What we know
Henry B. Walker's family was burned out north of Monument in the September 1868 raid and 'built their home at Husted in 1869. The location of the house was where the east and west road enters the Air Force Academy' (Lavelett, S-0013, p. 65); the Sun Hills essay says 'roughly at the North Gate' (S-0114). His son James B. Walker's 1918 sketch: after the raid the father 'bought a relinquishment of a Mr. Cousins and thus came into possession of a ranch, six miles south of Monument, whereon he resided until 1907', then moved to Colorado Springs and died in Denver in 1914 (Stone, S-0193, vol. 4 p. 173). Walker proved up this homestead in 1876 and bought more by cash entry: 202 acres in Secs. 31, 32 and 5 in 1884, in what is now the southeast part of Gleneagle, and 120 acres in Secs. 11 and 12 in 1888 (S-0080). Carlton B. Cozens homesteaded next to the 1884 tracts in 1880, and Clark Z. Cozens a mile west in 1873, so 'Mr. Cousins' may be a Cozens. See also 'Henry Walker's house burned (Sept. 1868)'.
Where it was
Henry B. Walker's homestead patent of May 15, 1876: E1/2 NE (the serial card: NE NE and S1/2 NE), SW NE and SE NW of Sec. 12, T12S R67W (BLM GLO, S-0080); the center of those tracts on the BLM PLSS grid, at today's North Gate of the Air Force Academy, where Lavelett puts the house. Good to about a quarter mile for the land; the house site is not marked.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- 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-0013: Lucille Lavelett, Monument's Faded Neighboring Communities and Its Folklore: Pring, Husted, Gwillimville, Table Rock, Spring Valley, Greenland (Colorado Springs: printed by ABC Printing, 1979), 70, [40] p., illus., map, facsims.; page numbers cited are those of the third printing (Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2026), which is paged differently from the 1979 printing
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0114: Bill Eckert, "Sun Hills Neighborhood History," Sun Hills Association website (sunhillsestates.org), "History & Community Links" page; undated (after 2004)
- S-0120: Bureau of Land Management, National Public Land Survey System (PLSS) data: CadNSDI section and quarter-section polygons, Colorado
- S-0193: History of Colorado, illustrated, vols. 2-4, biographical (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1918 [vols. 2-3] and 1919 [vol. 4]), the set edited by Wilbur Fisk Stone
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.