What we know
The largest fox farm in Colorado, and by 1948 'the largest fox ranch west of the Mississippi.' G. Frank Shelby, a Denver Episcopal layman who had been general secretary of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, left that post in 1928 to raise foxes and started the ranch that year in the southern end of the Black Forest, east of Monument (S-0140). D. E. (Dave) Gibbs was its foreman by 1929, when a $900 fox escaped from 'the Shelby fox farm in the Black forest' (S-0140), as Lucille Lavelett also recalled (S-0034). It was the sixth-largest silver fox farm in the country in 1937 and had about a thousand pairs of breeders and 4,600 foxes in 1938, with prize white-faced silvers. Shelby died on Dec. 21, 1938, hours after the ranch was put into federal trusteeship (S-0140). The stockholders reorganized it in 1941 as the Black Forest Fox Ranch, Inc., under C. L. Cole, a Denver broker; Melvin Dahl came as superintendent in 1941, and Arthur Patrick held the post in 1948, when 190 stockholders owned 2,400 animals on 1,240 acres with 14 cottages (S-0140). A 65-year-old hand's death after a roundup of escaped foxes in 1941 went to the Colorado Supreme Court (S-0138). With pelts down from $60 to $15, the stockholders voted in November 1948 to liquidate; the equipment was auctioned on Dec. 3, 1949, and the Colorado Baptist State Convention bought the land and buildings for $40,000, announced that November and closed on March 1, 1950, for its camp (S-0140, S-0136, S-0135). Fox Run Regional Park was later carved from the same land (S-0112). Judy von Ahlefeldt's 'Black Forest Silver Fox Ranch, owned by Dr. Frank Shelby' (S-0009, p. 92) is this ranch under a name the papers used in 1941; the 'Dr.' and her Ayer's Road location are not in the record, and the fox farm near Ayer Road was John Hanson's (S-0137). One 2026 article puts a 3,500-fox farm 'south of' Husted instead (S-0111); no Colorado newspaper places a fox farm at or near Husted (S-0146), though Lavelett does put a smaller one, the Laird and Scrivner fox farm, at West Husted (S-0013, p. 68; unlocated).
Where it was
The farm's buildings became the Baptist camp's (Castillo, S-0135), so the farmstead stood where the Black Forest Baptist Assembly point is; the 1949 auction notice puts the ranch '2½ miles south and 2½ miles east of Monument' (S-0140), and its land ran east to today's Fox Run Regional Park (S-0112; Rusk, S-0012 p. 66). Drawn a third of a mile east of the camp's point, toward Fox Run, so the two can be clicked separately. Good to about half a mile.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0009: Judy von Ahlefeldt, Thunder, Sun and Snow: The History of Colorado's Black Forest (Colorado Springs: Century One Press, a division of Graphic Services, Inc., 1979)
- S-0011: Lucille Lavelett, Through the Years at Monument, Colorado: The Story of Monument, Colorado, 5th printing (Palmer Lake: Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2004); first published Colorado Springs: Valliant Press, 1975
- S-0012: Vera Rusk Ellett, Growing Up in Black Forest ([Black Forest, Colo.]: the author, 1990)
- S-0013: Lucille Lavelett, Monument's Faded Neighboring Communities and Its Folklore: Pring, Husted, Gwillimville, Table Rock, Spring Valley, Greenland (Colorado Springs: printed by ABC Printing, 1979), 70, [40] p., illus., map, facsims.; page numbers cited are those of the third printing (Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2026), which is paged differently from the 1979 printing
- S-0034: Rob Carrigan's history posts on Colorado Restless Native (part of S-0001), read in full 2026-10-05
- S-0111: Linda Navarro, "Northern El Paso County has now-extinct early towns most people have never known about," The Gazette, Sept. 21, 2026; reprinted in The Tribune, Oct. 1, 2026, as "Now-extinct early towns most people have never known about"
- S-0112: Our Community News (ocn.me), Monument: items on the Chamber's meeting house (the Gwillimville schoolhouse)
- S-0114: Bill Eckert, "Sun Hills Neighborhood History," Sun Hills Association website (sunhillsestates.org), "History & Community Links" page; undated (after 2004)
- S-0135: Nita Adkins Castillo, "history of BFBA" (a short history of the Black Forest Baptist Assembly), about 2014
- S-0136: "Colorado Baptists Purchase Black Forest Ranch for Camp," Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, Nov. 26, 1949, p. 1
- S-0137: "Black Forest Ranch Buildings Leveled by Fire," Colorado Springs Free Press, Dec. 18, 1949, p. 1
- S-0138: Black Forest Fox Ranch, Inc. v. Garrett, 110 Colo. 323, 134 P.2d 332 (Colo. Feb. 1, 1943)
- S-0140: The Black Forest Fox Ranch in the Colorado newspapers, 1929–1952 (CHNC, 23 items)
- S-0146: Husted in the Colorado newspapers, 1870–1956: headline sweep (CHNC)
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.