John Pearce--first mention

...a small place bought in 1917 from the wife of the man who had homesteaded it. The man was John Pearce, an educated architect, who filed on 160 acres on Elkhorn Creek in 1884. Mr Pearce had been educated in England and came to America with is wife, Mary Emily, lovingly called Polly, by all her friends. He was the designer of the First Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, so the story goes. He retired to his ranch or homestead, which he named Coral Rock Ranch, from the large pointed hill in front of the home which he believed resembled a piece of coral. He developed and mapped out and filed on ditches to irrigate the small meadows which followed the course of the Elkhorn Creek. John Pearce had been brought up with the ideas of being a gentleman farmer and that he tried to be. Boys in the neighborhood came to milk his cow, cut wood for the two fireplaces that heated the house, cut and put his hay into his barn, and took it out and fed it. He had checks which arrived periodically from England and when they came, groceries and drinks came up in quantities. At this time many were invited to partake of the festivities. Polly also quite often received wonderful boxes from relatives in England and many havee told of the tea parties she gave for friends so she could show off her wonderful gifts. John Pearce wanted service and each evening he dressed for dinner which Polly served in the dining room before the fireplace. It wa nothing that she had to run up and down three steps between the dining room and kitchen. Mr. Pearce died in 1917 and Mrs. Pearce sold the ranch and went to live with the Craddocks, and old Livermore family who had moved to Littleton, Colorado, and there she died later.

This part of the country was the home of many Englishmen who had cvome out to a new country with some money and a love of pleasure and entertainment and so the stories of their antics and fun are legend.

The Story of the Ben Delatour Boy Scout Ranch, by Harold M. Dunning, Loveland, Colorado. (unpublished, undated, mimeographed paper).