Gallup Family

Avery and Charlotte Gallup, date unknown.

Avery and Charlotte Gallup were probably Littleton's first large-scale developers of suburban homesites, starting a trend in 1887 that continues today. In that year they purchased 720 acres on the east edge of Littleton, and Charlotte filed the first plat for five-acre tracts in "Gallup's Suburban Home Subdivision," designed for city residents who desired country homes. Included in the acreage was a thirty-five acre lake and several artesian wells. Plats for "Windermere Heights" and "Windermere Gardens" followed. The Gallups reserved a large tract for themselves where they planted seventy-five acres of orchards and a nursery with roses, peonies, and vineyards. All this was located in the area of current Windermere and Gallup streets.

The Gallups were not new to subdividing land or to the nursery business. Their first greenhouses were at Champa and 21st Street in Denver. In 1879 Avery bought acreage on South Broadway and Alameda, built a house there, and began selling lots and building greenhouses. He platted four additions to the city and turned a piece of trackless prairie into the town of South Denver.

Charlotte was president of the "Gallup Floral Company" which became known throughout the region. In 1887 they moved their enterprise to University Park where they planted ten acres in nursery stock and operated twelve greenhouses.

That was the year they purchased the land in Littleton, although they continued to live in the large house on Broadway. Avery rapidly got involved in improving Littleton. He was instrumental in having the Stark Nursery plant the apple orchard which became known as Woodlawn. He and Charlotte established the Merry Canning and Pickle Factory on South Nevada Street to take advantage of the vegetable plots at Pickletown, as well as the 15,000 fruit trees that eventually covered present Woodlawn Shopping Center. He designed the grounds at Wolhurst for Senator Wolcott. Avery continued to buy land—800 acres on the Western Slope, where he was president of the Orchard Mesa Land Company, 160 acres of farmland northeast of Denver, forty acres near Petersburg, including the Holly Water System. He tended to the real estate; Charlotte tended to the greenhouses and nurseries. She continued to manage the business and estate after Avery's early death in 1894. In 1910 she moved to Littleton and built the large house at 6177 South Gallup, using some of the materials from the old home at Alameda and Broadway. Her granddaughter said that she never fell victim to the "horrors" of the Victorian age in household furnishings and gadgets.

Charlotte and Avery had two sons, Rockwell and Perry. "Rocky" moved to Chicago and then to California with his wife Ann. Perry was also a nurseryman. He and his wife moved to the Littleton "ranch" in 1899 and lived in a home west of Broadway and south of Littleton Boulevard. Later he moved to the old ranch house off South Gallup Street where the Carmelite monastery now exists. In 1912 he sold out to June Brown Benedict, who, with her architect husband, Jacques, would build an estate called Wyldemere on the site. Perry Gallup moved to California for his health.

Gallup Street, Gallup Park, Gallup Gardens—these places in the beautiful Windermere area around the Bemis Public Library and Littleton Museum commemorate the family that broadened Littleton's scope far beyond its riverside origins.

Bibliography

Colorado Prospector. "Early Day Coloradans. Gallup Family." Denver, Colo.: Colorado Prospector, December, 1973.

Hall, Frank. "Avery Gallup." Denver Times. Denver, Colo.: Denver Times, 12 January 1894.

Littleton Museum. Photographic Archives and Biography/Placename File.

____. Vertical File: "Gallup Family."

____. A Walk Down Main Street, Littleton, Colorado. Littleton, Colo.: Littleton Historical Museum, 1985.

Photographs courtesy of the Littleton Museum unless otherwise noted. To order copies, contact the museum at 303-795-3950.

Compiled by Doris Farmer Hulse

Updated March 2021 by Phyllis Larison