Louisa B. Frost

Location of Name: On the walls of Spaulding's Cavern inside North Gateway Rock.

Condition of Name: The picture taken by the Colorado Springs Gazette and Telegraph photographer in 1935 showed the name Mrs. Lou Frost to be entirely legible.

Biography: Louisa was born in 1846 in Missouri. When she was nineteen years old her parents decided on a move to Colorado Territory. On 7 April 1865 they crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph. On the other side of the river they organized with one hundred other wagons into a train under the command of Captain Cross.

Other members of the wagon train included a Jack Morris, his wife and mother; a Methodist minister by the name of Johnson, his wife and niece and two orphaned nephews; two bachelors; a maiden lady and her mother and a young man driving their wagon; a Dr. Massey and his family; a young man named Jeff Compton, who was Louisa's beau during the trip. Several of these emigrants figured in the sham wedding planned by Louisa and one of her friends:

"One evening, we wanted a little fun in camp. We asked one of the bachelors and our maiden lady, Miss Nancy Matthews, to get married - just for fun. So they said they would. My chum and I went to the preacher and let him in on the secret. He was to say only what was necessary to carry out the effect, not the real service, to make them man and wife. After it was over we told them that they were really married because Mr. Johnson was really a minister. The old bachelor was furious but our maiden lady was pleased. We had a lot of fun with them but finally made it all right with the old bachelor by assuring him he wasn't married."

The year 1865 was a time of serious Indian uprisings all along the trails leading into Colorado Territory. Almost all the stage stations and road ranches along the Platte River had already been burned by marauding Indians. Louisa's wagon train did not make it through without the usual alarms. In latter years, Luoisa recalled one of those incidents:

"After strenuous traveling for several days the captain told us we could stop and rest for a day or so. We went down to the river to do some washing. Just as we had the clothes well soaked with water, we were told to pack everything at once and come back to camp as some Indians were there and acting very strange...There were about 50 mounted warriors, gaudy in paint and feathers. Some wore buckskin but most of them were almost nude. They watched us silently for quite a while.

"Our men were all on guard and well armed so they didn't try anything...The captain figured they might be intending to bring more men later on for an attack, consequently when the Indians were well out of sight, he ordered to pack up and cross the river for a better position....

"Guards listened to every movement on the prairie that night. If the Indians were coming back it was expected at dawn as that was the favorite time for them to attack. So long before daylight, our camp was up. But we were not molested that time or any other time, and made it to Colorado without getting scalped."

On reaching Colorado Louisa settled with her parents in Fort Collins. From there her father moved the family to East Cherry Creek in Black Forest. By 1870 Louisa was married to Edward W. Frost, a former government scout, Indian fighter and veteran of the Civil War. In the census of 1870 Louisa and and her husband were listed as living at Virginia in El Paso County. (Virginia had ten houses in 1870. The name was changed to Frost's Ranch in 1871, to Rock Ridge in 1872, and finally discontinued in 1892). Edward was twenty-four years old, according to the census taker of 1870. Louisa was one year his junior, and keeping house for her husband, her brother Amos, and three other hired men. Louisa and Edward had one child, Edward Jr., then one year old.

Th Frost family later moved to Colorado Springs, where they raised a family of three sons. Edward became a city alderman, water comissioner and health comissioner. He died in 1914 at the age of seventy-nine. Louisa survived him for twenty-two years. When her name was discovered inside Spaulding's Cavern in 1935, she was the oldest member of the El Paso County Pioneer Society. She died the following year.