What we know
John Hanson's fox farm, with about 75 fox kennels in 1949. On the evening of Dec. 17, 1949, a fire of undetermined origin destroyed its garage and four-room frame cottage. Robert Ayers and his daughter Persis saw it as they drove past and turned in the alarm at the Black Forest Store; trucks came from the county, the Black Forest community and the U.S. Forest Service, and residents from a Christmas program at the community center stood watch all night to keep it out of the forest. The pens were untouched, and 1,100 pounds of feed and 27 fox skins were saved (Free Press, Dec. 18, 1949, p. 1, S-0137). Probably the farm Vera Rusk Ellett places 'over near Ayers' (S-0012, p. 66) and the one von Ahlefeldt puts 'on Ayer's Road' under Dr. Frank Shelby's name (S-0009, p. 92).
Where it was
'One mile south and four miles east of the Black Forest Store' (Colorado Springs Free Press, Dec. 18, 1949, S-0137), measured from the store at the Shoup-Black Forest crossroads; the point falls about half a mile south of the west end of today's Ayer Road. Whether the miles are by road or straight is not stated. 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-0012: Vera Rusk Ellett, Growing Up in Black Forest ([Black Forest, Colo.]: the author, 1990)
- S-0137: "Black Forest Ranch Buildings Leveled by Fire," Colorado Springs Free Press, Dec. 18, 1949, p. 1
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.