Colonel and Mrs. Ford's home, Monument (about 1875), El Paso County, Colorado

Colonel and Mrs. Ford's home, Monument (about 1875)

Colonel and Mrs. Ford's home, Monument (about 1875) is a place still there today in El Paso County, Colorado, on the Palmer Divide, listed here under historic homes and cabins.

What we know

Home of about 1875 of Colonel and Mrs. Ford, a Civil War veteran and his wife from Maine (PLHS walking tour, S-0235). The Fords owned and ran the Monument Hotel, where Mrs. Ford kept the dining room (Lavelett, S-0011, pp. 38-39; mapped). Col. F. R. Ford's 1899 biography, written after his death, gives no war service: born in Sumner, Maine, in 1819, he mined in California from 1850 to 1855, kept a hotel in Kansas, and from 1859 mined in Gilpin County, organizing mining companies in the 1860s; he died in Denver on Dec. 26, 1883 and is buried at Riverside Cemetery, his widow 'comfortably fixed at Monument' and their son register of the U.S. Land Office at Denver (PBR 1899, p. 1135, S-0192; repeated by McGrath, S-0200). So the walking tour's 'Civil War veteran' is the outlier, and the title 'Colonel' is unexplained.

Where it was

175 Second Street (PLHS walking tour, S-0235), El Paso County address point (EPCPortalLocator2026, 2026-10-14), on the house at that address in OpenStreetMap. Good to about 30 feet.

A street address, located with the county's address points.

See it on the map

Sources

S-0002: Palmer Lake Historical Society website (palmerdividehistory.org)
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-0103: OpenStreetMap extracts via the Overpass API (2026-10-05)
S-0104: El Paso County GIS: address locators and parcels
S-0192: Portrait and Biographical Record of the State of Colorado (Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1899)
S-0200: Maria Davies McGrath, The Real Pioneers of Colorado, vols. 1-3 (Denver: Denver Museum, 1934; CWA Project No. 551), as retyped for the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department by Jane P. Ohl, October 2001
S-0235: Palmer Lake Historical Society, "Palmer Lake Walking Tour" and "Monument Walking Tour" web pages (palmerdividehistory.org, about 2020-2023; removed; Internet Archive captures)

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.

Know more about Colonel and Mrs. Ford's home, Monument (about 1875)?

Corrections, family stories, photographs, deeds, letters and maps are all welcome. Messages and files come to Michael Christensen privately; nothing appears on the site until it has been checked, and you'll be credited the way you ask.