Please Show Me to Your Master
In 1869, Elton and Edwin Beckwith drove cattle from Texas to feed the miners of Colorado. By 1874 the brothers had begun ranching. Their first ranch house was a two-story log structure that slowly grew into a Victorian mansion.
Edwin never married. Elton married a widow, Elsie Chapin Davis, who owned the Half Circle D Ranch in nearby Ula. By 1885, the Beckwith brothers owned nearly 7,000 head of cattle, 200 horses, and had fenced 2,300 acres of which 1,500 acres were meadow land. At its peak, the ranch was one of the largest cattle operations in Colorado. In 1887, Elton was elected to the Colorado Legislature as senator and re-elected in 1889.
A member of a pioneer cattle raising family, Elizabeth Kettle recorded that "as a cattle-breeder he (Elton Beckwith) must have been doubly blessed by the Lord Himself as the Beckwith cow herd was unusually fertile. So much so that the neighbors began calling the annual spring and fall round-ups a bit earlier each year so they could get their own calves branded before the Beckwith mothers multiplied. 100% calf crops are still considered quite unusual." In fact, the Colorado Cattlemen's Association predicts 80%.
Elsie, Mrs. Elton Beckwith, was labeled a snob by the valley residents and few were comfortable in her find home, if invited at all. One valley story recalled that "once one of Reginald Cusack's English guests asked a Beckwith cowboy to "please show me you your Master." The flinty hand's instant reply, "the sonnabitch ain't been born yet," got him into considerable trouble with Madam Beckwith.
By the late 1890's, the Beckwiths were dividing their time between their ranch and Denver mansion. In Denver, Elton's only daughter, Velma, met Norris Wilcox who had an "unsavory reputation." Velma was forbidden to see him and was whisked off to the ranch. The young lady eloped and was married in Denver. The Denver Times on September 27, 1898 reported with glee that she have been "cut off with one dollar" and that the parents had "denounced her as an ungrateful, unnatural child."
After the death of her husband in 1907, Mrs. Beckwith left the valley to live at the Brown Palace in Denver. Locals claim that Mrs. Beckwith asked not to be returned to the valley upon her death; nevertheless, in 1931 she was buried next to her husband at Ula Cemetery.
Elton J. Beckwith's ranch, 64159 Colorado Highway 69, is five miles north of Westcliffe and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Reprinted with permission from "Custer County at a Glance" Featuring Rosita, Silver Cliff and Westcliffe by Joanne West Dodds.
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