The Nature Conservancy Aiken Canyon, over 1,600 acres of pristine nature preserve also borders the Ranch. Over 100 species of birds were catalogued in the area by Charles Aiken, a U.S. surveyor, taxidermist, and collector in the 1870s. It was named in honor of Charles Edward Howard Aiken (1850-1936), who grew up in Vermont and Chicago. After Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871, he relocated to Colorado with his family, where they ran a sheep ranch a few miles south of the future preserve. Charles, a bird collector since a young age, had been apprenticed to a taxidermist in Chicago, and continued this profession in Colorado. As was common in the days before widespread photography and use of binoculars, the sad method to learn about birds was to shoot and stuff them.