What we know
Newton S. Grout, who built the first Lone Tree school and St. Philip's church in 1872, settled on Jackson Creek in 1873 and bought this land from the government in 1874. In 1894 the Castle Rock Journal described his home 'on Jackson creek almost under the shadows of the mountains,' with an orchard, a large garden and small fruits. His father, Robert Clark Grout, who lived with him, built a telescope with clockwork to hold it on a chosen star or planet and a house for it whose roof could be swung aside; he died at the ranch on June 2, 1899. Newton Grout died there of pneumonia on Jan. 14, 1901. His daughter Margie and her husband, Herb Stewart, ran the ranch until March 1915; it was sold that year, and the stock and equipment at the Grout Ranch went at auction in February 1916 (Castle Rock Journal and Record Journal items and Stewart family histories, in the Larkspur Historical Society's files, S-0199).
Where it was
The common corner of the four forties in Newton S. Grout's 160-acre cash-entry patent of July 15, 1874: SE1/4 SE1/4 Sec. 21, SW1/4 SW1/4 Sec. 22, NW1/4 NW1/4 Sec. 27 and NE1/4 NE1/4 Sec. 28, T8S R68W (BLM GLO record, in the Larkspur Historical Society's files, S-0199), on the BLM PLSS grid. It marks the land, not the house. OpenStreetMap's Jackson Creek is 0.3 mile from the corner (S-0103), and a 1916 sale notice's 'eight miles southwest of Sedalia' checks at 7.5 miles. Good to about a quarter mile.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0016: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)
- S-0045: Larkspur Historical Society website (larkspurhistoricalsociety.org)
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0103: OpenStreetMap extracts via the Overpass API (2026-10-05)
- S-0120: Bureau of Land Management, National Public Land Survey System (PLSS) data: CadNSDI section and quarter-section polygons, Colorado
- S-0199: Larkspur Historical Society, the document store behind its "LHS Search Agent" (larkspurhistoricalsociety.org/resources/lhs-search-agents/): 362 files, about 810 MB, uploaded April–June 2026
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.