What we know
Frederick Bartruff filed on this land in 1867, built a 14-by-18-foot log house and fenced 60 acres. After his death in 1875 his widow Barbara married John Bihlmeyer, who owned the adjoining land; the ranch stayed in the family until the 1930s. Now Douglas County open space (county map, S-0123, citing Appleby). The county's landmark page (2000) says the Bartruffs homesteaded here in 1873, not 1867 (S-0126); a GLO patent would settle it.
Where it was
Pin on the Douglas County Historic Resource Map (DCHR-022; Douglas County and Douglas County Libraries, 2012, on the Larkspur Historical Society's Google map, S-0123). Where that map and ours place the same site, the pins mostly fall within about 300 feet. Good to a few hundred feet.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0045: Larkspur Historical Society website (larkspurhistoricalsociety.org)
- S-0046: Douglas County Libraries, Archives & Local History: "Douglas County Timeline," "Douglas County Historic Sites," "Douglas County Schools Overview" (research collection PDFs 2, 7, 6)
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0123: Douglas County Historic Resource Map (Douglas County Community Planning and Sustainable Development, the Douglas County History Research Center of Douglas County Libraries, and the Douglas County Historic Preservation Board, 2012), as put on Google Maps and Google Earth by the Larkspur Historical Society
- S-0126: Douglas County Historic Preservation Board and Landmarks Program: landmark pages (2010-2022), board minutes and documents, the 2009 landmarks map and the 2010 Historic Resources map PDF (douglas.co.us, via the Wayback Machine)
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.