What we know
The last homestead granted in Douglas County: 80 acres 'just north of Dawson Butte, between Castle Rock and Larkspur,' patented to Vera Burton in 1940. After 1930 only five homesteads were issued in the county, against about 1,000 before; Shaun Boyd's chapter cites the BLM land records for both figures (Weber and Schlupp, ch. 31, p. 173, S-0262). The patent is an original homestead entry under the act of May 20, 1862, issued through the Denver land office on April 26, 1940 (serial COD 0043549, accession SER-1108063; GLO, S-0080). The land lies about 0.7 mile north-northeast of the butte's summit. Nothing more about Vera Burton has been found yet.
Where it was
The 80 acres patented to Vera L. Burton: NE1/4 SW1/4 and NW1/4 SE1/4 of Sec. 31, T8S R67W (GLO homestead patent, April 26, 1940, doc. 043549, S-0080), centered on those two quarter-quarters (BLM PLSS, S-0120). It marks the land, not a house; good to about a furlong.
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0120: Bureau of Land Management, National Public Land Survey System (PLSS) data: CadNSDI section and quarter-section polygons, Colorado
- 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.