Palmer Divide Research

Casteel cabin and store

Stores, hotels and other businesses before 1950Historic or vanishedEl Paso County

What we know

Two-story log cabin with a stable and a large log building that PPLD's cataloger calls 'likely a former store' (survey B24, summer 1976; the 1987 Black Forest Preservation Plan's Map 2 No. 14). Phoebe Casteel, wife of a Brentwood employee, ran a store and restaurant in her large cabin from 1925 (von Ahlefeldt p. 96, who puts it 'just south of the Black Forest intersection'). Ellett (p. 7) puts her store 'a quarter of a mile north of Shoup Road on Black Forest Road', as the survey address does: an unlocked cabin store ('help yourself, but close the door'), Sunday chicken dinners for twenty, and boarders in her eight-room house. Her daughter Beth Cadle was one of von Ahlefeldt's sources.

Where it was

12845 Black Forest Road (PPLD records of survey photos B24), El Paso County address point (county locator, 2026-10-05).

A street address, located with the county's address points.

See it on the map

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.

Know more about Casteel cabin and store?

Corrections, family stories, photographs, deeds, letters and maps are all welcome. Messages and files come to Michael Christensen privately; nothing appears on the site until it has been checked, and you'll be credited the way you ask.