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).
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: Larkspur Historical Society, "Historical Site Survey Binders"
- S-0009: Judy von Ahlefeldt, Thunder, Sun and Snow: The History of Colorado's Black Forest (Colorado Springs: Century One Press, a division of Graphic Services, Inc., 1979)
- S-0013: Lucille Lavelett, Monument's Faded Neighboring Communities and Its Folklore: Pring, Husted, Gwillimville, Table Rock, Spring Valley, Greenland (Colorado Springs: printed by ABC Printing, 1979), 70, [40] p., illus., map, facsims.; page numbers cited are those of the third printing (Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2026), which is paged differently from the 1979 printing
- S-0016: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)
- S-0079: Carl F. Mathews's divide histories in the Douglas County News and Palmer Lake-Monument News, 1958–1970 (via S-0016)
- S-0080: General Land Office land patents, Bureau of Land Management (glorecords.blm.gov)
- S-0192: Portrait and Biographical Record of the State of Colorado (Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1899)
- S-0250: Daniel W. Edwards, The U.S. Forest Service Monument Nursery, 1907-1965: Raising Millions of Trees for Planting in the Rocky Mountain West (Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2024; ISBN 978-0-9755989-4-8 soft cover, 978-0-9755989-3-1 hard cover)
- S-0252: Colorado Division of Water Resources, Colorado's Decision Support Systems (HydroBase): structures and water rights, REST API (dwr.state.co.us/Rest/GET/api/v2), queried 2026-10-17
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.