What we know
Peter Brennan (also Brannen, Brannan, Branon), an Irishman, settled in 1860 on the north side of Perry Park, 'which was then called Pleasant Park,' about three and a half miles from Fort Washington at Ben Quick's; the place was later called the Ford Ranch. The Dakan family's 1870 homestead on Dry Creek adjoined it, with George Dakan's on Spring Creek between them (Albert Dakan, 1940). Brennan married the widowed mother of Priscilla Allafar and King David Swinney in Denver and brought the family here on May 23, 1868, and in 1875 a school term was held in his house (Priscilla Swinney's memoir) (Larkspur Historical Society files, S-0199). In 1874 the Rocky Mountain News put 'Peter Brannan, three miles from Glen Grove and eight miles west of Larkspur,' with 720 acres under fence, 30 cultivated, and some of the finest of Pleasant Park's sandstone formations on his land, and placed C. W. Perry's ranch between Brannon's on the north and J. A. Kountz's on the south (Aug. 4, 1874; S-0094). Clara McClure Turner, whose grandfather Swinney was Brennan's stepson, said in 1995 that 'old Pete Brennan' homesteaded the Ford place; that because he 'couldn't read nor write' the Catholic sisters who nursed him got it; that it 'couldn't be sold until Mrs. Ford died, and she lived to be over 100'; and that she and Wallace Turner then bought it, in 1946. They lived ten years in its log house, which still stood in 1995, hauled milk three or four miles out to the road for the milk truck, wintered cattle in a natural rock corral, and later sold the mountain pasture to Colorado Western Development for Perry Park (DCL oral history doh/1067, S-0213). The Douglas County Libraries' record of the Turners' 1993 interview places 'the Ford Place' in Monument, which the 1995 account shows is a mistake.
Where it was
Peter Brennan's patent of Oct. 30, 1874, for the S1/2 SW of Sec. 3, T9S R68W, the only one in his name (BLM GLO, S-0080); the center of that tract on the BLM PLSS grid (S-0120). In 1874 he had 720 acres under fence (S-0094), so the ranch spread well beyond it. The tract is about two and a half miles north of Perry Park and 2.8 miles from Fort Washington, against 'about three and a half miles' in the family's account. 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-0016: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)
- 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-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0094: Pleasant Park, Perry Park and Glen Grove in the newspapers, 1870–1900 (via S-0016)
- 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
- S-0213: Douglas County Libraries, Archives & Local History, digital archive (archives.dcl.org, CONTENTdm cdm17197): item records of all 15 collections
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.