Fort Wicked

One of the most colorful characters on the South Platte River Road was Holon Godfrey who ran a station along the Overland Trail in the 1860s. In 1861, the colorful Holon Godfrey and his wife Matilda opened a general store and rest stop for the travelers. Godfrey’s Ranch was on the south side of the river near the modern-day South Platte River Bridge on Highway 6. A historical marker is placed approximately three miles west of Merino, Colorado. Poet Bayard Taylor wrote of his impressions of Fort Wicked and how Godfrey got his sobriquet, “Old Wicked”:

…we halted at a singular station. A wall of adobes three feet thick and six in height, pierced with loop-holes for musketry, confronted us. The top was rudely machicolated, and over the main entrance was the inscription, “Fort Wicked.” Entering the fortress, we found a long adobe cabin, one part of which was occupied as a store, well stocked with groceries, canned provisions, and liquors. A bearded man, with a good-natured but determined air, asked us if we would stop for breakfast . It was Mr. Godfrey himself, the builder and defender of the fort, which is known all along the Platte as “Godfrey's Ranche.” Here, last fall, he, his wife, and “another man,” withstood a siege of two days by three hundred Indians, who finally retreated, after losing seventeen of their number. Mr. Godfrey boldly announces that he will never surrender. He is now well prepared, and the rumors of a new Indian war do not give him the least anxiety. He is “bad medicine” to the tribes of the Plains, who are as cowardly as they are cruel. The stable and corral are defended by similar intrenchments [sic].

The siege Taylor references took place in January of 1865. Indians attacked and burned nearly all other ranches from Julesburg to Fort Morgan. James Florant Meline wrote of his impressions of “Fort Wicked” including more details about the attack:

We camped this afternoon two miles beyond the American [Ranch], and, seeing another ranch on the road, went up to reconnoiter. A sign over the door informed me that it was

FORT WICKED,
KEPT BY W. GODFREY,
GROCERY STORE.

The dwelling and store are strongly fortified by a strong stone wall nearly six feet high, well provided with flared embrasures…. In passing the sod-wall corral on my return to camp, I noticed a deep, well-constructed ditch at each angle of the inclosure [sic], - say three feet in breadth and depth. Supposing it was for defense, I…wondered what on earth the ditch could be for. There was no water to fill it, and, even if there were, the sandy soil would soon drink it up. Then, again, it was too narrow to prevent an Indian, “or any other man,” from stepping across…. I asked [Godfrey] why this “castle moat” was finished only at the angles, and not completed around the entire wall….
“Why, sir,” said he, “that’s a contrivance of my own to prevent cattle rubbing agin’ the corners, and knocking out the sod!”…
This ranch was attacked by the Indians on the same day Morris and three other men were killed at the American [Ranch]. The savages were about one hundred and thirty in number, Sioux and Cheyennes. They began operations at 10 a.m. by killing and driving off the valuable stock…then fired the prairie grass, the wind setting strong on the stable and hay-stacks…. Godfrey crept out with a bucket of water in one hand and rifle in the other, and, protected partially from [the Indian’s] view by the curtain of smoke, wet the grass a sufficient breadth to prevent the fire from crossing…. They then – all of them mounted, armed, and in their fiercest war-paint – made a circle about the house, and employed some hours in charging up to it in bands of twenty and discharging their pieces, guns and pistols, at long range, at the doors and windows. They kept up this performance until late in the afternoon…. Godfrey had but three men to assist him. He has seven now, and is not afraid, he says, of five hundred of them….

The siege and the successful defense of the ranch became something of a legend and Holon Godfrey became something of a folk hero.
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Photo Source: Worcester, Donald Emmet, Pioneer Trails West (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1985), p. 277.

Sources:
Taylor, Bayard, Colorado: A Summer Trip (NY: Putnam, 1867), p. 170.

Meline, James Florant, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback (NY: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), p. 42-44.