A New Home in the Hills
Soon after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, homesteaders moved west across the prairies and spread into the hills of Pikes Peak. In the 1870s, the Crowe family claimed 160 acres in this valley that later came to be known as Crowe Gulch.
At high elevations, the difficulty of satisfying the Homestead requirement of living on the land five years and cultivating and harvesting a crop could be overwhelming. Meager livelihoods were made cutting timber, grazing cattle, and struggling to raise a stalk or two of corn or beans in the decomposed granite soil.
Most of the homesteads on the south side of Pikes Peak were eventually sold and developed into rustic hotel sites along hiking trails to the summit. They were abandoned when the Carriage Road and Cog Train were built. Public land on this, the north side of the mountain was purchased for the road right-of-way and reservoirs.
Homesteading on the slopes of Pikes Peak came to a halt in 1892 when Congress established timber reservations on public lands. The Pikes Peak timberland Reservation included almost all of Pikes Peak and was withdrawn from settlement opportunities.
(caption: Cusack Family at Catamount Hay Ranch circa 1890, located under present Catamount Reservoir. Photo courtesy Ute Pass Historical Society)
Marker is on Pike's Peak Toll Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
