Palmer Divide Research

Pettigrew Ranch

Ranches and homesteadsHistoric or vanishedEl Paso County

What we know

Joe (J. J.) Pettigrew's ranch, taken up in 1870: von Ahlefeldt has him coming from New York City that year, and Lavelett has his friend Patrick Murphy, already homesteading nearby, walk to Fort Bent to bring him (S-0009 pp. 26-27; S-0011 pp. 96-97). The library's record dates it to 1869 as a joint Murphy-Pettigrew homestead, the outlier; Murphy's own place is mapped separately. The survey found log cabins and a two-story house of about 1880, and a one-room schoolhouse that may have served Gwillimville (PPLD records of survey B35). In 1979 his Victorian ranch house, with a winding mahogany staircase, stood boarded up along Highway 83 'about a mile south of Pat Murphy's homestead', with a 'hanging tree' on the ranch. He gave the land for the Gwillimville church of 1893 (von Ahlefeldt pp. 26-27, 45).

Where it was

'Three miles south of East Palmer Divide Avenue along Highway 83' (PPLD records of survey photos B35), measured along Highway 83 in OpenStreetMap; the 1987 Black Forest Preservation Plan's Map 2 No. 3 sits at the same point. Side of the road assumed. 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.

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 Pettigrew Ranch?

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.