Salt Works Ranch

07/16/2025

All South Park in this brand’s history!

It originally came from the Rogers family! G. A., Joseph, then Emma.

From there it went to James Witcher, then to Walt Coil (our neighboring ranch), and then to Tom and Linda Nelson (Nelson Realty), who donated it to our family with the express purpose of assisting in the preservation efforts of the ranch.

Any inquiries please DM our managing partner Travis Fanning

06/03/2025

📺 Saturday night, CNN will livestream Good Night, and Good Luck LIVE from the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway—the first time in history a Broadway show has been broadcast live for television. The play, nominated for 5 Tony Awards, tells the story of Edward R. Murrow’s fight against McCarthyism.

🎭 Sunday night, the Tony Awards will celebrate the very best of American theatre. The Tonys, of course, are named for our great-grandmother Antoinette “Tony” Perry, 3rd generation Salt Works Ranch owner.

Tony’s daughter, our grandmother Margaret Perry (4th generationion ranch owner), was a Broadway and film actress who lived through the McCarthy era. Her second husband, Burgess Meredith—a beloved actor who was blacklisted after being named in the infamous “Red Channels,” endured a 7 year loss of working at his career peak because of McCarthyism. Margaret and Burgess witnessed firsthand the chilling effect of political persecution on the arts. Burgess would go on to receive an Emmy Award for his role as Joseph Welch in the television movie “Tail Gunner Joe,” which dramatized the Army-McCarthy hearings.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" – Joseph Welch to Senator McCarthy, the question now widely considered a turning point in the Army-McCarthy hearings and the downfall of McCarthyism

As we celebrate the resilience of theater and the power of live performance, I can’t help but think of them—artists who stood their ground during one of America’s most turbulent cultural chapters.

08/29/2024

73 years after the ranch was homesteaded…

Ceiling Zero opened on Broadway in 1935, directed by 3rd generation Salt Works Ranch (SWR) owner Antoinette Perry (Tony), produced by Brock Pemberton, and starring Antoinette’s daughter and 4th generation SWR owner Margaret Perry and Osgood Perkins. Antoinette (Tony) and Osgood’s wife Jane were close friends, so much so Jane and Osgood named their only son, Anthony Perkins, after Antoinette.

The promotion of this play was absolutely huge, Tony and Brock had teamed up with George Putnam, Amelia Earhart’s husband, to cross promote his new parachutes 🪂 and the play (a drama centered around aviation.) 🛫 Tony and Brock had Margaret wear her stage costume and they drove her out to Jersey “for a promotional gig.” She had no idea she’d be parachute jumping with Amelia Earhart and the press would be there, the stunt would be shown in promotional reels prior to films.🪂🤣🙌

The show was a smash, Hollywood bought the rights and the next year the film opened starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien. Grandmother married Burgess Meredith that same year and the following year Amelia Earhart vanished.

See comments for a few more pictures📸

Reel #: 1527 https://www.myfootage.com/preview.asp?item=100847Broadway at night and the Music Box theater; Osgood Perkins in his dressing room, appearances o...

08/26/2024

On this we salute the women pioneers who homesteaded the ranch before Colorado was a state.

These women sewed the first American Flag in the State of Colorado, nursed and sheltered all wounded and in need in the territory from Grant’s men hiding out from Cheyenne Dog Soldiers to Jesse James, to the Utes… They met with Roosevelt, founded the Stagedoor Canteens, parachute jumped with Amelia Earhart, issued salt annuities and hospitality to strangers, ran industries in their husbands’ absence, they would break barriers for women in acting, directing, and producing, march for their rights, conserve precious land in Colorado, found schools, create paintings, poems, plays, music, novels, and humans.

The first 5 matriarchs would endure the loss of a child, husband, or both and keep going, these women were made of grit and grace from the Colorado plains.

Cheers to the women of the Salt Works Ranch for blazing trails to the West and far beyond 🥂

📸 L-R: Margaret Perry Frueauff 4th generation SWR, Elaine Perry Frueauff 4th gen, Antoinette Perry Frueauff 3rd Gen, Minnie B. Hall DeSoto 2nd gen.
History Colorado
Colorado Women's Hall of Fame
The South Park Historical Society

01/08/2024

75 years ago next week, Harvey closed on Broadway. Harvey was the pinnacle of success for both Great Grandmother as a director and for her friend Mary Chase as a playwright, earning the latter a Pulitzer. Harvey was not their first collaboration. Mary had success with a show back in Denver and sent it on to fellow Denverite and second generation Salt Works Ranch owner, Great Grandmother (Antoinette Perry) and her producing partner Brock Pemberton who staged it. When Me, Third ran for only 37 performances and was panned by critics, Chase returned to Denver crest fallen.

Harvey would take Mary Chase two years to write, she was gun shy from the failure of her first Broadway experience but driven to bring laughter during our second world war. Mary sent Harvey to her pals back in NY, Antoinette would choose to direct it and Pemberton to produce.

Harvey opened on November 1st, 1944 at the
48th St. Theatre, near where the James Earl Jones Theatre (the Cort Theater) is today.

Harvey, on the surface, is about a man who seems delusional or inebriated to his family and friends. During the show you realize Elwood reinforces the need for optimism and faith in a cynical world, both his immediate one and globally at the time.

Perhaps the timing of such a comedy during and after the war was the reason for its success, maybe it was the popularity of Frank Fay, the original Elwood P.Dowd. Was it, possibly, the simultaneous success of the Stagedoor Canteens? Maybe it was all of the above, but the original stage production of Harvey, by two women from the Colorado mountains, is still in the top 45 longest running Broadway shows of all time including musicals, and after 1,775 performances, it remains the 6th longest running Broadway play of all time.

Antoinette passed away during Harvey’s run, never knowing its ultimate success, but Mary stayed a close family friend of Antoinette’s daughters and grandson, dad.

Cheers to Antoinette and Mary, 75 years later and still hard to beat. 🐰💪

09/26/2023

“Visitors commented the nearest woman neighbor to Mary was 12 miles away,” said Gunia. “Her husband also spent a lot of time away. She was pretty isolated and on her own in taking care of her family and fending off wild animals and intruders. There were also reports that she took injured Utes into her home and treated their wounds. She challenged many attitudes held at the time, which was unusual.” 💪

Chosen as 1/10 remarkable women whose lives shaped the emerging West during the Pikes Peak gold rush, our ranch founding matriarch, 7 generations back, Mary Melissa Nye Hall, is featured in a new book available on Filter Press, LLC 📚

South Park ranchwoman Mary Melissa Hall is featured in a new book, titled Women of the Colorado Gold Rush Era, from Filter Press. The collection explores the lives of 10

09/06/2023

Back in July, while a phenomenal amount of preservation work was being done by many hands, the Park County Repub & Fairplay Flume published this article on the ranch, focusing on our mining origins and history. There are a few minor details that are mixed up among family names or children, but covering a couple hundred years and 7 generations in an article ain’t easy.. we are always proud of our part in Colorado and South Park History and thankful to those who help us with their hands and their pens. 💪✍️

South Park National Heritage Area
Explore Park County
Colorado Mining & Mines. Their Places, Pictures & History
The Colorado History Compilation
Colorado History Museum
History Colorado

Most ranching in Park County began to support the mining industry and all the people populating the towns to support mining. In many ways Salt Works Ranch follows that same

07/04/2023

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
“The first American flag in what is now the State of Colorado, was made by Mrs. Hall on the 4th of July 1861, her materials for the same consisting chiefly of a red flannel dress, a blue sunbonnet and goods that had been intended for a white shroud. Mrs. Hall was then living at Baker’s Park in the Ouray district and here she hoisted the flag. It was later cut down by a rebel sympathizer but was afterward returned to her by that noted plainsman and scout, Kit Carson. “ - Maria Davies McGrath, The Real Pioneers of Colorado Denver Public Library

Mary and her husband Charles founded the ranch in 1862, where Kit Carson later returned the flag she’d made for Lincoln’s inauguration to her. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Pg 185 for more on Mary Melissa Hill Nye Hall
Pg 180 for more on her husband Charles

https://history.denverlibrary.org/sites/history/files/RealPioneersColorado.pdf

07/03/2023

Tom McQuaid, pictured with pipe, married Mildred Hall (second generation Salt Works Ranch owner) and combined his properties with the ranch. At the time of his death he'd built the ranch to 87,000 acres. Here he is pictured on the steps of "The Big House", originally built as a stagecoach stop along the main road from Pueblo to Leadville, holding his niece Margaret Perry (fourth generation ranch owner) in 1914. The boy pictured with the cigar on the steps of the Big House in 1948 is Margaret's son, Karl Fanning (fifth generation ranch owner), wearing Tom's boots. The boy with the lollipop on the steps of the Big House is Karl's grandson, Jude Lynch (seventh generation ranch owner), wearing Karl's boots in 2014.

The picture of Tom and Margaret was recently discovered from a long lost trunk that had been purchased at auction.