Eugene Rourke, born on St. Patrick's Day in 1849 in Wicklow County, Ireland, immigrated with his family to La Salle, Illinois, in 1852; after his parents died soon afterward, he worked as a farmhand by day and educated himself at night, later becoming a stationary engine operator in the Illinois coal fields. Drawn west by rumors of gold, he went to Colorado in 1869, and by 1871 had saved enough to leave Black Hawk and travel more than 200 miles southeast to the Purgatoire River Valley, where he established Rourke Ranch on 40 acres in a semi-arid region he recognized as suited to ranching. In 1875 he married Mary Dooner and brought her to the ranch, and in 1876 they bought a house in Trinidad, probably to be near a doctor when their first boy was born. Three of their 10 children died young, two in an epidemic in Trinidad and one from snakebite. Known locally as the Wineglass Ranch after the family brand, the ranch became the social center of the Bent Canyon community in the late 19th century, when most of its 450 residents were small-scale cattle and sheep ranchers. Although the community declined in the early 1900s, the Rourke family remained prominent, expanded its cattle operation, and moved to La Junta in 1898 to benefit from its schools. Built in 1871 from locally quarried stone by Eugene's brother James, the original homestead was destroyed when the Purgatoire River flooded in 1904. Over a 100-year family history devoted entirely to cattle raising, the ranch grew from 40 acres in 1871 to more than 50,000 acres when it left the family three generations later in 1971.