TRACT 18 AND TRACT 19 - GERTRUDE WOODRUFF

Gertrude Woodruff was the 17th signer of the 1940 Federal Heights petition to incorporate.  She purchased Tracts 18 and 19 from Clifford H. and Lucy N. Innes on July 11, 1936 and was eligible to sign the petition as a landowner of the area to be annexed.

Gertrude Anna Bonner was born on September 3, 1874 in Abilene, Kansas to Clara Miller and Orlando Bonner, a captain in the Civil War.  She was an only child.

On September 4, 1895, Gertrude married Mark G. Woodruff in Monte Vista in south central Colorado.

Mark Woodruff was born in Missouri.  His dad died when he was 14.  Before he married Gertrude, he’d been the editor of the Aspen Leader newspaper, a silver miner, served as the Creede County Clerk, was in theatre production and was part owner of a copper mine.

The young couple had two children, a daughter Jean Frances who was born in June 1896 and died in August that same year, and a son Jesse Bonner who was born in December 1897 and died in January 1899.

Mark was appointed postmaster at a small post office in Amethyst, Colorado (later known as Creede); Gertrude was the deputy postmaster in Creede.  Mark served as Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal organization and secret society founded in 1864.

Mark was a route agent for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and ran for state auditor.  In 1903, he won the race for register of the state land office.  While in that role, he discovered large cattle dealers in Otero County who had illegally fenced thousands of acres of state land and he collected many old debts. 

The Woodruff’s daughter Miriam Clark was born in Denver in 1904.

Mark resigned from his position at the state land office in 1907 because, in his words, the Board “denied him the right to discipline employees for incompetency and insubordination.”  He went on to become the supervisor of Pike’s Peak forest service. 

The Woodruffs’ troubles began shortly after his resignation when Mark was accused of making shady land deals while serving at the state land office.  He was accused of making a fraudulent 40-year extension of a coal company’s lease.  Woodruff owned 50,000 shares in the coal company, valued at $25,000, and extended the lease at a fraction of the cost of its $1,000,000 value which would have gone into school funding.  According to a newspaper report, “the forgery, whose object was to rob the children of the state to the tune of $1,000,000.”  The lease extension was cancelled.  Charges were filed against Mark and two accomplices in 1907 and the Woodruffs left town.  It was rumored that some of the state’s highest  ranking government officials were funding the Woodruffs’ escape and paying their living expenses in Nevada, Utah, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, California and Mexico in order to keep Mark Woodruff from naming officials who participated in the fraudulent deals as more were being discovered.

 In 1908, a warrant was issued for Mark Woodruff’s arrest and as the investigation continued, Gertrude was implicated in an attempt to trade Cripple Creek mining stock to one of the beneficiaries of Mark’s fraudulent land deals in exchange for him to void the deal.  Two former governors and a former secretary of state testified in the case.

The Woodruffs remained on the lam as the investigations continued until June 1909 when it was reported that Gertrude and daughter Miriam would return to Denver so Mrs. Woodruff could tell the authorities what she knew.  She’d been living in Seattle, Washington.  Mark, who’d been a reporter at the Evening Telegram in Portland, Oregon, had received word that his mother, who lived in Colorado, was ill. It was rumored that he could return to Denver and tell all he knew about the land scandal.

Mark came to Colorado to visit his mother and had been hiding at a ranch in Platteville for several weeks when he was arrested while driving to Denver. 

Though Mark had been charged with embezzlement and forgery, the statute of limitations had run out on the embezzlement charge.  By September 1909, the forgery charge had been dismissed because of lack of evidence and Mark Woodruff was a free man.

The Woodruffs left Colorado and moved to Portland, Oregon where Mark resumed his career as a newspaper reporter.  He became the secretary of the Newspapermen of Oregon Press Club and the Portland Press Club and the press representative for Orpheum theatre.  He was publicity manager of the Portland, Eugene & Eastern Railway.  Family records indicate that little Miriam died in Portland in 1910.

In 1916, Gertrude was active in the Colorado Society in Portland, a club consisting of former Colorado residents, serving as chairman of the picnic committee and the entertainment committee.

By the 1920 census, Mark Woodruff was divorced and living with his mom and stepfather in Portland.  He worked in public relations and was heavily involved with the Masons and Shriners, travelling around the country.  His mom, whose illness had taken him to Colorado where he was arrested in 1909, died in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 30, 1922.  Mark died in Salem, Oregon on December 8, 1944, after a brief illness.

After Gertrude and Mark were divorced, Gertrude moved back to Denver and lived with her mother Clara at 1140 Fillmore Street.  A 1928 newspaper article reported that Gertrude struck a pedestrian with her car at 14th and Gilpin.  The woman recovered.  In 1936, Gertrude bought the Woods Mortuary Building in Golden, about the same time she purchased Tracts 18 and 19 in North Federal Heights. Gertrude remained in the Denver area for several more years, selling her Federal Heights tracts to Forrest and Augusta J. Rickard on October 7, 1947.  Gertrude died in 1965 and is buried in the Monte Vista Cemetery in Monte Vista, Colorado where her parents are buried.