A Stumped Court, a Burned House and Thirty Dead Sheep: Teofilo Trujillo, 1902
Great Sand Dunes National Park now includes his land. The evidence failed to identify the accused
The Monte Vista Journal reported on 1 February 1902 that “last Friday” the Dorris Brothers and Burt Davis were brought before Justice Asay at Mosca, Colorado. They were charged with killing sheep and with attempted murder.
Teofilo Trujillo, who lived about ten miles east of the town, brought the complaint. The paper said thirty dead and 22 crippled sheep had been found and 90 were missing. It said Trujillo alleged that “the boys” had ridden down, shot and scattered his sheep and had fired into a cabin where three of his herders were sleeping.
Then the paper turned to the evidence. It said it appeared from the evidence that George Dorris had warned the sheepmen to vacate the premises on the public domain, and had warned them that a failure to do so would result seriously. The item does not say that Dorris was charged, or that he was at the hearing.
The hearing filled the whole day. Then came the sentence that matters most. The evidence “failed to identify” the men charged as the ones who killed the sheep, “and they were consequently discharged.” The court just set them free. It did not settle who had killed the sheep.
The item ends with two sentences about the fire.
During the trial the residence of Mr. Trujillo took fire and was consumed. The fire is supposed to be the work of an incendiary.
An incendiary is someone who starts a fire on purpose. “Supposed” is the paper’s word. It names no one.
A week later the Journal ran an item credited to the Press, with more about the fire. Trujillo’s ranch house “burned to the ground” with “its entire contents” on a Friday evening, it says, and the fire started in the house of a “Mexican workman” nearby before it spread to the larger building. The item calls it one of the best ranch houses in the valley. It says Trujillo had lost money on deposit when the Hooper bank failed, had kept his funds in cash at home ever since, and had $8,000 on hand when the fire came. The item says nothing about arson, the sheep or the hearing. The two items may describe the same fire.
A court that could not identify who killed the sheep was sitting while the complainant’s house burned.
No word of Trujillo’s own is quoted in any of these papers.
The record speaks about him. It does not speak for him.
The Journal was not the first paper to report the attacks. The earlier reports do not agree with it, or with each other.
Who killed Teofilo Trujillo’s sheep?
The 1902 papers do not say. They also tell the attacks three different ways.
The earliest local report of the attack is a Mosca Herald item that the Saguache Crescent reprinted on 30 January. Four unknown men hit Trujillo’s flock one Saturday night, it says, and “ninety head were destroyed.” On the Tuesday night fourteen armed men came back and killed or drove away about thirty more sheep. The item also charges that they fired into the house where the herders were camped. It names none of the men.
Another report gives bigger numbers and a name. About 100 sheep were killed and about 200 more were wounded and driven away, it says, by fourteen men who worked for George Dorris, whom it describes as representing cattle interests. Four Colorado papers printed that report between 29 January and 7 February. It was one report, not four, and it does not say where it came from. The Lamar Register’s printing adds an hour: the owner’s cabin was also fired into about 10 o’clock the night of 18 January. The Herald item puts the firing into the house on the Tuesday night. The two are not reconciled.
Set side by side, the three accounts do not fit. The Herald says about ninety sheep were destroyed on a Saturday night and about thirty more on the Tuesday. The wire says about 100 were killed and some 200 wounded and driven away. The Journal says thirty dead, 22 crippled and 90 missing, and gives no day for the shooting.
The Herald names no one. The wire blames the men who worked for Dorris, and names none of them. The Journal names the men who were taken to court, and says the evidence did not tie them to the killing.
The Journal’s sentence about Dorris’s warning matches the wire’s, word for word, from “warned the sheepmen” to “would result seriously.” The wire states the warning as fact and goes on to say that the cattlemen then enforced their injunction by the shooting process. The Journal says only that it appeared from the evidence, and stops there. I cannot tell whether one copied the other or both drew on the same source.
The record that can be placed on the ground is not a newspaper. It is a patent.
What this has to do with a national park
In 1882 the government gave Teofilo Trujillo title to a quarter section of land, 160 acres, in Section 1 of Township 40 North, Range 11 East. All of that section lies inside the boundary the National Park Service publishes for Great Sand Dunes National Park. The Park Service’s own tract records list the land there as federal land held in fee, with a 2022 date in the conveyance field.
I have not seen a title record, so I do not say who holds Teofilo’s quarter today. The sources I examined do not place the attacks or the burned house on that land.
What the papers do tie to Trujillo’s ranch is a sale.
Why did the paper say the killing would stop?
The Journal’s answer was short. “There will be no more sheep killing in that neighborhood as Mr. Sylvester is a straight cattle man,” it wrote on 1 March 1902.
The Monte Vista Journal, Monte Vista, Colorado, 1 March 1902, page 1. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.
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Another item in the same column said Teofilo Trujillo had sold his livestock and land to L. B. Sylvester. By the paper’s account, the reason the killing would stop was not a verdict. It was a new owner.
Teofilo Trujillo was born in New Mexico in 1838, when it belonged to Mexico. About 1866 he settled in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He raised cattle and sheep, and over time sheep became most of his herd. In 1885 he reported 600 sheep to the state census, according to a National Register form.
The form says the buyers were Loren B. Sylvester and Richard W. Hosford of the Medano Ranch, that the price was $30,000, and that Trujillo moved to San Luis. The Journal names only one buyer and says Trujillo would move near Ft. Garland and raise sheep again.
The sources I examined do not show that Trujillo was forced to sell. They do not show that he sold freely either.
The form also cites a 1977 history of Sargent, which says it was “generally believed in the Valley” that the house was burned because Teofilo refused to sell to a cattle interest. The form does not prove that. Nothing I opened proves it or disproves it.
In the papers I opened, the only court to hear the case could not say who had killed the sheep.
About a month after that hearing, the Journal said the killing would stop because the new owner was a cattleman.
The facts, plainly
What each source says, and what the National Parks History Project has and has not examined. Sources checked 4 November 2026.
- The Monte Vista Journal of 1 February 1902 reported that the Dorris Brothers and Burt Davis were brought before Justice Asay at Mosca, Colorado, on a Friday, charged with killing sheep belonging to Teofilo Trujillo and with attempted murder; that thirty dead and 22 crippled sheep had been found and 90 were missing; that Trujillo alleged men called “the boys” fired into a cabin where three of his herders were sleeping; and that the evidence failed to identify the accused and they were discharged.
- The same item said it appeared from the evidence that George Dorris warned the sheepmen to vacate the premises on the public domain and that a failure to do so would result seriously; it did not say that Dorris was charged or at the hearing.
- The wire paragraph printed in The Lamar Register of 29 January 1902 used the same words about the warning, from “warned the sheepmen” to “would result seriously,” and then said the cattlemen proceeded to enforce their injunction by the shooting process, which the Journal item does not say; neither text says which came first.
- The same issue of the Monte Vista Journal reported that Teofilo Trujillo’s residence took fire during that trial and called the fire the supposed work of an incendiary; the Journal of 8 February 1902 reprinted an item from the Press saying the fire started in a ranch worker’s house and spread, with $8,000 in cash lost.
- The Saguache Crescent of 30 January 1902, reprinting the Mosca Herald, reported about ninety of Teofilo Trujillo’s sheep destroyed by four unknown men and about thirty more killed or driven off by fourteen armed men; a wire paragraph printed in four Colorado newspapers between 29 January and 7 February 1902 reported about 100 killed and some 200 wounded and driven away by employes of George Dorris, as the wire alleged.
- The Monte Vista Journal of 1 March 1902 reported that Teofilo Trujillo had sold his livestock and land east of Hooper, Colorado, to L. B. Sylvester and would raise sheep near Ft. Garland, and that there would be no more sheep killing in that neighborhood because Sylvester was a straight cattle man; the 2003 National Register form for the Trujillo homestead gives the price as $30,000.
- The 2003 National Register form, prepared for the National Park Service, gives Teofilo Trujillo’s dates as 1838 to 1915 and says he reported 600 sheep in the 1885 Colorado census.
- The General Land Office patent, certificate №413, dated 1 June 1882 at the Del Norte land office, gave Teofilo Trujillo title to the southwest quarter of Section 1, Township 40 North, Range 11 East, 160 acres; the National Parks History Project’s overlay of the Park Service’s boundary and tract files on the Bureau of Land Management survey grid puts all of Section 1 inside the boundary and inside one tract that the Service’s records list as federal land held in fee, with a conveyance field dated 22 September 2022.
- The National Parks History Project found no word spoken or written by Teofilo Trujillo in the 1902 newspaper pages it examined or in the National Register form, and it has not seen any court record of the hearing at Mosca.
Notes: how this was sourced, and what I could not check
I read the 1902 pages as Library of Congress scans, and the Saguache Crescent item as a screen capture from Colorado Historic Newspapers. Each passage quoted here was checked a second time against the page image. I compared the four wire printings as scanned text.
- Who holds the land now, and where Trujillo’s house stood on it. A patent names the land, not a house site. The tract records are a Park Service data file edited in June 2023, not a title search, and they name no owner. I have not seen a county record.
- The dates of the hearing and the fire, any court record of the hearing, and any later proceeding. The Journal gives no date for either event, and both fall in January 1902. The National Register form puts the fire in February, but the Journal had it in print on 1 February. I have not seen county or court records.
- Other papers and one digit. I have not read the Alamosa Courier, the Center Dispatch, or the Saguache Crescent after 30 January. The first digit of the price in the Journal of 1 March is unreadable to me on the scan, so I cite the form for the sum.
Where to check each claim
- The Monte Vista Journal, page 1: 1 February 1902, 8 February 1902 and 1 March 1902. Library of Congress scans with full-text search.
- The Saguache Crescent, 30 January 1902, item “War on Sheep Men”: Colorado Historic Newspapers.
- The wire report: The Lamar Register, 29 January 1902, page 2 and The Dolores Star, 31 January 1902, page 2.
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Trujillo Homestead, Alamosa County, Colorado, Front Range Research Associates, 2003.
- General Land Office patent, certificate №413, Del Norte, 1 June 1882. Bureau of Land Management scan.
- The National Park Service boundary and tract data, laid over the Bureau of Land Management survey grid for Township 40 North, Range 11 East. The tract record is GRSA-02–101. These are data services, not pages.
National Parks History Project is an app. It documents park histories, sourced independently and checked against primary records.
https://nullciphersystems.com/sources/a-stumped-court-a-burned-house-and-thirty-dead-sheep
