What we know
Easton's post office before the railroad, probably the office reopened June 24, 1874: the 1872 application puts the first office at Weir's Mill, nearly a mile southwest (NARA M1126, S-0113). It moved to the McConnellsville station in 1882 and was renamed Eastonville in 1883. Goodrich's section also holds the Eastonville cemetery, and Richard Ayer's land lies 1.05 miles south, as Hobbs's 'one mile north and east of the Ayer Ranch' requires. 1870s distances (18, 19 and 20 miles northeast of Colorado Springs) fit: this point is 17.5 miles straight-line from downtown.
Where it was
Jonathan Goodrich's patented land (Dec. 5, 1884), Sec. 7, T12S R64W: W1/2 NW, NE NW, NW SW. Hobbs (1950) put Easton 'on Jonathan Goodrich's place'. Center of those forties; 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-0054: Chas. M. Hobbs, "History of Eastonville, Colorado," The Colorado Magazine 27, no. 3 (July 1950), pp. 208–211
- S-0064: Wikipedia, "List of post offices in Colorado" (A–F, G–O, P–Z) and town articles
- S-0065: Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies, Place Names of Colorado (1999), PDF hosted by the Denver Public Library
- S-0066: Jim Forte Postal History, U.S. post office database (postalhistory.com)
- S-0069: COGenWeb El Paso County community lists and Lincoln County history
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0113: U.S. Post Office Department, Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950 (NARA microfilm M1126), Colorado rolls 73 and 74: Douglas, Elbert and El Paso counties
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.