The Boettcher Mansion on Lookout Mountain, Colorado

I'm sharing some places I visited this past summer that I did not have an opportunity to blog about,  while I am recovering from foot surgery.

Charles Boettcher (1852–1948) was one of Colorado’s most important early businessmen and philanthropists.  He owned many lucrative businesses, one of which was a cement company. He donated cement to a businessman building a road to the top of a prominent foothill west of Golden, Colorado, known as Lookout Mountain. When the property on top of the mountain became available Boettcher bought sixty-two acres and built Lorraine Lodge, now known as Boettcher Mansion, in 1917 as a summer retreat. It stands as a particularly elaborate example of the rustic foothills lodges that were popular among wealthy Denverites in the early twentieth century. (All photos in this post will enlarge if clicked on.)

Boettcher hired a popular architectural firm of the time; known as Fisher and Fisher, who designed many buildings in Denver. For “Lorraine Lodge,” the Fishers used local harvested stone and wood from the site to construct the massive retreat.  The estate, which included the main residence, carriage house, gazebo, and well house, emphasized traditional Arts and Crafts craftsmanship in its design. Large east-facing windows allowed Boettcher to take in the view of Denver, and rooms at the lodge could accommodate fifteen to twenty guests.

The grounds around the mansion are beautifully landscaped, both in the rear...

....and front.

Since the mansion was completed in 1917, many pine trees have grown and have obscured the view of Denver, but have added to the beauty of the location.

 Please click to enlarge--photos of Charles Boettcher and his granddaughter Charline Humphreys Breeden.

After Boettcher and his wife, Fannie, officially separated in 1920, the property became Boettcher’s personal retreat and for the next three decades, he stayed at the lodge each year from June to September, using it as a base for hunting and entertaining. Upon Boettcher’s death in 1948, the estate passed to his granddaughter, Charline Humphreys Breeden. Breeden raised her family at the lodge before making plans in the late 1960s to donate the house and surrounding grounds to Jefferson County for public use. When she died in 1972, the 110-acre property officially became county land.

Jefferson County built a nature trail on the grounds and opened the lodge to the public in 1975 as a combined conference and nature center. In the 1980s the entire property was managed by Jefferson County’s Open Space program, but in 1989 Lorraine Lodge was renamed Boettcher Mansion and became its own entity within the Jefferson County Parks Department. These changes were intended to help differentiate the mansion, which had become a popular conference and wedding venue, from the Lookout Mountain Nature Center, which moved into a new building on the property in the 1990s.

In the collage above you can see, what was know as the Fireside Room (left) in the mansion, is now a large banquet room that can accommodate 200 people.  Boettcher Mansion has become a popular wedding venue site

The Boettcher Mansion retains some of the original Stickley classic furnishings.

Many rooms inside the mansion can be used as meeting rooms for conferences...

...and there is also an up to date, state of the art kitchen inside for catering purposes.

There is also a gift shop in the mansion as well as many interesting framed historical photos, period newspaper clippings, and information in the hallways. In the upper right on the collage above, you can see a photo of Chief Colorow. He often roamed this part of Colorado and liked to camp on Lookout Mountain.  You can read more about him on this blog post--click here.

Boettcher Mansion and the Lookout Mountain Nature Center continue to share the open-space park at the top of the mountain, which has grown from Boettcher’s original 62-acre purchase to the 134-acre Lookout Mountain Nature Preserve.  

I really enjoyed my visit to Boettcher Mansion and learning more about its history, and I hope you did too!

Further information:

The Boettcher Mansion

900 Colorow Road

Golden, 80401

Phone: 720-497-7630

Hours

Monday - Friday

8 a.m. - 4 p.m.

(Nights, weekends, and holidays by

appointment or reservation.)

PS: I am reaching the end of my foot surgery recovery and hope to be back to wearing shoes again soon, and be able to get back to a normal schedule. We have so many wonderful places to hike in Colorado and I'm looking forward to being able to walk well again. I really hope this surgery will help to make hiking comfortable for me. Thanks for all your good wishes!

You can also find me on 

Instagram Twitter Facebook 
Pinterest

I'm linking this post to the following blog events:

Amaze Me Monday, Mosaic Monday, All Seasons, Blue Monday,  Through My Lens Monday, Inspiration Monday, Blogging Grandmothers, Hearth, and Soul Link Party, You Are the Star Blog Hop, Good Random Fun, Nature Notes, Grand Social, Travel Photos, Photo Tunes, Happiness Is Homemade, Tuesday Treasures, Pictorial Tuesday, Our World Tuesday, Ruby Tuesday, Tuesdays With A Twist, Party in Your PJ's, Wordless Wednesday, Nanahood WW, Oh My Heartsie Girl's Wonderful Wednesday, Outdoor Wednesday,  Your Whims Wednesday, Wednesday Around the World, Wonderful Wednesday,  Little Things Thursday,Thankful Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things, Thursday Traffic Jam Weekend Linky, Pretty Pintastic Party, Friendship Fridays, Friday Photo Journal, Skywatch Friday, Sweet Inspiration, Pink Saturday, Saturday Critters, Over the Moon, Happiness Is Homemade, Wandering Camera (monthly-last Thursday of the month)

Bradford Perley House

This is a pioneer's tale...In my last blog post--click here--I discussed one of the Native Americans who lived and frequently traveled through the community where I live in Colorado. Before gold was discovered in California in 1848, most of the western territories, including Colorado, were inhabited mainly by indigenous people, fur trappers and settlers of Spanish and Mexican descent.  The California Gold Rush brought the greatest mass migration of people to the western part of the country. By the mid-1850s over 300,000 new people were in California, including immigrants from South America, China, Australia, and Europe. The Colorado Gold Rush, which began a decade after in 1859, brought over 100,000 people to Colorado. One of them was Robert Boyles Bradford.

Bradford was born in Davison County, Tennessee in 1813.  He joined with Russell, Majors, and Waddell (founders of the Pony Express) to form an overland transportation company. Bradford went on to Denver in 1859 to set up a store for the supplies which the company would transport by stagecoach. He then set up the Bradford Wagon Toll Road to convey miners and settlers from Denver, first to "Bradford City" and then into the foothills to what is present-day Conifer and into the mining camps in the mountains, to Tarryall, Fairplay, Leadville and eventually to Breckenridge.

These are the ruins of the original house that Bradford built in 1860 on land he obtained along the foothills of the front range, where he had hoped to establish his "Bradford City."   Bradford left the Russell, Majors and Waddell partnership in 1861, and lived full time in his stone cabin, where he raised cattle and turnips, potatoes, apples, and peaches.  Settlers also used the broad valley in this location to rest and water their livestock before heading up the rest of Bradford Wagon Toll Road into the mountains.

 The Name "Bradford" is carved into the original house lintel, facing west toward the foothills.

In 1872 Bradford added on to the house, with a larger eastern entrance, and patterned it after a southern-style mansion. It featured eighteen-inch walls made from locally quarried hand cut sandstones and had board floors and a shingled roof.

In 1863, Colonel John M. Chivington used the Bradford house to recruit soldiers during the Civil War. Colonel Chivington was later involved with the Sand Creek Massacre, which I blogged about previously--click here--to read that post.

Some of the apple trees that were noted on a Homestead Act application Bradford made in 1870, are still standing and still produce fruit! 

They are Ben Davis variety, heirloom series.  

An early photo of the addition to the Bradford -Perley House. 

In 1867, Bradford married his third wife, Fannie E. Miller. His previous two wives had passed away before he left Tennessee. Travelers abandoned the Bradford Wagon Toll Road after a newer, more direct route to the mines was built through Turkey Creek Canyon in 1867.  Despite this economic misfortune, Bradford remained in his house until his death on December 29, 1876. Fannie gave up the ranch in 1878.

James Adams Perley purchased the property in 1895. He was a direct descendant of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Perley was a dairy farmer from Vermont, who came west with the gold rush. He eventually returned to dairy farming, when he bought the Bradford property. Perley died in 1926 when the house was then sold to John C. Shaffer, who already owned some of the surrounding lands.

The great=great granddaughter of James Adams Perley can be heard on this short YouTube video talking about her memories of her family.  More history about both Bradford and Perley can be read on this link.

 John C Shaffer's Manor House

John C. Shaffer was born in Baltimore and became a newspaper baron who first owned the Chicago Evening Post and a string of Midwest newspapers. After visiting his son, Kent, in Denver, in 1913, Shaffer expanded his empire with the purchase of the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Times, and the Denver Republic Newspaper. He built his own large and beautiful Manor House and did not live in the Bradford Perley House, that was now part of his property but used it as a place to entertain at times. Shaffer named his ranch after his sons, Kent and Carroll, which he shortened to "Ken Caryl Ranch."   Shaffer was an influential man and was a supporter of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited the Ken Caryl Ranch on occasions. He was also a friend of President Taft and Warren Harding. Unfortunately, Shaffer's fortunes dwindled during the depression and Ken Caryl Ranch was taken over by the banks. Ken Caryl ranch was sold to three other ranchers during the years between 1938 to 1972: Allen, Minissale, and McDannald. None of them lived in the Bradford Perley House, and it fell into disrepair.  More history about the Shaffer year can be read on this link.

Sadly, a fire destroyed the wooded aspects of the Bradford Perley House in 1967, and only the stone frame was left standing.  The Johns Manville Corporation bought the entire ranch property in 1971, and built a campus building which became Lockheed Martin when The Martin Marietta Astronautics Group bought the property in 1987, and a housing community was developed for its employees and was mostly completed in 1997. The further history of the community can be read on this link.

The Ken Caryl Historical Society had the Bradford Perley House listed on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties and worked to secure funding to stabilize the structure. In 2002 it was listed on the states most endangered places and repair to the stone walls was done to preserve the house ruins for its historical nature. It was declared "saved in time" in 2006. The Bradford Perley House was placed on the National Register for Historic Places in February 2015.

More photos of the Bradford Perley House ruins.

My granddaughter, looking out a Bradford Perley House window.

The Ken Caryl Historical Society members are the stewards watching over the Bradford Perley House and apple orchard.  We help maintain the properties and conduct tours for interested parties and schoolchildren who are learning about their local history.  We are preserving it for future generations to learn about those who came to this area of Colorado in pioneer days.

Knowing our history enriches our lives and helps us to appreciate our surroundings even more. We can imagine those who rode Bradford's wagon road up into the foothills to seek their fortune and the Perley's ranching days when this was a remote area south west of Denver City. We can appreciate the very land our houses rest on, that was once the large Ken Caryl Ranch of John C. Shaffer, and the subsequent ranchers that came after him.  

The present tells us that we are now a stable Denver suburb that is being surrounded by fast progress and development that has come in recent decades to Colorado.  What will the future bring? That is unpredictable, but we are happy to say that we will do our best to continue to preserve the history of this place for all time.

You can also find me on 

Instagram Twitter Facebook 
Pinterest

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

This past spring my husband and I took a road trip to SE Colorado to visit The Great Sand Dunes National Park--click here to read that post--and we decided to visit two National Historical sites on our way back home. One was of these sites was the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site located in Kiowa County, near Eads, on the great high plains of Colorado. This site is sacred, controversial, symbolic and a reminder of a national tragedy that happened on November 29, 1864. I was profoundly touched by what I read and saw at this site, and although it is a difficult subject, I thought it would be fitting to show what we saw on the 152 year anniversary as well as to wonder what has the United States learned from its past?

Our drive was very long.  The high plains of Colorado are very vast and very desolate in many areas. The remoteness of the Sand Creek location made me wonder even more why this event happened so long ago.

We passed through dry prairie grasslands, by ranches, and some farms before we passed by the desolate ghost town of Chivington.  This was a landmark that the Sand Creek Massacre site was close by.

When we passed through the gate there was still some drive ahead, with only a few trees visible a small visitor center and some placards describing what happened here. My husband and I and one other man were the only visitors at the time, but a ranger came to meet us to tell us the history of the area and direct us towards the massacre site.

Please click on to enlarge

Along the Big Sandy Creek, about 700 Cheyenne and Arapaho native people were living peacefully at a winter camp in what was then Colorado territory. They believed they were under the protection of the US Army by treaty. Many of the men were away hunting for food, so the camp consisted of mainly old people, women, and children. At dawn on November 29, 1864, approximately 675 U.S. volunteer soldiers, commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington, attacked the sleeping natives with guns and cannons. Black Kettle, one of the peace Chiefs, raised an American flag and white truce flag above his tipi, as he had been promised protection, but he also had to flee. While many managed to escape, about 200 women and children, and the elderly struggled to run in the sandy earth of the dry creek bed.  Some women tried to dig trenches in the creek bed, or in the hollow logs of cottonwood trees to hide their children, but most were mercilessly slaughtered during the eight hours of fighting. During the afternoon, and the next day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead, taking native belongings as souvenirs, and burning down the encampment, before departing the scene on December 1, to resume campaigning.

 Please click on to enlarge

A placard on the site explains the events of the massacre.

For many years the Arapaho and Cheyenne people had lived their way of life on the plains of Colorado, but the discovery of gold in 1858 brought many prospectors and then many settlers into the Colorado territory, increasing conflicts and clashes with the natives.  Territorial Governor John Evans wished to apply for statehood and felt the eradication of "hostile natives" would ensure the safety of the new citizens. Sadly, many at the time felt the natives were soulless savages not worthy of the same rights as Christians.

Please click on to enlarge

Chiefs Black Kettle and Left Hand pleaded for peace and an end to violence and were promised this just a couple months before at a counsel in Denver, with Governor Evans, Colonel Chivington, Major Wynkoop, Captain Soule, and other officials. They were told to surrender at Fort Lyons.  Prisoner rations were not enough to sustain them at the fort, so they moved further east to the Sand Creek area where they knew they could hunt for food.

Please click on to enlarge

Captain Silas S. Soule, and Lieutenant Joseph A Cramer, who knew these people had been promised peace, put their military careers and lives at danger by refusing to fire on the peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek on November 29.  They wrote letters to their former commander Major Edward Wynkoop, describing the horrible atrocities they witnessed. These letters led to an investigation by two congressional committees, and an army commission, which changed history's judgment of Sand Creek from a battle to a massacre of men, women, and children, but charges were never brought against those responsible.  Sadly, Captain Soule was murdered soon after he testified to the commissions.

A placard at the Sand Creek site shows the letter Captain Soule wrote to Major Wynkoop graphically describing the atrocities of the massacre.  For a long time, these letters were displaced but copies resurfaced around the year 2000 to help convince the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to establish the Sand Creek Massacre site as a National Historical site.  You can read the full letter on this government website--click here--scroll down the page. Be warned they are horribly graphic in description.

Today the park preserves approximately 2,400 acres of the massacre site.

The actual creek site is restricted to visitors.

Native Cottonwood trees line the creek where tipi once stood.

Please click on to enlarge

Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members still gather here to pay homage to their ancestors, to heal, and to help educate future generations to the horrors of genocide that still exists around the world

The Sand Creek Massacre is one of the most disgraceful events in American history--a tragedy reflective of its time and place.  As time has marched on, most Americans realize the injustices done to our country's native people, who were trying to protect their way of life from change and destruction.

Every year, for the last 18 years, there has been a Spiritual Healing Walk Run Event that is sponsored by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana, the Northern Arapaho Tribe of Wyoming, and the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes (Oklahoma) to honor the victims and survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre and for healing of ancestral homelands.  They run/walk from the Sand Creek Massacre site to Denver over four days, stopping at the memorial plaque for Silas S. Soule located at 15th and Arapaho Ave, in Denver and then walk a mile on to the Colorado State Capital Building for a ceremony.



To watch a video about the Sand Creek Massacre, presented by Rocky Mountain PBS, click on the arrow above or go to this link: YouTube Sand Creek Massacre.  The National Parks Service also has a video about the Sand Creek Massacre Site dedication as a National Historic landmark on this YouTube video link.

As my husband and I drove the 180 miles or so back home to the Denver area, we thought about the sad events that took place 152 years ago at Sand Creek. Unfortunately, events such as this continue to occur in the world and probably will continue in the future as long as humans judge each other by race, nationality, and creed.  There are many lessons to be learned if we hope to see hatred end and peace come to our world. Can we ever hope to see that day?

You can also find me on 

Instagram Twitter Facebook Pinterest