What we know
A large jack-pine log house with a story told by the Black Forest News in 1960, not yet checked against other sources: built by a woman spiritualist who held seances, then used by a bootlegger with a still, who traded it to Rev. and Mrs. E. D. Hageman just ahead of the law. In the 1930s it was the meeting place of the Seth Parker meetings, when the Forest had no church, and of summer Christian Endeavor gatherings, with a bunkhouse out back; Hageman preached in the schoolhouse. Hageman recalled the Decoration Day storm of 1935, when hail lay seven inches deep and a wall of water 70 feet wide came down the ravine beside the house; the paper adds that the creek was called Kettle Creek because settlers traded copper kettles to Indians camped there, a story it gives without a source (S-0141). Mrs. Hageman wrote the 'Black Forest Gazoottee,' a mimeographed weekly of Forest news from 1934 through World War II, and mailed 80 copies a week to servicemen overseas (Black Forest News, April 1, 1960, S-0141).
Where it was
'At the junction of Brentwood Dr. and Pinery Rd., stands a large log house' (Black Forest News, May 13, 1960, S-0141); placed where Brentwood Drive meets today's Pinery Drive in OpenStreetMap. 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-0103: OpenStreetMap extracts via the Overpass API (2026-10-05)
- S-0141: Black Forest in the Colorado newspapers, 1871–1965: headline sweep (CHNC)
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.