A couple of weeks ago, we took advantage of another one of the Estes Park Museum’s great programs to visit some of the historic sites in Rocky Mountain National Park with Ken Jessen. Philip had been on a few tours last year with Jim Pickering but this was my first. We all met at the Museum and loaded onto the mini bus which was great because we could all see the beautiful scenery on the way. We were going to view many of the remnants of what used to be huge lodges and buildings in the park.
 
In the 1930s Rocky Mountain National Park bought these lodges and cabins with the intention of returning the park to its natural setting. In Moraine Park alone there were sixty buildings. By the 1960s there were none left in the park; they had been either razed or burned down. Along Fall River Road where the Lawn Lake Trailhead now stands was Fall River Lodge which was a 3-story structure complete with a huge recreation hall. The lodge held 100 guests and also boasted a fishing pond, 14 cabins, a barn and a corral. It was interesting to see how historians determined that a certain structure stood in a particular spot…by the way the grass grew or by a piece of the foundation….and putting all of the pieces together along with the old photographs. When they started to construct Old Fall River Road, they recruited 38 convicts from Colorado State Penitentiary. To house them all they built what they called the “Convict Cabins.” You can still see the remnants of two of these along the roadside.
 
As you turn the bend past where Old Fall River turns off of US 34, you can see the mound where Horseshoe Inn stood. This Inn could accommodate 50 guests with an added 4 cabins and 12 tent-cottages. We parked a short way up and took the old dirt road to the left and saw the old water diversion structure where Willard Ashton piped water through ditches to irrigate his homestead. We could see the old walkway from the road to the house. The old root cellar is still standing as well as the garage which is now used for storage. Past this homestead we could see where a large tent camp stood among the aspens. It’s fascinating to imagine what it was like to live during these times.
 
At the junction of US 34 and US 36 where the Deer Mountain Trailhead is located was Deer Ridge Chalet. This was a huge lodge, 6 cabins, a 50-foot observation tower, filling station, livery barn, outhouses and an Indian Gift Store. It is just astounding to think that there were once this many huge structures in Rocky Mountain National Park. We proceeded down to Upper Beaver Meadows where Pieter Hondius owned over 3,000 acres and a modest sized ranch house and barn. We took a walk up to the water diversion structure that he built to supply water to his house and eventually down to the residential area on High Drive. This was really incredible how they diverted the water from a small stream through a filtering system of gravel and then down to the ranch and farther. It is amazing to think that these people used this water supply until 1993. Driving out of Upper Beaver Meadows, we stopped to see where the Hupp Homestead stood and their grave marker which RMNP gave the family special permission to install years later.
 
Driving down Cub Lake Road we stopped and saw where Sprague’s Resort was started In Moraine Park in 1847. This began as a homestead and grew to a complex of 40 structures including a three-story log hotel, a swimming pool, a 9-hole golf course and a tennis court. In 1963 all of these buildings were razed and the golf course was put to its natural state. It was so interesting to see remnants of old roads or walkways and to walk where so many people stayed in these incredible lodges years ago. It is mind-boggling to look around Moraine Park and try to reminisce what is used to look like in the early 1900s when so many people populated the area.
 
These historic tours are put on by the Estes Park Museum periodically and are well worth it. It is so much fun to catch a glimpse of what life was like 100 years ago and to compare it to today. When we returned to the Museum we promptly went into purchase Ken Jessen’s new book, “Rocky Mountain National Park Pictorial History”, so we could see what so many of these structure actually looked like years ago. The book has amazing photographs of many of the lodges, along with hundreds of others. If you read about an Estes Park Museum tour, register fast as the seats fill up rapidly.