THE ROCK LEDGE HOUSE CELEBRATES 150 YEARS
While the story of the people who have called Rock Ledge Ranch home goes back thousands of years, this year we commemorate one hundred fifty years since this part of the Camp Creek Valley began to be called Rock Ledge Ranch.
In February of 1875, Robert and Elsie W. Chambers, health-seeking pioneers and innovative farmers, moved into a small frame house on the property. For four months they weathered the Colorado spring inside this humble dwelling with their two children, Benjamin and Eleanor, as they waited for the rest of the home to be completed. It was Elsie W. Chambers who christened their farm Rock Ledge Ranch, and their sturdy stone house is known today as the Rock Ledge House.


Built of locally quarried sandstone, the Rock Ledge House is the oldest original building at Rock Ledge Ranch. Its design contains both classic Victorian features and many unique features the Chambers added to accommodate the businesses they ran from the house. Builders finished the house in June of 1875, and the hardworking Chambers family immediately began to make full use of it. A note in the Colorado Springs Gazette on June 19, 1875, reports that multiple boarders had already taken up residence in the “handsome stone residence.”
Another new resident was on her way as well: Elsie W. Chambers’ youngest daughter, Mary, was born later that summer, and her coming was one of the reasons for the house’s swift construction. Mary Chambers DeLong later wrote that “Mother kept urging them to hurry as she wanted me to be born in the new house.” The house was finished in time for Mary to be born in the main bedroom on the first floor.
The Rock Ledge House was the center of the Chambers’ many endeavors for twenty-five years. It served as a boarding house for tourists and health-seekers, the site of the first school in the Camp Creek Valley, the kitchen for an innovative market-garden business—and of course, a home for a hardworking, community-minded family. Today, Rock Ledge Ranch continues to tell the story of Colorado Springs and these early settlers through the Rock Ledge House, which celebrates its 150th birthday this summer.