# Pettigrew Ranch

- URL: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/pettigrew-ranch/

- Kind: Ranches and homesteads
- Status: Historic or vanished
- County: El Paso County, Colorado
- Point: 39.087, -104.7712 (from a cited description (good to a quarter mile))

- Updated: 2026-10-06

## What we know

Joe (J. J.) Pettigrew's ranch, taken up in 1870: von Ahlefeldt has him coming from New York City that year, and Lavelett has his friend Patrick Murphy, already homesteading nearby, walk to Fort Bent to bring him (S-0009 pp. 26-27; S-0011 pp. 96-97). The library's record dates it to 1869 as a joint Murphy-Pettigrew homestead, the outlier; Murphy's own place is mapped separately. The survey found log cabins and a two-story house of about 1880, and a one-room schoolhouse that may have served Gwillimville (PPLD records of survey B35). In 1979 his Victorian ranch house, with a winding mahogany staircase, stood boarded up along Highway 83 'about a mile south of Pat Murphy's homestead', with a 'hanging tree' on the ranch. He gave the land for the Gwillimville church of 1893 (von Ahlefeldt pp. 26-27, 45).

## Where it was

'Three miles south of East Palmer Divide Avenue along Highway 83' (PPLD records of survey photos B35), measured along Highway 83 in OpenStreetMap; the 1987 Black Forest Preservation Plan's Map 2 No. 3 sits at the same point. Side of the road assumed. 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.

## Nearby

- [Gwillimville](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/gwillimville/): 0.9 mi north
- [Gwillimville church site (1893)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/gwillimville-church-site-1893/): 1.0 mi north
- [Pat Murphy homestead](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/pat-murphy-homestead/): 1.0 mi north
- [William Brown fox farm](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/william-brown-fox-farm/): 2.0 mi southwest
- [Steppler potato cellar](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/steppler-potato-cellar/): 2.0 mi east
- [Black Forest Baptist Assembly](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/black-forest-baptist-assembly/): 2.5 mi southwest

Source numbers (S-0000) refer to https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/. Compiled by Michael Christensen for Palmer Divide Research; CC BY 4.0.