Delta, Colorado, is presented through its connection to Cima’s education and to the ranch community nearby. Delta High and a scholarship to Dartmouth College make the town a point of passage between ranch life and a possible future elsewhere; later, Delta also helps mark the geography of the two towns serving the ranch.

Setting and Connection to the Ranch

Cima describes Delta in relation to the ranch rather than through a detailed account of its streets or civic life. The ranch lay almost equidistant from Delta and another town where the family did major shopping, bought auto parts and farm equipment, and sometimes went to the movies. That practical connection places Delta within the orbit of ordinary ranch life, while keeping it distinct from the more distant places imagined in Cima’s plans for the future.

The distinction matters again after the collapse. Cima and Pops left the ranch as the crisis worsened, before they had seen the full devastation of the ruined city encountered later. Their earlier access to television news had shown the reports growing more frantic as anchors and correspondents disappeared. The account places Delta among the two towns measured from the ranch, but does not identify Delta as the ruined city in that later scene.

Delta High and the Scholarship

Cima’s account of her school years gives Delta a more specific institutional role. She had strong grades and test scores and expected to become a veterinarian, study at Colorado State, and return to establish a large-animal practice. At Delta High, however, access to another path depended on the annual scholarship to Dartmouth College. It was endowed by the alumnus who had built the local fiberboard plant, whose fumes reeked in winter inversions, and the college counselor, Sykes, controlled which student would be considered.

The selection process shaped the whole school’s atmosphere. Each fall, one student received a note summoning them to Sykes’s office; when Cima received one, classmates watched her, and she felt their envy before she knew whether the opportunity would prove a blessing or a burden. The scholarship therefore represented more than academic recognition: it concentrated local hopes and resentments in a decision controlled by a single counselor.

Cima’s Application and the Town’s Social Divide

Sykes urged Cima to write her application essay about ranch life and the loss of her twin, Bo. She rejected the prescribed approach and instead wrote about the counselor’s demand, ranch culture’s tact around grief, and the distance between Western land-based people and the Eastern establishment. She sent the essay without letting Sykes review it, contrary to school protocol. Though he tried to obstruct her application, she was accepted to Dartmouth College on an early-decision, full-ride scholarship, and the college pressured the high school until Sykes retired.

Cima later remained troubled by her own awareness that the anger in her essay might strengthen her candidacy, even as she felt that anger sincerely and wondered whether she had used Bo’s death to gain admission. In this recollection, Delta is not simply a backdrop to a successful application. Its school system, industrial history, and counselor’s authority expose the tension between a ranch community’s values and the way an elite Eastern institution might interpret them.