What we know
George Engl filed for a homestead in Lake Gulch in 1865 (the Centennial Farm listing dates the family to 1860). The Castlewood reservoir of 1889-90 flooded part of the ranch until the dam broke in 1933. His widow, Louisa Roacher Engl, ran it after him, then her nephew Josef Winkler, who raised Shorthorns. Colorado Centennial Farm, 2000 (county map, S-0123). The 1864 cattle hunt that killed Conrad Moschel was after Engl's cattle. The 2000 Centennial Farm award recognized a two-story log barn and two cabins of about 1860 and a stone shed and barn of the 1890s; Louisa Engl built the ranch to 5,000 acres (S-0128).
Where it was
Pin on the Douglas County Historic Resource Map (DCHR-041; 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-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-0128: Colorado Historical Society, Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, Colorado Centennial Farms list (2010) and award texts
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.