A Sanctuary in Sedalia: The Quiet Corner Where Wolfensberger Meets 105

Sometimes you have those days.

Sometimes you have those weeks.

And sometimes you have them more often than not.

Well, if you need a place to get away from it all for a little bit, I've got the spot for you.

A Sanctuary Center is just a short drive from town, out where Wolfensberger meets 105. Just under four acres right there at the corner. Sue and Jack Pfeiffer started it in the early 2000s — it began with a friend's piece of land that was gifted, and the chapel went up three years after that. I was fortunate enough to randomly run into Sue there last week and got a few nice tidbits of information about the area. We were not alone during the hour that we were there after she left. One person showed up and parked the car to read with one leg out the driver's side window, and another looked like an adult father/daughter combo.

Here's the part I didn't know until I went digging. That corner has been pulling people in for a lot longer than Sue's been out there. A one-room schoolhouse went up on it in 1899 — Oakland School, its own little district, fifteen to twenty kids a year — and it ran until 1958. The building isn't even gone. The district hauled it into town, and it sits at South Ridge Elementary today as a museum. So Sue didn't really start something on that corner. She restarted it.

There's no distinct rhyme or reason to it all, at least not when I first got there. But it seems to function as a sort of refuge for those who seek to remember, who seek to reflect, and maybe even explore. This place is meant to be whatever it is that you need it to be. I saw things with different religious, spiritual, and other backgrounds. There's a chapel that's open sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, and plenty of different outdoor areas for reflection, sitting peacefully, or trying to figure out what exactly it is that you're looking at. There were things from a labyrinth to wishing trees to different hexagon things — which turn out to be Platonic solids in a sacred geometry garden, along with a medicine wheel and a sundial. People drop personal notes, figurines, and other mementos all around. There are books that can be taken (borrowed) from the chapel, but they do ask for them to be returned so others might be able to enjoy the words upon the pages.

Jack is no longer with us, and Sue says that Magpie Art Center over in Sedalia is in place to take over the operations when she takes her next journey. She's enjoyed carving this corner over the years — what was once originally a friend's piece of land that didn't have much functional use has brought her great joy: acquiring it, imagining what it could become, creating and ideating with friends and family, and caretaking it through the years. She was cleaning up when we arrived, which shows her pride in the place. She understands its impact on those that she's been fortunate enough to run into throughout the years and hopes that its role will continue on for the years to come.

And here's the science behind it: I have no idea, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you find yourself in need of an extended moment of silence or reflection, a bit of rest or relief, or an excuse to explore something new, whether outside or within…

I hope you try it out someday. I hope it leaves you better than it found you, and that you leave it better than you found it.

What's actually out there

The property is small enough to walk in twenty minutes and curious enough to keep you out there for hours.

There is no single main attraction, which is most of the reason the place is disorienting. Paths run off in every direction and each one ends at something different.

The labyrinth is the one people know about. It is not a maze — a maze has dead ends and is built to confuse you, while a labyrinth has one path in and one path out, nothing to solve. You just walk it. Denver Post reporting put it at about 50 feet across, and it walks a lot longer than that because of the way the path doubles back on itself.

The sacred geometry garden is the "hexagon things." Large rusted-steel Platonic solids sit out in the grass — the five shapes Plato tied to the classical elements — alongside a medicine wheel, a Pa-Kua laid out in stone slabs — the eight-sided Chinese symbol that feng shui is built on — and a sundial. Each has its own small carved sign, so you're not left guessing the way I was.

The wishing trees are the ones that stay with you. You write a wish or a prayer on a cloth streamer and tie it to a branch, a tradition that shows up across a lot of cultures. When the limbs get too full, the streamers are pruned and the messages burned, so they go up with the smoke rather than into a trash bag.

Scattered around the rest of it: singing bowls on stone plinths, benches under the pines, a pergola with two chairs facing each other, statues including Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Francis of Assisi, and small shrines where people leave shells, figurines, painted rocks and notes.

The Memorial Grove sits back under the pines — a stone marker and a bench, quieter and more deliberate than the rest of it. There are engraved plaques set into the walkways elsewhere on the property too, one of them reading "Paving The Way." People are remembered here by name.

The Xeriscape Educational Garden is the most practical thing on the property and the least advertised. It is signed and laid out to be read, which in a county this dry is genuinely useful and not something you expect to find next to a medicine wheel.

The old schoolhouse pieces turn up out in the open — a cast-iron potbelly stove going to rust in the grass, and a row of vintage wooden school desks. The Oakland School stood on this corner long before any of the rest of this existed, and those are its leftovers, sitting outside without much ceremony.

There is also a small wooden lending-library box out on the grounds, separate from the shelves inside the chapel, plus bamboo wind chimes in the pines, angel figures gathered around a tree stump, and a bench at the top of the rise where the whole property opens up below you.

The chapel is one room — 864 square feet, with a vaulted ceiling that runs about thirteen feet. It is painted, which the photos do not really prepare you for: the ceiling is a night-sky navy worked with clouds, and the walls run terracotta into a sunset. There is a framed pioneer landscape, a few chairs, window alcoves with more singing bowls tucked into them, and three bookshelves that make up the lending library. Take a book; bring it back.

The corner has a longer history than the center does

A one-room schoolhouse was built at what is now Highway 105 and Wolfensberger Road in 1899. It was called Oakland School, and per a Castle Rock newspaper clipping preserved by the school district, it "was actually its own district," serving fifteen to twenty students a year until it closed in 1958.

The building survived. Douglas County School District moved it into town — the relocation doubled as a project for the high school carpentry class — and it stands today at South Ridge Elementary, preserved as a museum and teaching model. A sign on the Sanctuary property still marks the spot.

How it came to be

The ground had been in one Sedalia ranching family for a generation. Virginia M. Pollock bought the parcel in July 1973 for $11,000; her husband, Dr. H. Carlyle Pollock, bred and raised thoroughbreds on the family's Sedalia ranch. After Virginia's death the property passed through the family, and in September 2000 the Carla P. Holst Trust deeded the land to A Sanctuary Center on a warranty deed recorded at $0 — given, not sold. Carla Pollock Holst is a daughter of that ranching family, per her brother's published obituary.

The IRS granted A Sanctuary Center its 501(c)(3) status in December 2000. The chapel went up in 2003, and the property opened to the public in 2004. A donor plaque inside the chapel, dated June 2004, lists the people and businesses who built it — contractors, a window cleaner, a paint supplier, the Douglas County Garden Club, CSU Extension Master Gardeners, and, among the names, "Chris Pfeiffer – Artist." Sue told me a son did the painting; the wall backs her up.

In 2013, the Pfeiffers had the property designated as open space, which is what keeps it what it is rather than what four acres at a highway corner could otherwise become. The Douglas County Master Gardeners help maintain the plantings.

Jack Pfeiffer passed away in 2024. Sue still looks after the place, and says Magpie Art Center in Sedalia is lined up to take over when she can't.

If you go

A Sanctuary Center, 3720 West Wolfensberger Road, Sedalia, CO 80135 — the corner of Wolfensberger and Colorado Highway 105.
Hours: sunrise to sunset, seven days a week.
Cost: free. It's a 501(c)(3); donations go through asanctuarycenter.org.
Bring: flat shoes and a little time. There's a restroom, but no water and no food.
Full details, photos and map: A Sanctuary Center on the DougCo Directory.

If you're making a morning of it out that way, Cherokee Ranch & Castle and Magpie Art Center are both close, and Lost Canyon Ranch Open Space is the bigger walk on the Castle Rock side.