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Nathan Edward Rose was born at the Mennonite Hospital in La Junta, Colorado on March 13, 1956, to Donald Edward Rose and Dorothy May (Van Schooten) Rose of rural Kiowa County, Colorado. Their third child and only son, Nathan was raised to one day take over the Rose Ranch, so he started doing farm chores including milking cows and herding cattle on foot before he started school and he learned to drive a tractor before he drove a car.

He attended school in Eads for all twelve grades and was a favorite of many classmates and a few teachers. He wasn’t very interested in sports, but he enjoyed his art classes and playing tenor saxophone in the band.

He was brought up in the First Christian Church in Eads, where he was baptized.

Nathan loved music and turned his bedroom into a home recording studio and mixing booth, where he played guitar, sang songs he wrote, and created mixed tapes including his own voice-over DJ commentary. Whenever he had to drive the 25 miles into town, he always had his shortwave radio turned on, using the handle “High Plains Drifter” or “HPD.”

Nathan attended the University of Northern Colorado for one year before returning to the ranch to work full-time with his father and grandfather, William E. Rose, raising white-faced Herefords and growing hard red winter wheat. He was proud of getting top dollar for Rose and Son cattle at the sale ring and was admired for his ability to drill perfectly straight rows of wheat and cattle feed crops.

In his late twenties, Nathan was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalized for treatment. After his release, he lived in Lamar for several years before moving to La Junta, where he continued to live independently for more than 25 years, writing poems and stories, drawing car designs, custom detailing his car, shooting photographs of places and spaces around the Arkansas Valley, and taking long walks along the streets of La Junta, where he was a familiar figure.

In May of 2021, after being hospitalized during the COVID 19 pandemic, Nathan became a long-term resident at the Bent County Healthcare Center in Las Animas, where he developed friendships with staff and other residents during his walks up and down the corridors and frequent visits to the treats cart. He died peacefully, on May 21, 2026, after succumbing to complications of COPD.

Nathan was preceded in death by his parents and his sister Nancy Rose MacKenzie.

Nate is survived by his sister Shirley Rose and her husband Leon Johnson of Tempe, Arizona, nephew Phillip MacKenzie of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, niece Fiona MacKenzie Swanson of St. Peter, Minnesota, niece Morgan Pircer of Dearborn Michigan, his cousins, Judy Parker of Lawrence, Kansas and Gary Parker of Monterey, California and their respective families.

Nathan’s family is grateful to the friends he found among the clients and staff at Southeast Mental Health Center in La Junta and at BCHCC in Las Animas, and to his long-time friend and landlord Stanley Werner for their care and friendship over the years.

A memorial service will be held at the Bent County Healthcare Center Nursing Home, 810 3rd Street, in Las Animas at 10:00 a.m. on June 26, 2026.

Memorial donations may be made to the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

Arrangements are under the direction of Perez & Peacock Funeral Home & Arkansas Valley Crematory.