The property is associated with the early settlement of the Platte Canyon area of northern Park County.

James B. Putnam homesteaded the ranch’s original 160 acres in 1881.  When purchased by the Buckley family in 1908, the cattle ranch spread across more than 2,500 acres.  During the 1920s, sheep replaced cattle as the primary focus of ranching in the South Park area, and the production of hay also played an important role in the successful operation of the ranch.

The Guiraud-McDowell Ranch was established by the Guiraud family in 1862 and quickly became one of South Park’s preeminent ranch operations.  After her husband Adolphe’s death in 1875, Marie Guiraud continued to grow ranch operations, taking advantage of the arrival of the railroad in Park County by platting the nearby town of Garo. 

The building represents, both physically and intellectually, the growth and evolution of public education in the South Park area of Park County.  The original Italianate style portion was constructed in 1881, and it has remained in use as a public educational facility ever since.

The site, located at an elevation of 11,498 feet, was a key element of the Denver South Park & Pacific Railroad’s route that ran from Como to Breckenridge and then on to Leadville. 

The 1899 mill is architecturally representative of a turn-of-the-century agricultural processing and storage facility typically found in rural Colorado communities. 

The 1915 First Methodist Episcopal Church in Windsor is an excellent ecclesiastical example of Classical Revival and a well-preserved example of high style architecture applied in a small town setting.  Nebraska architect John R. Smith designed the building.

The townsite is the only remaining Colorado example of the national African-American colonization movement inspired by Booker T. Washington.  It was one of fourteen colonies, or rural towns, established in the West to provide Americans of African descent with the opportunity to own and work their own land.  By 1917, sixty African-American families worked its 15,000 acres.

The district yielded, and continues to yield, important information regarding northeastern Colorado’s prehistoric and early historic periods, especially in relation to the use of rock shelters and stone rings.

Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette built an adobe fort on this site about 1835 as part of their fur trading enterprise.  The two sold the fort in 1841 and it was abandoned a year later.