# Welty ranches and stone fort (1868)

- URL: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/welty-ranches-and-stone-fort-1868/
- Also known as: the Welty fort
- Kind: Forts, raids and the Indian wars
- Status: Historic or vanished
- County: El Paso County, Colorado
- Point: 39.0569, -104.8738 (from a cited description (good to a mile))

- Updated: 2026-10-21

## What we know

One of the two stone refuges near Monument in the 1868 raids: 'nine families lived in the Welty fort for six weeks, while seven other families lived in the nearby Welty house' (Carl Mathews, Douglas County News, March 13, 1958, S-0079); the families 'forted up' at 'the McShane and Welty ranches where small stone forts had been built for protection' (von Ahlefeldt p. 23, S-0009). Alonzo and Levi Welty had settled near Monument in 1861 (Mathews). J. C. Kinner's family essay has the Roberts family, 'about three miles below Monument,' fleeing a war party in 1867 to 'the Welty home, a mile above on the same creek,' about two miles below Monument, which fits these patents (Larkspur Historical Society binder 1 p. 165); a 1956 reminiscence instead calls the old stone fort on the Teachout Ranch near Edgerton 'the old Welty place' (News, Feb. 19, 1956), about five miles farther south. The McShane fort is mapped separately. Lavelett's 1979 book puts the fort with Levi Welty: the Roberts family, on their homestead three and a half miles south of Monument, went to 'Levi Welty's fort, three quarters of a mile west' (S-0013, pp. 32-33); Levi Welty's own patents (Secs. 34-35) center about 0.35 mile from this point, but Kinner has the Welty home 'a mile above' the Roberts place, so the point stays at the center of the family's land. Frank Welty's 1899 sketch: in spring 1866 the family settled 'two miles south of Monument', 'the fifth family to locate in that section', ranching with his brothers George and Alonzo; Alonzo's sketch says Levi Welty settled near Monument that spring and that Alonzo later ran a sawmill on the ranch (PBR 1899, S-0192, pp. 1037, 1107). The family's Welty Ditch took water from Beaver Creek at a headgate in the SW1/4 SW1/4 of Sec. 28, T11S R67W, just west of these patents, under a right appropriated June 1, 1867 and decreed for irrigation on March 6, 1882; the right was later moved to a new point in the NE1/4 NE1/4 of Sec. 34, among the Welty land (Colorado Division of Water Resources, WDID 1000524 and 1000738, cases CA0751 and W4218; S-0252). So the Weltys were irrigating on Beaver Creek a year before the 1868 raids. In 1940 the Monument Nursery considered buying the appropriation, then held by Duncan and Thomas, for a waterworks (Edwards, S-0250, p. 177). Alonzo Welty's 1899 sketch has his father, Levi, coming to Colorado in the spring of 1861, to Summit County, and settling on the ranch near Monument in the spring of 1866 (PBR 1899, pp. 1036-1037, S-0192; repeated by McGrath, S-0200, who has February 1861). With Frank's sketch, two accounts give 1866 for the Monument ranch, and Mathews's 1861 is probably the year Levi reached Colorado.

## Where it was

Center of the Welty family's land patents of 1871-76 in Secs. 27, 34 and 35, T11S R67W (George A. Welty, Sec. 27 SE, 1871; J. Franklin Welty, Sec. 27 SW, 1873; Levi Welty, Sec. 35 N1/2 NW and SW NW, 1871, and Sec. 34 NE, 1876; BLM GLO, read 2026-10-07), 2.4 miles south of Monument. Which tract held the fort is not stated. Good to about a mile.

Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.

## Sources

- S-0005: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0005
- S-0009: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0009
- S-0013: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0013
- S-0016: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0016
- S-0079: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0079
- S-0080: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0080
- S-0192: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0192
- S-0200: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0200
- S-0250: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0250
- S-0252: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0252

## Nearby

- [Pring](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/pring/): 0.8 mi east
- [Borst](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/borst/): 0.9 mi northeast
- [National Carvers Museum](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/national-carvers-museum/): 1.1 mi southeast
- [Beaver Creek Ranch (the Waldon ranch)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/beaver-creek-ranch-the-waldon-ranch/): 1.5 mi west
- [Dirty Woman's Ranch (by 1861)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/dirty-womans-ranch-by-1861/): 1.9 mi north
- [Agnew's sawmill](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/agnews-sawmill/): 1.9 mi southeast

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