Palmer Divide Research

Changelog

Changes to the site, newest first, in brief. Each place page also shows the date it was last updated. The events calendar refreshes itself every morning and is not logged here.

  • The Research page grows from 62 to 110 entries, with five new topics. Expeditions and travelers: the journals of Long (1820, with his map), Dodge (1835), Sage, Frémont, Kearny's dragoons, Parkman, Sedgwick and Marcy. Census volumes 1890-1930; the Divide experiment station's reports; the 1866 land-survey plats and the 1898 forest-reserve survey; three USGS flood and climate reports; Sanborn fire-insurance maps of Castle Rock, Monument, Limon and Calhan; and more biographical histories. Our own data is now downloadable too: about 1,100 federal land patents, the 1976 Cherry Valley-Spring Valley homestead map matched to the patents, railroad stations, census population by precinct, the explorers' camps, a list of 417 newspaper articles we have saved, and nine Sanborn sheets lined up with modern maps for GIS use.
  • New place: Bentley Homestead Park at Hilltop, the 160-acre homestead John F. Miller proved up in 1894, whose two-room homestead house still stands with the Demont family's 1921 farmhouse and a prairie barn, restored from 2020; from the 2021 ranch history by The History Quest, with Miller's patent checked in the federal land records. The same history adds to Hilltop (the Denver & New Orleans milepost, Mrs. Cole's store by 1894, and the end of the line in 1935-36), confirms the Hilltop School's 1954 closing, and gives a location for the lost D&NO station of Cameron. The Hilltop entry also notes that the 1889 post office application first called the place Hamilton.
  • Storms and floods on the Divide from three U.S. Geological Survey reports (Matthai's 1969 report on the June 1965 floods, Follansbee and Sawyer's Floods in Colorado of 1948, and the 1978 Front Range climatography): the tornado that unroofed 30 homes at Palmer Lake on June 16, 1965 and the 12 to 14 inches of rain that fell that afternoon near Castle Rock, Dawson Butte, Larkspur and Monument; 14 inches at Falcon the next day; the failure of Castlewood Dam on the night of Aug. 2-3, 1933; and the cloudburst of May 30, 1935 that put 24 inches on Elbert and 18 on the Black Forest. The Dawson Butte entry is corrected to what the 1969 report says. New place: Vera Burton's 80-acre homestead of 1940 north of Dawson Butte, the last homestead granted in Douglas County, placed from her land patent.
  • From Weber and Schlupp's Douglas County, Colorado: Prehistory to 2020 (2022): a new place, the 1948 arch bridge that carries SH 83 over Castlewood Canyon, called the Bridge to Nowhere because it ended in a cow pasture when the state chose US 85 instead; and notes on 32 entries. Among them: Bill Kreutzer appointed the first forest ranger on Aug. 8, 1898; the first Devil's Head lookout of 1912; the Nanichant Inn's 1891 opening; the Frink creamery at Larkspur, which handled 80% of the county's milk until the June 16, 1965 flood destroyed it; Larkspur's 1979 incorporation; the end of the Divide's one-room schools between 1951 and 1958; the Doepkes' Lake Gulch telephone switchboard; and a public meeting at the Huntsville post office in July 1865.
  • Three new places and 23 updated entries from the Castle Rock Writers' Douglas County (Images of America, 2017). New: the Perry Park Manor House, built by Charles Roberts in 1891 and now the country club's clubhouse; the 1923 tablet at Wildcat Point marking Kit Carson's last campfire; and the Dillons' 1917 house on Cantril Street in Castle Rock. A company photograph names the CCC camp near Castle Rock as Camp SCS-7-C (1938), and the book adds Army target practice at Perry Park in the mid-1890s, Spring Valley's 1867 homestead date for John Geiger, the Oakland School's move to Castle Rock in 1988 and notes on Larkspur, Sedalia, Franktown, Parker's Twenty Mile House and more. Where the book is wrong (the 1918 paired-track directions, the Greenland Ranch barn, the height of Devil's Head), the entries say so.
  • Eight entries updated from Beverly Higginson Noe's June 2026 presentation to the Larkspur Historical Society on her family's ranch north of Palmer Lake: the Harold Higginson ranch (its 1907 purchase from the Ben Lomond Ranch, the land on both sides of Perry Park Road and the 1955 sale), Spruce (soldiers guarded the Santa Fe's crossing over the Rio Grande there in 1918), the Palmer Lake Park subdivision, Greenmont Cemetery, the Ben Lomond Ranch, the Little Log Church, Dakan (the cattlemen's fall roundup corrals) and the Devil's Head lookout, which Harold Higginson kept for twelve summers. Where her dates differ from older records, the entries say so.
  • Crull-Hammond cabin and Allis Ranch: details from the Larkspur Historical Society's pages. The cabin was found as the core of Sheriff John Hammond's stucco house, has 1874 carved on a top log, and was restored by the county and the society in 2002-04. Charles Allis was shipwrecked on his way from England in 1883 and opened an Arvada meat market in 1922 while his son ran the ranch.

  • Five more Limon places from the April 1920 Sanborn map: the Bank Hotel at E Avenue and 1st Street (by the Limon Heritage Museum's account, lost in the 1990 tornado), the Baptist and First Christian churches, and two elevators on the Rock Island siding, the Equity Mercantile Association's of 1915 and the Isbell Colorado Bean & Elevator Co.'s of 1917. The 1920 map also updates the Limon Hotel (renamed the Tomkins Hotel), the E Avenue business block, the Lincoln Hotel and the Russell Gates store. The 1929 Limon maps are not digitized.
  • Ten places in Limon, at the east end of the Divide: the 1910 Rock Island-Union Pacific depot, now the Limon Heritage Museum (from its National Register nomination); the Rock Island roundhouse, whose stall pits still show on aerial photographs where a 1913 plan of the yard puts its ten-stall engine house; the Grier House, the railroad's eating house (razed 1932); and, from the May 1913 Sanborn fire-insurance map fitted to today's streets, the Limon Hotel, the Lincoln Hotel, the E Avenue business block, a Russell Gates Mercantile Co. store, the Methodist Episcopal church and the brick school of District No. 4; and the Pershing Memorial Cemetery, named for the town's first mayor. The Limon entry notes that sources give three dates in 1909 for its incorporation.

  • Three follow-ups: the Mount Herman fire is dated to 1880 by a letter from Monument in the Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette of June 19, 1880, which has the mountains west of town burning for several weeks; the Welty ranches entry adds the family's Welty Ditch on Beaver Creek, appropriated June 1, 1867, a year before the 1868 raids (state water-rights records); and the Monument Nursery entry adds the layout shown on the 1954 USGS Palmer Lake sheet, with the two candidate sites for the CCC camp and the later sign shop, neither yet settled.
  • Six Calhan buildings of 1917 from the Sanborn fire-insurance map of that year (Library of Congress), fitted to today's streets and matched to Percy Conarroe's memoir: the Russell Gates Mercantile Co. and its elevator, D. O. Moberly's First State Bank, the Calhan Hotel, the Kansas Avenue business block 'on the hill', J. R. Allen's blacksmith shop and the Methodist Episcopal church.
  • Monument Nursery, Monument Rock and Mount Herman revised from Dan Edwards's 2024 history of the nursery: founded in 1907 as the Mt. Herman Planting Station (renamed in 1909), the Monument Rock Ranch added in 1929, a CCC side camp from 1933 and Camp F-60-C from 1937 to 1942 (not from 1933), production ended June 30, 1965, with the stock and seed going to the new Mt. Sopris Nursery near Basalt. The Mount Herman Road was built by the Forest Service in 1923-25 on the line of an 1880s tie road; the CCC only rerouted its lower end, in 1938.
  • Three new places from Percy Conarroe's memoir of a 1930s boyhood in Calhan: the Myers Cemetery south-east of town, where the Weinlich family of 1888 are buried; the Calhan Memorial Cemetery; and the El Paso County Fairgrounds, the fair having begun as a Calhan potato day in October 1905. The book also adds to the entries for Calhan (the 1907 business review, the 1929 waterworks, the 1935 highway and the Rock Island section headquarters), Big Sandy, Eastonville, Fondis and St. Mary's Orthodox Church, whose photograph in the book does not match the 1976 survey's description.
  • Correction to the Ben Lomond Ranch entry posted earlier today: the Douglas County deeds show Frank McClure did own the ranch, from March 1886 to August 1888, between W. B. Daniels's purchase from the Bennets in October 1885 and Daniels's repurchase. The entry now gives the chain of title from the Bennets in 1875 to the Higginsons in 1907 and T. A. Hanks in 1908, and its map point has moved about 1,000 feet east into the ranch's El Paso County tract as an 1893 deed describes it.
  • Ben Lomond Ranch: an 1885 newspaper report shows the Bennet ranch was sold that October to W. B. Daniels, the Denver merchant of Daniels & Fisher, for $23,000, not to Frank McClure as two local histories have it. The entry now follows Daniels's ownership to his death in December 1890 and the court-ordered sale of 1891; the McClures had their own place near Palmer Lake, Pinehurst. Also from the newspapers: the Trinity Addition to Palmer Lake existed by September 1889, and in 1889-92 Elephant Rock was counted as part of Ben Lomond mountain.
  • Four new places from Daniel W. Edwards's 2008 biography of Dr. William Finley Thompson, Palmer Lake's founder: Thompson's first cabin and 80-acre claim of 1882, his mother Clarissa Thompson's claim, his sister Nettie Berry's claim at the Courts, and Ben Lomond, the hill east of the lake named on the 1882 Loch Katrine plat. Two new entries not yet located: the Trinity Addition to Palmer Lake and the Vaughn hotel of 1889. The book also adds to ten entries, among them the town itself (the 1882 plat), the Estemere (its 1883 predecessor and the 1894 sale ad), the Santa Fe depot, the D&RG icehouses and the Ben Lomond Ranch, where an 1890 newspaper's account of W. B. Daniels's horse ranch does not fit the 1885 sale to Frank McClure.
  • New place: the Bridle Bit Ranch on Shoup Road, from Terry Stokka's 2006 history of the ranch and its copied county records. The entry covers its 1909 cabin, the Edgar Lumber and Box Company's camp and sawmill of 1919, the Webster, Wagner and Morris years and its dude-ranch days. The same records date the end of Palmer's Pinery company, added to the Pinery overlay, the S. C. Stout ranch and the Edgar mill entry: the charter lapsed in 1905, Stout sued in 1910, and the court's trustee sold 12,047 acres to the Edgar company by a deed of July 21, 1919.
  • Place pages can now show our own photographs, free to reuse with credit under the site's CC BY 4.0 license. The first is the Brentwood Country Club gateway, photographed on Oct. 17, 2026.
  • Bleeker or Blecker School (later Forest View): added the 1992 National Register nomination for the Black Forest School, which spells it Blecker, as Rusk does; von Ahlefeldt and Koch spell it Bleeker. Its first teacher, for whom it was named, has not been found in a primary record. The nomination's dates for the log school are added to that entry.
  • New place: the inscription cave beside Sentinel Rock at Perry Park, where people waiting for the stage to the railroad at Larkspur carved their names in the late 1800s. The earliest legible carving is dated 1871. The country club's history calls the cave an 1860s stagecoach stop, but no 1860s source has been found.
  • Five places that had been on the unplaced list are now on the map. Marshal Ray Lewis's killing on Feb. 14, 1946 is placed at the B&B Café at Fourth and Wilcox in Castle Rock, and its date is corrected (Perez had shot the two Denver officers about three days earlier). The Nanichant Inn at Perry Park is placed, approximately, at the country club's 18th tee. The post offices of Curtis, Burt and Mosby are placed from their National Archives site reports. Eight other post offices on the list (Albano, Majors, Gleneath, Dragoo, Squirrel Creek, Sun View, Bardeen and Halfway) lie outside the Divide and were taken off it.
  • Place Names of Colorado read through in full for El Paso, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties and checked against the map. New places: Pulpit Rock, also the name of a D&RG station by 1873, and the National Carvers Museum south of Monument (incorporated 1969). Elephant Rock gains an older name, 'Sandstone Arch', from an 1885 map and an 1898 USGS forest map.
  • Second sources for leads from a 2004 essay on the communities along the New Santa Fe Trail: Will Shoemaker's 1927 clay pit added to Husted, Marion Porter's tourist court (to 1949) to Breed, and the D&RG station Aetna, the Pine Valley Airport (by 1927) and the 1874 D&RG station Mill No. 2 to the unplaced list.

  • From three Gazette articles the Pikes Peak Library District scanned for us: the 1909 trial of Rube Pribble for killing William Neff in Limbach's saloon (second-degree murder, with a recommendation of life) added to the saloon's entry; the April 1879 item indexed as Monument's incorporation turns out to be the Monument Academy's, so the town's June 1879 date stands, and the academy (1878 to the early 1880s) joins the unplaced list. R. C. Elliott's store is now identified with the general store at 104 Front Street.
  • Monument, from the Historical Society's walking tour (also recovered from the Internet Archive) with Lavelett: eight new places, the Santa Fe depot site on Third Street, the Santa Fe agents' home, the Presbyterian parsonage, the Santa Fe section crew bunkhouse, Colonel and Mrs. Ford's home, the Higby garage (later the post office), the Schubarth home and the first town hall in Lavelett Park. The creamery is moved to 366 Second Street, and nine downtown entries gain today's addresses and the tour's names (Elliott's store and carriage repository, Limbach's saloon, the Betz meat market, Dr. Rupp's drug store).
  • Sources page: listed in number order again (four entries had been out of sequence).
  • White Kitchen Café and the 1925 powerhouse: added Joe Gschwendtner's 2014 Castle Pines Connection article, which identifies the Rock House as the White Kitchen building and names B. E. Jack of the local electric company among the planners of the 1935 Star.
  • Palmer Lake, from the Historical Society's walking tour (recovered from the Internet Archive, as the page is no longer on the society's site): six new places, the WPA fire station (1937-38), the 1891 jail, the White Kitchen Café of 1927 (now the Rock House), John L. Woodbury's telephone house, the George W. Palmer house site and the 1925 electric company powerhouse. The Estemere, the Little Log Church and the Katrina Murat cottage are moved onto their buildings, and the Vaile cottage notes the tour's different address.
  • Santa Fe depot, Palmer Lake: corrected the side of the tracks. The 1937 photograph puts the station on the east side of the Santa Fe main line (today's Santa Fe Trail), not the lake side, as the note published earlier today had it; the map point was right and is unchanged.
  • Palmer Lake checked against the Douglas County Libraries' 1937 aerial photograph and two 1963 Stewart's aerials at the Pikes Peak Library District. In 1937 the lake reached about 500 feet farther south than it does today. The D&RG dance pavilion is moved to its documented spot between the two overhead road bridges south of the lake, and the D&RG icehouses to the 1937 south end. The Santa Fe depot is moved onto the station building, the Santa Fe wye to the center of its triangle, and the Glen Park station to the west side of the tracks as they ran then. New places: the D&RG turntable pit (1900-1925) and the D&RG and Santa Fe overhead road bridges. The 1963 photographs confirm the joint depot's site.
  • Sources page: links to the Palmer Lake Historical Society's shop for the nine books and booklets of ours that it sells, among them Lavelett, Sabin, Communities of the Palmer Divide, Shootouts, Killings, and War Heroes and Daniel W. Edwards's works.
  • Palmer Lake from Daniel W. Edwards's railroad book and his Palmer Lake Historical Society papers: thirteen new places, among them the Rocklands Hotel and the Glen House, the D&RG depot and its lunch room, the Glen Park station, the 1938 joint depot, the Santa Fe wye, the two North Monument Canyon reservoirs, Chautauqua Mountain and the 1883 dancing pavilion; corrections to the Santa Fe depot (now dated 1889), Pine Crest, the Glen Park cottages and several other entries.
  • Three new places from a check of Linda Saulnier Case's Tribune columns against Lavelett, Koch and the Palmer Lake Historical Society: Dirty Woman's Ranch (a stopping place by 1861), the John Olfs homestead (the Woodmoor Barn site) and Dr. William McConnell's home and office. The Best family's history added to the Vincent McDowell ranch, and notes added to the Monument Hotel, the buggy and wagon repository, Columbine School and the Monument public school.
  • New place: the Monument Potato Bake grounds (1890-1917), placed from the Rocky Mountain News's 1891 description, 'a hundred yards west of the depot'. The newspapers also date the first bake held to Oct. 10, 1890; notes added to the Russell Homestead, the Walker stone store and hall, and the Monument Lake dam.
  • Big Springs Ranch: the library's records of the 1976 survey photographs put the ranch northeast of Ellicott, which agrees with the map point; the note on today's Big Springs Road is corrected (it runs 1.3 miles north of the point, not five miles east).
  • 87 place pages now link to their 1976 survey photographs at the Pikes Peak Library District, 294 photos in all, from Elaine Freed and David Barber's survey of the county's historic sites. Thanks to the library's photo archivist, Erinn Barnes.
  • Larkspur, Greenland, Glen Grove and Perry Park checked against the 1937 aerial photographs, many with the 1937 owners' names penciled on the prints: the Madge Quarry moved onto its workings, and the Ware, Cold Springs, Allis, Harold Higginson, Nickson, McInroy, Haystack (Koontz) and Johnston places, Stone Canyon School, the Greenland Ranch headquarters, the Palmer Lake Park addition and Fort Washington placed on what the photographs show; Glen Grove School and the Quick stone house confirmed.
  • Place notes: the last few Larkspur Historical Society binder references written out in full.
  • Spring Valley and Cherry checked against the Douglas County Libraries' 1937 aerial photographs, each tied to today's road corners: the Spring Valley Cheese Company, the Jacob Geiger (Schubarth) and John Geiger homesteads, Elk Creek Ranch, the Elias Roberts and Howard Williams places, the Alderman ranch and East Cherry Creek School moved to the buildings that stood there in 1937; Cherry School placed at its schoolhouse lot; Spring Valley School, Loraine Ranch and Lincoln Ranch confirmed.
  • Orr Fur Farms: the angora co-operative's home at Palmer Lake in 1951 was "a rambling white stucco building which began as a garage."
  • Fox farms: Dave Gibbs's ranch east of Monument in 1941-42, when William and W. R. Brown had charge of it; Charlie Orr of Palmer Lake, who gave up foxes for angora rabbits because his wife couldn't bear to see them killed; and the Laird and Scrivner fox farm at West Husted, on the unlocated list.
  • Land patents for three families: Samuel R. Ditmars's land of 1904-05 lies just south of the Madge Quarry, which the 1937 aerial survey calls Ditmar's Quarry; the Ware brothers bought their ranch west of Larkspur rather than homesteading it; and Edgar and Victoria Hiatt's homestead of 1878 goes on the unlocated list, since no patent in their names has been found.
  • From El Paso County's school-district map of December 1946: five rural schools on the eastern Divide added (Alta Vista, Big Sandy, Excelsior, Washington and Corona), and the Columbine, Table Rock, Black Forest, Forest View, Fairplay and Bijou Basin entries checked against it.
  • From the federal land patents: Junius W. Dickinson's "Cigar Box Homestead" southeast of Peyton and Irvie and Lena Hazen's homestead on the county line east of Ramah.
  • Glen Park, Palmer Lake: twelve summer cottages of 1887-1931 mapped from the 1976 county survey and the resort columns of the Denver papers. North of Ramah, the monastery church of 1923 and Sproch Cemetery; north of Calhan, the first St. Mary's church site, now St. Tikhon's Chapel, and the National Slovak Society Cemetery; Brovsky's store in Ramah.
  • From the Douglas County Libraries' oral histories and school records: the Ware brothers' ranch west of Larkspur placed, the Pettigrew house moved to the east side of Highway 83, and 23 entries filled out, among them the Madge Quarry (the libraries' "Douglas Quarry"), Douglas, and the Lone Tree, Oakland, Stone Canyon and Spring Valley schools.
  • Twin Houses: Frank Allison's own advertisements of July 1892 date the Ponce de Leon Chalybeate Springs resort and confirm its place, "two and three-quarter miles from Parker Station."
  • Vera Rusk Ellett's Growing Up in Black Forest (1990) is now cited as Rusk throughout, as Judy von Ahlefeldt advises.
  • Two old Gazette pages read in full: the 1909 killing of William A. Neff, over an old plow, happened in Limbach's saloon on Monument's Front Street, and in June 1883 there was "quite a demand for lots at Loch Katrine on the Divide," the first name of Palmer Lake. The saloon, Gwillimville and Palmer Lake entries are updated.
  • Map: fixed a fault, introduced this morning with the explorers' camps, that stopped clicks on places from opening them.
  • Parker: three more places, the Hood House (1911, now in Preservation Park), the Twin Houses health resort north of Franktown, and the post office in James Newcomb's barbershop, where Victoria Newcomb was postmaster for 34 years from 1914.
  • Map: the camps of Stephen H. Long's expedition of July 1820 and John C. Frémont's of July 1843, 19 in all, each placed from the expedition's own account (Frémont's by his barometer readings), with the passage quoted and a confidence rating. Long's party crossed the Divide below Palmer Lake on the morning of July 10, 1820.
  • From the Pikes Peak Library District's digital collections: four places added, the D&RG station agent's house (1883) and T. A. Hanks's livery stable (1898-99) in Palmer Lake, the Pine Park Ranch barn and Fairplay School. 22 entries gain dates and details from the library's newspaper index and photograph records, among them Palmer Lake's first name, Loch Katrine (1882-83), Nettie Berry, its first woman officeholder (1895), the Black Forest School's National Register listing (1992) and a killing in a Monument saloon in 1909.
  • Elephant Rock: the Long expedition passed it on July 10, 1820, not July 11; the printed account's dates run a day late here.
  • Churches added: Taylor Memorial Chapel at La Foret (1929, John Gaw Meem), Our Lady of the Pines in Black Forest (1965), St. Ann's at Kiowa (1903, now the library) and Sacred Heart at Elbert (1914, moved after the 1935 flood). The first Catholic churches at Elizabeth (1889) and Calhan (1907), and Sacred Heart's first site, go on the unlocated list.
  • From the Douglas County Libraries' digital archive: Josiah H. Smith's farm and stone milk house added. George Nickson's cabin, the Case grange hall and post office, and the Williams cheese factory (photographed in 1892) gain the library's photograph records.
  • Parker: entries checked against the Parker Area Historical Society's site pages. Two places added, the Newlin Gulch placer mines and William H. Reynolds's homestead (placed from his 1892 land patent). The Twenty Mile House's surviving post office, the Parker Cemetery's founding, the Tallman-Newlin cabin's move, the Hilltop and Fonder schools, Ave Maria, Ruth Memorial Chapel, the depot, the 17-Mile House and the Montgomery farm are corrected or filled out.
  • Eleven places in Cherry Valley, Spring Valley and Rock Ridge gain their federal land patents. The patents show that the Frost's Ranch post office of 1871 stood on its postmaster Amos K. Frost's land, and that the Alderman-Stark Cemetery lies on James R. Stark's.
  • St. Mary's Orthodox Church near Calhan gains its parish's earlier story from the old newspapers, from a bishop's visit in 1905 to the burning of its brick church in 1928. Balch Cemetery gains Edwin C. Balch's 1887 land patent, in the section where the cemetery is said to lie.
  • Greenland, Monument, Palmer Lake, Peyton and Larkspur: their earliest church records, from the Episcopal diocese's histories and journals and the Catholic directories: preaching stations at Greenland and Monument in 1874, an Episcopal mission at Peyton from 1898 to 1909, and Palmer Lake served by a Catholic priest by 1890.
  • Map: the homesteaders on the 1976 4-H map of Cherry Valley and Spring Valley checked against every federal land patent in the map's 84 sections. 148 of its 159 squares have a patent under the same name within about a mile, and each popup now lists the patents.
  • About: how the Divide's crest and outline are drawn, with Judy von Ahlefeldt's reasons for the 6,000-foot line.
  • Home page: the tip on zooming with a mouse scroll wheel is now in bold.
  • Map: a button for each county in the key that shows only that county's places and zooms to it, and a new overlay that shades the counties in light colors. Suggested by Judy von Ahlefeldt.
  • Map: a north arrow and a scale bar in miles that adjusts as you zoom. Suggested by Judy von Ahlefeldt.
  • Church entries checked against the Episcopal diocese's council journals and the Catholic directories of 1890–1923. St. Philip-in-the-Field gains its 1888 rebuilding as a mission, and its consecration date is now marked unconfirmed. Christ's Episcopal in Castle Rock is dated 1907. The Eastonville church is identified as St. Timothy's (1888). St. Peter's in Monument, Ave Maria in Parker and the Sedalia entry gain their listings in those records.

  • St. Philip-in-the-Field rewritten from its 1969 parish history, the church's own history page and the Castle Rock Journal of 1888–89: built by Newton Grout in 1872, finished in 1888 and consecrated in 1889. Round's Mill, which sawed its lumber, goes on the unlocated list, and the Eastonville Episcopal church entry gains the mission's 1890 name, St. Timothy's.
  • Three more Larkspur-area places from old sale bills and news items: Charles Brand's Cold Springs Ranch at the mouth of Stone Canyon, Jim McInroy's MacHurst ranch, and the 1920-21 potash mine on Storm Peak.
  • Five West Plum Creek and Perry Park ranches placed from their federal land patents: John A. Koontz's Haystack Ranch (his 1872 homestead), Peter Brennan's, George Nickson's, Harry A. Starr's and the Gove ranch.
  • A search of the old newspapers for the unlocated list: Woodbine Lodge, the Jarre Canyon silver fox farm on its ranch, the Joe Lockhart ranch and the place where Adolph Coors III's remains were found in 1960 are now mapped, and fifteen unlocated entries gain new clues.
  • 38 places added and 103 entries corrected or filled out from the Larkspur Historical Society's document store, among them Hunt Mountain, the Larkspur school of 1890–1912, the Greenland townsite's stores, saloon and stockyards, the Monument Hill summit, the Cold Spring skirmish of 1868 and Oakes' Mill in Riley's Gulch. 42 more places go on the unlocated list.
  • Coberly's Half-Way House is now the Huntsville entry; the Spring Creek entry is the Coberly-Crull ranch. The point once labeled Daniels Ranch is a Greenland Stock Farm ranch station; the 1893 Daniels ranch was the Ben Lomond Ranch.
  • Map: Clear all and Defaults buttons at the top of the key, for picking out one or two kinds of place.
  • Place notes: leftover research shorthand removed from a dozen entries; binder references written out in full.
  • This changelog, linked at the foot of every page.
  • Map: the Spring Valley fort (John Irion's fort) placed at its traditional site, at medium confidence.
  • The Pikes Peak Westerners added to local history resources, with their monthly meetings on the calendar.

  • Visit statistics (Google Analytics) added; the privacy page says what they collect.
  • Home page: a tip on zooming with a mouse scroll wheel.

  • 16 places added and 16 more filled out from Susan Koch's The Land Is In My Blood, among them Blakely's mill, Stout School and Vollmer Hill.
  • Books are cited by their printed page numbers throughout.
  • Place notes: our internal shorthand replaced with plain words.
  • Map: a click on places that share a point offers a list to choose from.
  • Home page recommends a computer for the map; the Full Size Map link is in bold.
  • Sources page: working notes removed and descriptions shown in full.

  • Map zooms in much further, far enough to separate buildings on the old fire-insurance maps; names that would overlap hide until you zoom in.
  • Map: fixed a fault that stopped place clicks working after you measured a distance.
  • 14 places from the Castle Rock Sanborn maps (1890–1914); 29 farms and ranches from the county biographies of 1898–1919; the creameries on Frink's 1918 sketch; Gleneagle's ranch history.
  • Douglas County landmarks checked against the county's current list; the Converse Ranch and the Kleinert Homestead added.
  • Two cheese factories from the 1976 4-H map; John Irion's place mapped from his 1875 land patent; the Reynolds gang entry rewritten with all three accounts of 1864.
  • Place pages: titles that name Colorado, a plain opening sentence saying what and where each place is, an "Updated" date, and better information for search engines.

  • 12 places from three local books, among them Weinfeld and Howe's history of Monument's cemetery; Monument Cemetery placed from its 1886 deed; a new map layer of lines drawn from the local histories.
  • 15 places checked against Scott's trail maps and mapped, among them Old Elbert, Clemmons, Schley, Amo, Suffolk and Surber; six leave the unlocated list.
  • New map layer: 159 homesteaders from the 1976 4-H map of Cherry Valley and Spring Valley (off by default).

  • 108 places from the Douglas County Historic Resource Map, plus county landmark records and a layer of the county's historic roads, trails and ditches.
  • Monument on the 1895 and 1900 Sanborn fire-insurance maps: 22 buildings placed.
  • Newspaper sweeps for Black Forest, Greenland, Eastonville, Spring Valley, Table Rock and Husted; the Black Forest Fox Ranch traced from 1928 to 1949; the Divide Experiment Station placed.
  • Raids, refuges and killings: 12 places. Bijou Basin and the Holden ranch placed, with notes on Camp Evans (1864).
  • New landforms category (Monument Rock, Mount Herman, Dawson Butte and others), and Palmer's 1889 Pinery lands as a map overlay.
  • New pages: Research files (public-domain documents and maps, including the post office site reports), Local history (34 links to societies, museums, libraries and archives) and a history events calendar that refreshes itself each morning.
  • Map popups made shorter; the source lists stay on each place page. The contribute page now asks for family history, photographs, maps and documents.

  • Site opens: the research map, a page for every place and every type of place, and a contribution form.
  • First additions from post office site reports, the 1977 county survey report, early newspapers and the Palmer Lake Historical Society's newsletters (Keystone, Pring Station, Cascade Ice Lake, the Chautauqua grounds, the Little Log Church and others).
  • Every place lists its source numbers.