Working to preserve history

South Platte Hotel placed on endangered places list

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

A dilapidated historic building near Buffalo Creek may get new life now that it is on Colorado’s Most Endangered Places list.

The South Platte Hotel, which was built in 1913, is in the North Fork Historic District and the only building remaining of the South Platte community. The property has been owned by Denver Water since 1987, and the building was slated for demolition.

The Most Endangered Places list is created each year by Colorado Preservation Inc., and the organization announced on Feb. 9 additions to the list, which included the South Platte Hotel.

Last August, the Jefferson County Historic Commission received a letter from Denver Water stating that the building would be demolished, which made John Steinle, a local historian, spring into action.

“We have talked about that building for a long time, what might be done and how it could be saved,” Steinle said. “The letter put us into emergency mode. What (the letter) did was galvanize us, and we contacted a lot of local organizations to get them mobilized and aware of the situation.”

Among the organizations interested in preserving the building are the Evergreen Mountain Area Historical Society, the Conifer Historical Society, the Pine Elk Creek Improvement Association and Jefferson County Open Space.

Steinle hopes the organizations can meet with Denver Water officials and put their heads together to come up with a plan.

“Our next step is to contact the decisionmakers at Denver Water and have a discussion of what they are amenable to do,” Steinle said. “Hopeful we can work with them in the near future and keep them from tearing it down and figure out what to do with it.”

Colorado Preservation Inc. will facilitate and assist the local orga- nizations with finding a solution to keep the building, said Endangered Places Director Katie Peterson, who noted that it takes local community initiative to preserve historic sites.

She said since the hotel was so close to the Colorado Trail and the South Platte River, options should be available to keep the building.

According to Jose Salas, a Denver Water spokesman, Denver Water bought the hotel building because it would be within the area underwater with the proposed Two Forks Reservoir, which ultimately was never built.

“With no waterworks purposes for Denver Water to warrant the expenditure of ratepayer funding for building repairs, the structure has progressively deteriorated over the last four decades and is currently extremely unsafe,” Salas wrote in an email. “Denver Water has installed fencing to deter the public from trying to enter the unsafe structure while we go through the process of determining its future.”

He said Denver Water understood the site’s historic significance and wanted to work with other groups to determine potentially viable options, and no decisions have been made.

Hotel history

The community of South Platte was at the confluence of the North Fork of the South Platte River. According to Preservation Colorado, the hotel originally was constructed in 1887 by Charles Walbrecht and his wife Millie, an example of a working-class resort hotel. In its day, the hotel offered 14 rooms to stagecoach passengers and train passengers on the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad narrowgauge line.

Steinle said many communities sprang up in the late 1800s along the railroad, especially between Buffalo Creek and Pine Grove, a reminder of how intense railroading was in Colorado and how important the railroads were to the state’s economy.

The hotel also operated a post office, and by 1900 the town, population 40, included the hotel, railroad-related businesses and a general merchandise store. Five years later the Walbrechts expanded the hotel to include a saloon.

According to legend, the hotel was set on fire and burned to the ground in 1912. It was replaced with the structure that is still standing today, according to Preservation Colorado.

Student involvement

It’s not just area historical societies who are interested in preserving the South Platte Hotel. In the 2012-13 school year, West Jefferson Middle School English teacher Frank Reetz and a team of students embarked on a project to restore the Billy Westall Monument near the South Platte community. This project was successfully completed in 2014 and recognized by the Jefferson County Historical Commission.

With that success, Reetz and his students began studying the South Platte Hotel, and students wrote essays on what should be done with the building, especially given its neglected state, that were published in 2018 in the periodical “Historically Colorado.”

While a few students said the building was too expensive to renovate and preserve, some suggested restoring it to a functioning hotel, preserving part of the building, or creating a park on the property as a way to preserve its history.

As one student put it: “We must protect this historic space from the forces of nature. We cannot let the destruction of this area. It is spiritual and special to the community.”