Cherokee Ranch History

History of Cherokee Ranch & Castle
The Flower Homestead – Late 1800sFrederick Gerald Flower filed for his homestead on August 6, 1894. He had renounced his English citizenship two years prior and planned to make a life here. He constructed his stone house and moved in with his wife, Amy, and his sister, Beatrice, on January 18, 1895.
The Flower Family home was perched on the edge of a high plateau with stunning views of the Front Range. The long trail to his house begins at the old territorial road, now named Daniels Park Road. Back then, there were very few inhabitants nearby due to the land’s rugged terrain.
On his homestead claim form, Flowers wrote that he had plowed twelve acres and strung a half-mile of barbed wire to contain his livestock. Local lore says that he actually used these twelve acres to raise potatoes.
Frederick Flower prospered and added land to his holdings. At the time of the sale of his ranch to Charles Johnson in 1924, the property measured 2,380 acres.
The Blunt Homestead – Late 1800sJohn Blunt brought his family west in 1868 following his service in the Civil War and homesteaded land on East Plum Creek near the town of Sedalia. Their first home site was abandoned, allegedly because the site was too cold. They built a new house in 1873 and named their homestead Sunflower Ranch.
At Sunflower Ranch, the Blunt family raised cattle and planted wheat and sorghum on the creek terraces. Three generations of their family ran the cattle and farming operations at Sunflower Ranch for over 81 years. They gradually purchased adjacent homesteads and gained 1,550 total acres. Their land included the mountain on what is now Cherokee Ranch.
In its place and time, their 1,370 square foot house was proudly elegant, a most unusual house in the rural landscape. The house seems to have no stylistic precedent in pattern books of the mid and late nineteenth century, and the design is attributed to the inventive common sense of John Blunt.The 1873 Blunt house still stands today at the center of the outbuildings at Cherokee Ranch headquarters. An apple tree, brought from Kansas by John Blunt in 1868, stands east of the house. It is believed that branches trimmed from this apple tree were used as the porch columns for Flower Homestead on the ranch. The Blunt house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and is recognized as one of the finest and best-preserved ranches in Douglas County. Tweet Kimball purchased the Blunt holdings from Ray Blunt in 1954.
Johnson Family – Early 1900sCharles Alfred Johnson (Carl) was originally from Boston but discovered Denver during a trip with his cousin. He fell in love with the west and moved to Denver in 1891. He began a real estate business and ultimately became a wealthy real estate tycoon, specifically for the development of Denver's historic Park Hill neighborhood.
After the passing of his first two wives, Carl and his third wife, Alice Gifford Phillips, settled south of Denver. Carl purchased the Flower Homestead property for $5 an acre in 1924. Soon after the purchase, Carl hired architect Burnham Hoyt to begin construction of his residence that turned from a summer home to his year-round residence. Charlford Castle, built from 1924-1926, was named after Alice's son Gifford and Alice and Carl's son Charlie. Hoyt designed the residence with architectural details from English and Scottish castles and other county homes west of the Flower Homestead.
When Carl's health began to fail in 1949, he and Alice temporarily moved to California. After Alice's death in 1950, Carl returned to Denver each summer and stayed at the Brown Palace Hotel. His visits were always front-page news. Carl died in 1954 a very wealthy man. After growing up at Charlford, Carl's son, Charles Johnson, Jr. (Charlie), lived there with his wife Katherine Sweet Johnson, and their two children Shelly Elizabeth and Charles Alfred III. Before selling the property to Tweet Kimball in 1954, the family traveled back and forth between Charlford and California because of Charlie's health problems. Shelly Johnson Carter now lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Charles Alfred III lives in Denver.
Tweet Kimball – Mid 1900sMildred Montigue Genevieve Kimball, also know as 'Tweet' Kimball, lived at Cherokee Ranch from 1954-1999. An avid equestrian, she purchased two parcels of land, the Castle and Castle property (formerly known as the Flower Homestead) from Charles Johnson, Jr., and the adjacent Blunt Ranch (formerly known as the Blunt Homestead) from Ray Blunt in 1954. She renamed both pieces of land Cherokee Ranch and their combined totaled acreage remains over 3,100 acres. Tweet Kimball made her mark by renaming the building groupings on land. The Flower Homestead became Chickamauga, Charlford Castle became Cherokee Castle, the Johnson Farm become Wauhatchie and the Blunt Homestead became Amnicola.
When she purchased the Blunt Property in 1954, she wanted to use buildings as the hub of her cattle breeding operations. Tweet brought Santa Gertrudis cattle from Texas to Colorado. This breed was developed to thrive on the native grasses of the South Texas brush country. Tweet wanted to breed them in the colder climate of Colorado but her critics thought it couldn't be done. Mrs. Kimball proved them wrong – Santa Gertrudis are now bred all over the world and the Cherokee Ranch is recognized within cattle breeding circles for this legacy.
In 1996, Tweet Kimball sold Cherokee Ranch in a conservation easement to Douglas County. The Foundation holds the deed to the land. The land is now protected as a wildlife sanctuary but Santa Gertrudis cattle are still bred on the land.