Freedom School

What we know

Named on the county map without a description (S-0123). Robert LeFevre, then a Gazette-Telegraph editorial writer, founded the Freedom School at Larkspur in 1956 and added Rampart College, an unaccredited four-year school, on the same campus in 1963, with its Pine Tree Press; a flood in 1965 devastated the campus (Wikipedia, 'Robert LeFevre,' rev. of Oct. 1, 2026, S-0048). The article says both that the school moved to Santa Ana, California, after the flood and that LeFevre ran it in Larkspur until 1973; PPLD's clipping file tags the Freedom School with a flood. The county's landmark page (designated March 24, 2015) says LeFevre established the school in 1955, it 'officially opened on June 3, 1957' with four students, and by late 1963 it was renamed Rampart College; 13 rustic stone-and-log buildings contribute (S-0126).

Where it was

Pin on the Douglas County Historic Resource Map (DCHR-047; 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.

See it on the map

Sources

• S-0017: Pikes Peak Library District, Regional History & Genealogy
• 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-0048: Wikipedia: "List of ghost towns in Colorado," the populated-places lists by county, county articles, and articles on vanished places
• 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.