Page 47 - AreaNewsletters "Nov 2021" issue

Cherokee Ranch & Castle includes land that originally belonged to two separate homesteads in the late 1890s: the Flower Homestead and the Blunt Homestead. The Johnson Family moved from the East and purchased the Flower Homestead in 1924 and built the 1450s Scottish-style Castle that remains
today and is the property that Tweet bought in 1954. She then purchased the adjacent land that had been the Blunt Homestead and renamed both pieces of land “Cherokee Ranch”, which today includes 3,400 acres of natural beauty and wildlife. In 1996, Tweet worked
with Douglas County and a citizen’s group, The Douglas County Open Lands Coalition, to protect Cherokee Ranch through a Conservation Easement. The Foundation holds the deed to Cherokee Ranch. Under a living
trust, Tweet had retained use of about 2,000 acres to raise her champion strain of Santa Gertrudis cattle. The property -- appraised at about $20 million -- was in an area under intense
development pressure as an exclusive Front Range residential area.
The Santa Gertrudis strain of cattle was developed on the King Ranch in Texas. Between 1912 and 1920, the King Ranch was breeding Brahma cattle – imported from India – to nd a type of cow that could withstand long droughts.
A Brahma long-horn bull named Monkey jumped the fence to mate a short-horn cow, thus creating the Santa Gertrudis! The result remained “illegitimate” until 1940 when the breed was rst o cially recognized. Tweet pioneered the Santa Gertrudis in the Rocky Mountain region in the early ‘50s and established the Rocky Mountains Gertrudis Association. A visit to the bulls was a visit to family for Tweet, as she personally named all 12 of the herd sires.
I remember while on duty with the State Patrol one of Tweet’s bulls got out of
the ranch onto Hwy 85 and was hit by
a Volkswagen. The unfortunate car— without a front engine--was totaled and we called the ranch manager, Raphael,
who brought a frontend loader to take the mostly-uninjured bull home.
Tweet discovered after she brought her Santa Gertrudis animals to her ranch that her
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Castle Rock “AreaNewsletters” • November 2021