What we know
PO 1868-1883, mail to Elizabeth; Middle Kiowa's office in the 1875-77 directories. The 1868 post road ran 'from Frankstown to the Bijou Basin … to Running Creek and thence to Kiowa and Bijou Basin' (Colorado Tribune, May 14, 1868). Sawmills on Running Creek: M. M. DeLano's (1865) and the Webbers' (1868). The 'Ruthton' variant is doubtful: in 1865 Ruthton was a Smoky Hill stage station in Kansas.
Where it was
'Running Creek Station 1871 or Ruthton Home Station, P.O. 1868-83': Scott, Historic Trail Map of the Denver 1x2 Quadrangle (USGS I-2639, 1999, S-0106), symbol read from the reprojected sheet good to a few hundred feet). Sec. 31, T7S R64W, on Running Creek at the south edge of today's Elizabeth. Crofutt: 'on Box Creek … fifteen miles east from Castle Rock'; Scott labels the stream 'Running (Box Elder Creek) Creek', and this point is 13.5 miles east of Castle Rock.
Read from Glenn R. Scott's USGS historic trail map of 1999 and confirmed by a second, independent source.
Sources
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.