Okay, confession time. While this website and financial blog takes a more expansive view of what Clear Creek means, I have a more personal connection to the name. I grew up in Arvada, just outside of Denver, CO. My dad would take me down to Clear Creek when I was really young and he would tell me stories about Jim Baker, famous frontiersman and key figure in the Colorado Gold Rush.

As I got older, these stories would morph into life lessons, part inspirational, part sobering reality. Jim Baker—the frontiersman not the Secretary of State—did a little bit of everything and was good at whatever he did. Pioneer, soldier, hunter, trader, and rancher. He owned a mine and built a toll bridge. For his retirement, he moved to Wyoming and built a large cabin and ranch.

This statue commemorating Jim Baker was scultped by Steve Boyce.

The sobering part of these speeches my dad used to give tended to focus on the death of this kind of jack-of-all-trades. Virtuosos, my dad used to call them. He would say, Nowadays everything is so specialized you can’t do that anymore. They don’t let you. You have to always know your corner of the store and you have to prove that you know it at all times. And that means you can’t do other things, by and large.

Still, the idea of limitless potential and diversified interests seemed to stick. As did the reality of the modern-day economy. And so I studied economics and finance in school. Not because of the money or the math, but because finance opens doors to all kinds of knowledge sets and worlds of expertise. What really made Jim Baker possible in his day and in ours is the economic productivity and financial success of his various endeavors. With this in mind, Clear Creek Finance was a natural choice for a financial blog.