A Brief Introduction to the Blog

Greetings to our many blog followers!  Be sure to check the research pages at right for other new articles.

Fountain is a small town about 10 miles south of Colorado Springs that was founded in 1859.  Formerly, it was a railroad shipping center for local ranches and farms. Now, a lot of residents work on Fort Carson or other nearby bases, but the town still maintains it own identity.  

The blog is an online repository of photographs, stories, land records and biographies of the settlers of Fountain, Colorado.  Many of these sources were given to me to add by the Fountain Museum and Historical Society.  My goal was to make this information freely available to researchers.  Use of this data for personal research is encouraged.  Reproduction of any or all of the content for commercial purposes is prohibited, or we'll track you down and bury you in an ant hill! Just kidding.  Contact the Museum to request photo rights. The image above shows a foot race down Main Street in the early 1920s.

The search feature only looks in the main column at left.  Those articles added to the subsets at right (people, gossip, railroads, etc) are not indexed, but I've tried to add a note to the index at the top of each column. 

 

Lastly, as is true of all history, we all have our own recollection or opinion of what happened. I've had people tell me that an article was wrong! The guy didn't know what he was talking about!  I have tried to include my source for each story or article. 

The new entries on Fairview Cemetery are a work-in-progress.

Here are a few new articles!

 Residents of Fountain Fairview Cemetery

 A few notes from each year's tour research. For readability, I have not included all my sources.

Surnames in order of appearance (for now): OWEN, CELL, SISNEROS, LOCK, HUTCHIN, BOWLBY, CHILD, VAN ENDERT, RUIZ, IMES, LISTON, ELLINGTON, TERRELL

Tom Owen may have been the first white settler in the Fountain region. He paid $50 to put his bag in a wagon and walk to Colorado from Missouri. He built a structure on the banks of the Little Fountain Creek, near the present-day Ray Nixon power plant. He raised hay which he sold to freighters. See the entries for Barbara and Mathias Lock, reportedly the next settlers to arrive here. They were headed south along the front range, headed for the California gold fields, when they met Tom and were convinced to stay.  Later in life Tom lived in Aspen, CO and  owned much property, which he acquired when people he had loaned money to defaulted. 

David Cell and Berdie Johnson Cell were killed by a train in 1907 when their horse and buggy stalled on the tracks just north of Fountain. An infant in arms, Mary Adelaide, was thrown down on the tracks in the collision, and lived.  The Cells came to Colorado from Missouri in about 1865 and David was a rancher. Berdie Johnson came to Colorado in about 1889 to visit her brother William Johnson, also a rancher, and she met David. They had six children together.  Daughter Mary 1908-1998 is buried in Mendocino, CA.