business for a decade. Then, in 1883, Schafer started his own ranch in the Boyero vicinity, where he raised sheep and cattle until his death at age 49, in 1888. Still owned by the Schafer family, that ranch now is known for its cattle and quarter horses.
For years thereafter, Dostal and his JOD Ranch raised Hereford cattle which, when exhibited, won many prizes. In 1899 (before the present National Western Stock Show), Dostal was awarded first prize on a carload of 10-month old calves, bred and raised on the JOD range. The calves averaged 530 pounds, and were exhibited at the Stocker and Feeder Cattle Show held in Denver.
In 1889, Cheyenne County was created by the state legislature, and J.O.Dostal was the new county's oldest resident and largest individual taxpayer. In the following year, Dostal was elected county commissioner.
Also, on September 17, 1889, a post office was established at Aroya, and Dostal was named postmaster. The office served a wide area, for post offices were not established at Boyero or Wild Horse, and mail sacks were carried by horseback to the Sanford Ranch 13 miles from Aroya, for distribution in that area.
When the Wild Horse post office re-opened in 1904 (it was first established in 1877, but was closed the same year). Dostal sorted the Wild Horse mail, then put in on the train to Wild Horse, where the train crew threw it off onto the front porch of the section house as the train went by.
Dostal was also instrumental in organizing the stockmen's association in the state, for protection against rustlers. It later was reorganized as the Cattle and Horse Growers Association. He was for years a delegate to the meetings of the National Livestock Association, and in 1904, was appointed by the governor to represent Colorado at the national meeting.
Dostal's wife, Mary, died in 1909. Afterward, he sold the JOD to a Mr. Schilling. The ranch has changed hands several times since, but the JOD brand is still there, even though parts of the ranch recently were "busted up", plowed out for farm ground.
The Dostals had maintained a comfortable home in Denver since the 1890s, in addition to their large ranch, and one of their sons even graduated from a high school there, but Joseph Dostal retired to San Diego, California, where he died November 9, 1925, a week short of his 83rd birthday.
Most of the people who knew Joseph Dostal are gone now, and it's difficult to draw a picture of JOD, the man. He has been quoted as saying, "My only ambition in life has been to make a success. I did not count so much on dollars that this success would bring as on the satisfaction that would come to me should I be successful in what I undertook."
One of Dostal's sons is reported to have been afraid of his father, and one of Dostal's granddaughters has described him as "stern, but full of the devil." She recalled her grandfather urging her to always drink Scotch whiskey, so that she would never become an alcoholic. That advice dismayed her mother, she reported.
In his photographs, Dostal always appeared in a necktie, and without a smile, and yet he was photographed often in family recreational pursuits, relaxing with a grandson on a riverbank, or enjoying a picnic lunch on the prairie.
Perhaps the real key to Joseph O. Dostal was in the poetry he wrote in the Czech language. His granddaughter showed a sample to a friend who could read Czech. "It was very romantic," she was told.
Information for this article was provided by Lincoln County Stockmen--Then and Now, by M. E. Owen; Kit Carson, Colorado, by Marion A. Hogan; The Cheyenne County History, published by the Cheyenne County Historical Society; Colorado Magazine, Spring '77, a publication of the Colorado Historical Society; and Adele Dostal Sundell, who also provided the photo.
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