I recently gave a talk at the Colorado Springs Senior Center on my book, “Insider’s Guide to Colorado Springs.” When it came to the Q&A portion, they all started asking about street names. I did not research this for my book (a travel guide), so I could not answer some of their questions. The one that had most of us stumped was: Where does Templeton Gap get its name? Who was Templeton and to what does “the gap” refer? We’re all curious!

– Linda DuVal

ANSWER: The Templeton name goes back in local history to the 1860s when the family came here from Illinois by covered wagon. The Templetons, headed by patriarch Henry Templeton, pursued endeavors including a flour mill and hauling lumber to help build Old Colorado City where there was a Templeton Block. The Templeton Building is at 25th Street and West Colorado Avenue. There were eight children in the family and several members of the family are buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

It’s widely held that Templeton Gap/Templeton Gap Road were named for A.J. “Uncle Jack” Templeton, who died in 1909 at age 82 at his ranch in Woodland Park where he had lived for 30 years, according to geneologists.

As is often the case with early – usually oral –  history, what makes it a little cloudy is that a geneology tracker lists “Uncle Jack” as “the last of six members of his family.” However, 26 years later a Gazette Telegraph reporter interviewed several of the now-elderly Templeton siblings –  from the family with eight children – and they were living in Colorado Springs/Old Colorado City and several other Colorado towns.

“Uncle Jack” was reportedly a deputy U.S. Marshal and recruiting officer for the cavalry unit that fought at Sand Creek (often called the “Sand Creek Massacre”) and “one of the leading members of the law and order committee in (Old) Colorado City in the early days.”

Marshall Sprague’s “Newport in the Rockies” says “Uncle Jack” ranched in the Templeton Gap area in the 1860s and was a veterinarian who delivered not only calves and colts but human babies as well. In case there’s a Templeton family historian, we’d love to hear your story to put all of this together.

Now about that “Gap” question. Local history talks about the oxen wagon trains arriving in what was to become Colorado Springs through an open space between the bluffs and hills north of what is now the area of Austin Bluffs Parkway and Union Boulevard.

– Send questions or answers to questions to linda.navarro@gazettedev.gazette.com.