La Junta, CO and Trinidad, CO

As those in the family may remember, there has always been family history about Grandma Hank's grandfather Washington Winchester King and his ranch in the La Junta, CO area.  We couldn't resist playing Sherlock Holmes to see if we could find where the ranch was located.

We went to the library in La Junta to see what we could find.  After searching the information they had, the conclusion was that the 'King Ranch' was probably located in the county(Las Animas)  just south of Otero County where La Junta is located.

While at the library in La Junta, Steve found some interesting information about the area; about a large cattle company called the J J Ranch who hired many men to herd and care for their cattle that roamed on 'free range'.  This company was probably who WW King was working for before 1900 when he came to the area.

We went to Trinidad, CO. about 70 miles south of La Junta in Las Animas County to investigate the land.  At the courthouse in Trinidad we found some of the land records for WW King, his sons Urton(Lawrence) and Harry and his daughter Lulu(Lula).  Located were original Land Patents given by the US Government to each family member. There were also other land purchases.  Many of these additional land purchases were in combinations of the names of the 4 King family members.  The original Land Patents gave them about 1400 acres and we found additional combined purchases of close to 1500 acres.  There may be other purchases because we did not take a lot of time to thoroughly check all available information.  The first land was acquired in 1908 and purchases continued into the 1920s.  It sounds like a lot of land but out here in this desert area it takes approximately 50 acres to match the plant growth capability of 1 acre in Ohio.  The cattle ranchers often purchased the land where water was found and used 1000s of acres of the Open Range for cattle grazing also.  Steve was able to identify the location of the the original Land Patent homestead of W W King in the northern section of Las Animas County with the other land purchases in close proximity.  Steve thinks the La Junta connection is because that is where there is an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad head and the cattle would have been driven there for sale and transport.  In addition La Junta was the closest town and post office to where they lived.  This railroad was also probably how the Kings got from Kentucky to Colorado.

If we run out of things to do sometime, it would be fun to go back and do a more in depth research of the land and their lives.