What we know
Edward Kreutzer homesteaded here from 1878; he helped found the first Douglas County High School and was Sedalia's justice of the peace. His son William Kreutzer became the first U.S. forest ranger in 1898, the only one in Colorado then, and served 41 years; a 13,120-foot peak in the Gunnison National Forest bears his name. A 1908 house on 480 acres; a source of Indian Creek rises here. County landmark, 2000 (county map, S-0123). The Castle Rock Writers' book has Bill Kreutzer riding to Denver on Aug. 8, 1899, aged 20, being told by Col. W. T. May to start at once, and patrolling 300,000 acres of the Plum Creek Forest Reserve for $50 a month (S-0261, p. 115); its own count of 41 years to his retirement in 1939 points to 1898, and Jack's 1898 survey gives the reserve 179,200 acres (S-0180). Weber and Schlupp's county history puts the appointment on Aug. 8, 1898, the day Col. W. T. S. May became forestry superintendent for the Colorado reserves, and has Kreutzer working on the H. H. Metcalf ranch at the time (ch. 30, Johnson, p. 167; S-0262); 1898 is followed.
Where it was
On the fringe of the Divide outline (3.9 miles outside its edge), included as a fringe place. Pin on the Douglas County Historic Resource Map (DCHR-013; 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-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)
- S-0180: John G. Jack, "Pikes Peak, Plum Creek, and South Platte Reserves," in Twentieth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, Part V, Forest Reserves (Washington: GPO, 1900), pp. 39–115, with Plates VIII (density of forests), IX (range of principal timber trees) and X (burned areas), all dated 1898
- S-0261: Castle Rock Writers, Douglas County (Images of America; Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2017; introduction by Shaun Boyd; ISBN 978-1-4671-2652-6)
- S-0262: Tim Weber and Larry Schlupp, eds., Douglas County, Colorado: Prehistory to 2020 (Castle Rock: Historic Douglas County, Inc., 2022; first edition, printed by Amazon)
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.