04/11/2026
The Broadmoor Mesa Cemetery Connection
By Eric Swab © 2024
How are the Mesa Cemetery, Harlan Wolfe House, and the upscale Count Pourtales Addition to Broadmoor connected? The short answer is the pioneer, named Carter Smith Harlan (1816-1873).
Carter Harlan’s is one of 45 names inscribed on a granite monument in Pioneer Park, located southeast of the intersection of Panorama and Fontmore on the Westside of Colorado Springs. This monument marks the location of one of the first cemeteries in the Pikes Peak region. It has been known by several names; Mesa Cemetery, Pioneer Cemetery and Colorado City Cemetery. It was in use from about 1858 until 1907. (Fairview was developed in 1895.) The number of settlers buried there varies from 87 to 140. While many of the bodies have been moved to Evergreen and Fairview Cemeteries, it is likely that some early pioneers are still interred there.
Harlan Family
During Carter S. Harlan’s move across the country from North Carolina, he settled in Indiana where he married Nancy C. Yates (1818-1909) and where their two eldest sons, William B. (1845-1881) and Eli Hobson (1849-1922), were born. The family next moved to Iowa where Mary Elizabeth (1851-1930), Steven (1855-1935) and James Lincoln (1860-1940) were born. In 1861 Carter came alone to Colorado in search of the next place for his family to live. He settled on Denver and brought his family there. In 1865 they made their final move to the Pikes Peak region.
In 1871 Carter “took up” 160 acres east of what would become the Broadmoor Golf Course and south of the future Pourtales Road. It was his intent to homestead the land. To do so he would certainly have established his residence there. In addition, he used the land for commercial purposes. Carter was a brick mason, and he set up a brick kiln on the property, dug clay, and fired brick for sale in the developing area of Cheyenne Canon and most likely in the new town of Colorado Springs. It is said that many homes in the area were constructed of Harlan bricks.
He died in 1873 before he could prove up on his homestead. His claim to the property passed to Nancy, and their children. Nancy Harlan proved up on her husband’s claim in November of 1877. It is likely she and her two oldest sons continued to manufacture bricks on the site until they relinquished the patent to Arthur Edward Van Strettell in 1880. As it turned out Nancy’s patent was declared illegal. When Colorado Territory became a State In 1876, all the land in Sections 16 and 36 in every township were set aside to support “Common” schools. Carter’s claim was in section 36. Colorado made a provision for entrymen with claims in those sections predating statehood, to perfect their claims to school property. The deadline for doing so was May 20, 1874. Neither Carter nor Nancy did so.
The First School
In 1972 Carter and Nancy had become concerned about the education of their two youngest children. They joined forces with two other homestead neighbors--Marcus A. Foster and Daniel Kinsman--to build a 12’ by 12’ one-room log schoolhouse. It was located south of Cheyenne Creek and east of the present-day Cresta Road. The first teacher was Mary Elizabeth Harlan, Carter and Nancy’s daughter. Mary only taught that first year. The next year the school was moved north of Cheyenne Creek to land donated by John Wolfe (1832-1909), another Cheyenne Creek homesteader. This humble start was the beginning of the District 12, Cheyenne Mountain School.
October of 1876, Mary Elizabeth married William H. Worrell (1850-1889), a merchant from Springfield, Missouri, who settled in the Pikes Peak region. This union was cut short by William’s death. Later, Mary Elizabeth took a fancy to John Wolfe, the man who had donated the land for the relocation of the school. They were married in January of 1894. In 1889, Mary Elizabeth’s brother, Steven Harlan, married Viola the adopted daughter of Daniel and Martha Kinsman.
John Wolf
At the end of August 1864, John Wolfe volunteered for the 3rd Colorado Calvary. The Army was recruiting men for 100-day enlistments to deal with attacks by Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. The 3rd Colorado Calvary was responsible for the November 29, 1864, Sand Creek Massacre. The word “massacre” usually marks a participant as complicit in the slaughter of innocent Indian women and children. However, according to Irving Howbert, another 3rd Calvary enlistee, the Indian men fought back. We do not know John Wolfe’s thoughts at the time.
Wolfe “took up” 160 acres along Cheyenne Creek on July 28, 1869, and was issued a patent December 1, 1873. John developed a ranch on his property where he raised horses, milk cows, and pigs and grew spring wheat and oats. Ranching was not John Wolfe’s only interest. In October of 1878 he sold his homestead to Timothy Johnson and moved to South Dakota to pursue his interest in mining. A year later he returned and repurchased his homestead from Johnson. In the fall of 1879, John was displaying his melons, squash, pumpkins, other vegetables and fruits at the Colorado State Fair. He hadn’t given up mining. By 1891 he along with three partners had filed seven mining claims in Cripple Creek. In 1892 he and his partners incorporated the Buck Horn Gold Mining Company, and in 1894 he was elected president and director of the company.
In 1887 Wolfe began to sell off small pieces of his homestead. Between 1887 and 1895 he sold eight parcels totaling a little more than twenty-three acres. This included 12,000 square feet to the Cheyenne Mountain School.
John was also involved in the development of water in his neighborhood. In 1862 he constructed the John Wolfe Ditch. In 1863 this ditch is listed in the Ditch Book for District 10 as owned by John Wolf (sic), J. D. Hammond, A. Bott and the Smith Sisters. It is described as being two miles long and starting near the “school house”. That same year, Wolfe constructed the Alvord Ditch. In March of 1888, John filed a plat for the Wolfe Reservoir with the State Engineer. The map accompanying this filing shows the reservoir and the Elvoid (Alvord?) Ditch located on John’s Homestead. In 1891 Timothy Johnson, Marcus A. Foster, John Wolfe, J. H. Bruening, and W. B. Jenkins incorporated the Brookside Water Company. John Wolfe transferred the water rights from his ditches and the reservoir to the company. Three years later the Broadmoor Dairy challenged Brookside’s claim to Cheyenne Creek water rights. In 1897 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of Broadmoor Dairy.
Two years after John and Mary Elizabeth’s marriage, John’s wood frame ranch house was moved across Cheyenne Road and replaced with a brick home. Since Mary Elizabeth’s four brothers were all professional brick masons it is certain that one or all of them built this house which still stands at 905 W. Cheyenne Road.
Through the years, the occupants of the brick house at 905 W. Cheyenne Road were mostly Carter Harlan’s descendants. In the year 1900, Eli Harlan and Carter’s wife Nancy were living there with Mary Elizabeth and John Wolfe. Mary Elizabeth (Harlan) Wolfe inherited the house when John Wolfe died in 1909. In 1910, James C. Harlan and Robert S. Harlan, the sons of Mary Elizabeth’s brother Steven, were living with her. In 1920 and 1930 Mary Elizabeth’s brother James Lincoln Harlan was living with her. Mary Elizabeth (Harlan) Wolfe died July 27, 1930, leaving 905 W. Cheyenne to her nephews James C. Harlan and Robert Steven Harlan.
James C. Harlan married Nancy Jane Karr (1892-1956) in 1911 and their daughter Edna Katherine (Harlan) Rodabaugh inherited 905 W. Cheyenne when James C. Harlan died in 1955. Edna was married to Delmer J. Rodabaugh (1911-1992), and she divided her residence between Malibu, California and Colorado Springs. When she died in 1995, her estate--wishing to preserve 905 W. Cheyenne Road for its historic significance--deeded the property to the City of Colorado Springs. The house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Count Pourtales Addition
Because the Harlan family’s 160-acre homestead entry was cancelled, their effort to transfer the property to Arthur Edward Van Strettell was invalid, and the control of the property in Section 36 remained with the State of Colorado. On January 30, 1907, the State issued a “Patent For School Land” for the 160 acres to Ducan Chisholm. While Mr. Chisholm owned the property, he granted rights of way for ditches, roads, and utility lines. On February 9, 1920, the Colorado Title and Trust Company issued a Special Warranty Deed for the Harlan’s 160 acres to George A. Fowler. On the same day Mr. Fowler sold the property to Cyrus Ferguson.
Before coming to Colorado Springs in 1919, Cyrus Ferguson was considered one of the foremost businessmen of Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley. One of his interests was brick manufacturing. It is unknown if that interest influenced the purchase of the Harlan’s property or whether he even pursued that business in the Pikes Peak Region. In 1925 Mr. Ferguson sold the 160 acres to the Broadmoor Hotel Company.
In 1926, The Broadmoor Hotel Company platted the Harlan 160 acres as the Count Pourtales Addition to Broadmoor. The design for the subdivision was created by the Olmsted Brother’s Landscape Architects, of Brookline Massachusetts. The curvilinear street patterns, open spaces and asymmetric lot shapes are the inspiration of Olmsted firm. The firm was established in 1898 by John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870-1957), the sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States. Olmsted Sr. and his partner Calvert Vaux’s first design project was New York City's Central Park, which led to many more urban park design contracts, including the main park for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
A 1927 edition of the Colorado Springs Gazette & Telegraph newspaper reported the following: Penrose and Associates are spending fortunes to develop the Count Pourtales, Polo Park, and Broadmoor Heights subdivisions. “Scores of the finest homes of the region and state are contemplated for this ideal residence district ….” Today driving through the neighborhood east of the Broadmoor Golf Course and south of Pourtales Road, it is obvious their plan was realized.
The Cemetery
This article began with the question, how are the Mesa Cemetery, the Harlan Wolfe House, and the upscale Count Pourtales Addition to Broadmoor connected? Carter Smith Harlan settled the 160 acres that became the Count Pourtales Addition, his descendants owned the brick house at 905 W. Cheyenne Road, and Carter died in Colorado City making the Mesa Cemetery the obvious place for his burial.
