Music in the Park Cruisin' the Canyon Car Show Steamroller Printmaking Event
SOUTH FORK
Colorfest & Hog Roast
Fall Colors Driving Tours
Par Fly Golf & Fly shing Tournament
Starr y, Starry Nights
A San Luis Valley drive-in finds new life with creative lodging, movies and lawn chairs. by Eric Peterson
Moose Encounters
Local wildfires and mountain climates encourage Colorado’s reintroduced moose population to grow. by Peter Moore 30
Life and Loss Along the Rio Grande
The Rio Grande River along Highway 149 shares the history of a family and the loss of a son and brother. by Jennifer Young Perlman
Craig: Digging Deeper
Between coal mining, dinosaur bone discovery and western memorabilia, Craig finds its place in history. story by Tom Hess photographs by Joshua Hardin
Moose Encounters, p 22
Craig: Digging Deeper, p 34
ON THE COVER
On the first of a four-night backpacking trip, evening light filters through the canopy onto an aspen grove in the West Elk Mountains in Gunnison County. Story begins on page 62.
IN EVERY ISSUE
10 Sluice Box
46 Poetry
A Calhan couple has collected over 200,000 treasures for their antique shop, and after a recent bull injury, a Hartsel rodeo cowboy goes pro.
16 Trivia
Get low below the mountains, ridges and mesas for a quiz on Colorado’s valleys. Answers on page 61.
42 Kitchens
Cheer on your favorite team with these snack-and-share sliders ready for game-day parties.
56
Changing colors and seasons encourage poets to delight in Colorado’s vast and bountiful landscapes.
Go. See. Do.
Hot-air balloons in the Animas Valley light up the night and morning skies. Find seven more fall festivals and traditions scheduled this October.
60 Camping
Riverside campers explore the Western Slope at James M. Robb State Park’s Island Acres near Palisade.
Don’t worry! You are not missing any issues. To ensure that you receive timely magazines, we have decided to defer the July/August issue and continue with our September/October issue. Every subscriber will have one additional issue added at the end of their current subscription period at no extra charge. Thank you for your patience as we continue to share beautiful stories of Colorado.
Above: Chris Amundson, Dan Leeth Page 5: Jeremy Swanson, Joshua Hardin, Deb Adams
Map by Raven Maps & Images
Rangely p 34
Craig p 34
Steamboat Springs p 22
Palisade p 60
Evergreen p 22
Hartsel p 10
Gunnison p 62
Westcliffe p 48
Center p 18
South Fork p 30
Durango p 54
Calhan p 10
Bird watchers are finding their perfect playground on the Pioneering Plains of northeast Colorado. The natural backdrop of Plains areas in Sterling and Logan County invites birders to journey off the beaten track in search of new encounters with a variety of species in an unspoiled environment.
Did you know there are more than 300 species of birds in this
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2024
Volume 13, Number 4
Publisher & Editor
Chris Amundson
Associate Publisher
Angela Amundson
Production Assistants
Victoria Finlayson
Lauren Warring
Design
Jennifer Stevens
Mark Del Rosario
John Anton Sisbreño
Tim Parks
Senior Editor
Tom Hess
Advertising Sales
Sarah Smith
Subscriptions
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NUGGETS AND OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LIFE IN COLORADO
An organized mess
A Calhan couple settle in after bringing home more than 200,000 treasures to their antique shop
by TOM HESS
Seated comfortably in his recliner is an 84-year-old man who’s earned his rest. Calvin “Cal” Chaussee (pronounced “show-see”), looks out his office window toward his life’s work – what his wife of 61 years, Annette, laughingly calls an “organized mess.” See what Annette means as you walk the seemingly endless aisles of Cadillac Jack’s in Calhan: 200,000 collectible items displayed floor to ceiling. The aisles are offset; you’ll lose sight of Cal and Annette, and likely whoever came with you, too.
Cal and Annette gathered those thousands of items beginning on Oct. 1 each year, towing a truck behind their 40-footlong Fleetwood motor coach. They picked destinations south of Interstate 70, away from snow and ice. They drove as far as Florida, with stops in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Kansas. They brought back to Calhan, in far eastern El Paso County, treasures from estate sales and abandoned stores and homes, getting permission from owners when they could.
Their travels ended in 2020, with Covid, and with age. Close by Cal’s recliner is his walker; he’s had neuropathy since age 24, and it’s gotten worse. Next to Cal’s left hand is the store phone. Among the callers are toy collectors asking about Cal’s antiques. The phone also rings with calls for the Calhan Chamber of Commerce, many of the calls from families wanting to move out of the big city to Calhan. Annette’s recliner is next to his, but she’s rarely seated in it. She uses it as a surface for things to be filed or shelved.
At Cadillac Jack’s in Calhan, each corner offers a new discovery as customers tour densely decorated aisles filled with objects long forgotten by adults and rarely seen by the young.
Calhan’s population was 736 in 2022, down 24 from 2020; some say the town will reverse that trend and grow to five times that number in a few years. In the 40 years since the Chaussees opened Cadillac Jack’s, much older businesses closed, leaving the antique store among the oldest businesses still lighting its “Open” sign. From his vantage point, Cal has an eye for unique toys. He learned about toys early on, beginning in 1952 at a Ben Franklin five-and-dime store in Vermillion, South Dakota. “I had to know every manufacturer, the model of toy truck, a model 50 or a model 60 made by Tonka,” he said.
“The toys came in cardboard boxes, and I burned those boxes in a 55-gallon barrel, for hours a day. Today those boxes are worth as much as every toy, $25 million dollars’ worth.”
That toy knowledge stuck with him all these years. That is why he’s never needed a computer, never sent an email, doesn’t own a cellphone and rarely reads collectors’ price guides – the ones on the shelf behind him are decades outdated. Whether it is Depression glass or Coca-Cola relics, he pays what he thinks is the right price, adds his markup and puts it on the shelf. Some items get a mark-down.
Chris Amundson
The coin-operated Uncle Sam Personality Tester, standing six feet high, its metal hand extended toward shop visitors, had been priced at $3,500. It’s now on sale for $1,888.
How does Cal know if he’s paid too much? “When it sits on the shelf too long,” he said. What’s the longest sitting thing in the store? “Him,” Annette said, pointing at Cal. They both laugh.
Among the rarer toys at Cadillac Jack’s is a German-made children’s toy sewing machine from the late 1800s. They bought it from a long-closed antique store in East Texas. They found the owner’s name and phone number in a phone book at the El Paso library and got permission to enter the barn.
“It was right on the highway, full of antiques, all kinds of stuff, lots of holes in the barn,” Cal said. “And it was a mess –snakes and skunks and spiders. You didn’t dare put our arm under a shelf.”
Cadillac Jack’s is nothing like that sketchy barn. It is a safe place, with orderly rows and nothing slithering on the floor. There’s only one locked door, to prevent injury to children. With eight grandkids and 10 great grandkids of their own, Cal and Annette want to keep little ones safe from a room of large, sharpedged metal oil and gas signs. Inside may be the rarest item in the store: a weathered Frontier Gas sign that reads “Fastest Gas in the West,” made rare when Frontier abandoned the phrase in favor of a new one: “Rarin’ to go.”
“There are guys at the Frontier Refinery in Cheyenne, they want to buy that sign so bad, to put in the museum they want to build. That’s a $21,000 sign,” Cal said.
These are the kinds of treasure that drew the late country singer Loretta Lynn, the late daredevil Evel Knievel and popstars the Jonas Brothers to Calhan. So did the son of Al Capone, in search of a pho-
to that Cal found in a box. The photo was dated 1933, signed by Scarface himself.
“One day a brand-new Mercury pulled up to the shop and out came a well-dressed couple asking, ‘Can we see the picture?’
The gentleman looked at the picture and said, ‘This was my dad.’ He looked just like his father,” Cal said.
In exchange for the promise of memorabilia, Cal gave the photo to the man who claimed to be Sonny Capone. Sonny died in 2004; his famous father died in 1947. The memorabilia never arrived.
Cal’s lived a long life. He’s survived and outlived the Capones, snake-filled barns and neuropathy. And he’s got a plan to live even longer; on the advice of a long-lived friend, he drinks Michelob Ultra every third day for good health. It’s worked so far. He might even offer to share a cold one with you (just in case his office fridge is empty, BYOB). He’s got more stories to tell, and the time to tell them.
Sharp-edge metal signs – some worth over $20,000 – stand behind a locked door to protect children. Shopkeeper Annette Chaussee greets visitors from her office window; her husband, Calvin, takes calls on behalf of the local chamber of commerce.
Chris Amundson (both)
by TOM HESS
A South Park High School athlete who had his right lung punctured in 2021 while bull riding has healed up and is headed for college and a career in pro rodeo, thanks to a healing laugh in the hospital.
Monte Downare, a third-generation rodeo cowboy, wasn’t certain he would continue his career when he awakened in the hospital, unable to recall what had happened to him. His father’s best friend, sitting at his bedside, said “an alien abducted you.” The athlete’s laugh was painful but good medicine.
The bull that stomped on him was Hangry Snickers. Monte has ridden the bull four times, which had thrown Monte only once. The friend who had him laugh was the late Matthew Carl Mosher, a friend of his father. Monte healed faster than doctors expected, thanks to Mosher.
Downare’s family and friends have always been there for him. Monte’s grandparents, Monte and Tracy Downare, care for cows and bison on their ranch east of Hartsel, a town of 38 close to the geographic center of Colorado in Park County, rising early enough to start work at 7:30 a.m. They add to their daily chores polishing the silver-and-gold, bejeweled
The good medicine of a laugh heals a busted rodeo star
belt buckles their grandson has won riding broncs and bulls in Colorado rodeo events. The proud grandparents show off all 120 buckles – mounted on a dining room wall – and sports-page newspaper clippings to everyone who pays a visit.
The Downare grandparents were the grandson’s chief sponsors all through his high school years at South Park High, helping cover the cost of traveling to 45 rodeos across the state, from Craig to Hugo to Las Animas to Durango. Downare can’t wait for the day that he accomplishes even half of what his grandpa and dad have
done. Grandson Monte won state championships all four years of high school. Now that he’s graduated, Monte the grandson has turned pro.
Monte attends Casper College this fall. He envisions the day when everyone will smile when he wins the National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas each December, “one, five, six, 10 titles,” he said. He’ll do it not for his own glory, but for his parents’ and grandparents’ behind-the-scenes, out-of-the-bright-lights, busy-ranch-life support. That’s what helped heal him and what keeps him going.
Colorado rodeo bullrider Monte Downare of Hartsel displays his bareback championship prizes: a checkbook cover and belt buckle from the Deer Trail Rodeo.
Tom Hess, Cody Klein
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1 Once semi-arid land, the Uncompahgre Valley greatly expanded with the completion of the Gunnison Tunnel in 1909, a 5.8-mile-long tunnel that diverted water from the Gunnison River toward what town?
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2 Located right next to the Mayflower Tailings Pond, what valley gets its name from an Indiana city? It’s nowhere near Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Bahama, Key Largo or Montego.
3 The Shavano Valley Rock Art Site features several pictographs and petroglyphs. Some were made during the Archaic period, while others were made by what Native American tribe whose name inspired the name of a state bordering Colorado?
4 Snowmelt from Mount Columbia, Mount Oxford, Mount Yale, Mount Princeton and Mount Harvard feed into what river and valley with the same name?
5 The towns of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff can be found in the Wet Mountain Valley. They also comprise an IDSC, meaning the communities have taken steps to significantly reduce light pollution. What does the acronym stand for?
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MULTIPLE CHOICE
6
Paradox Valley has historically been home to mines for uranium and what other elemental metal? As part of the Manhattan Project, a corporation named for this element mined and processed uranium in Uravan, close to the valley.
a. Vanadium
b. Tungsten
c. Yttrium
7 The Cozens Ranch Museum, the IceBox Ice Rink and Hideaway Park Brewing are three attractions in what Colorado valley?
a. Senfeld Valley
b. Fraser Valley
c. Frends Valley
8
The name of northern Colorado’s Kawuneeche Valley is derived from an Arapaho word that refers to what animal? The name of one of the trailheads includes the English name of this animal.
a. Coyote
b. Elk
c. Moose
9
What animals found in the Chicago Basin are notorious for getting incredibly close to campers? Part of this is due to the face that these animals need salt, which they can somewhat grossly find in human urine.
a. Black bears
b. Marmots
c. Mountain goats
10 What picturesque waterfall, known for its frozen flow during the winter, is located not far from the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the San Luis Valley?
a. Bufanda Falls
b. Camisa Falls
c. Zapata Falls
OR FALSE
11
The Grand Valley wasn’t officially named until the late 1800s. It took the name from the city of Grand Junction, which got its name as a corruption of “Grande Junction,” as it began as a settlement near a junction on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad.
12
The Trail Through Time runs through Rabbit Valley in western Colorado, allowing hikers to see fossils partially exposed to the elements and signs about prehistoric flora and fauna.
13
The North Park, Middle Park and South Park basins are three sections of the same larger basin. The three of them combined make the longest valley in the world.
14
Yankee Boy Basin is home to Triplet Falls, a series of three parallel waterfalls.
15 Browns Park is a valley that straddles the border with Utah. The Colorado side is home to the Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge that follows the Green River between the Cold Springs and Diamond Mountains.
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STARRY STARRY NIGHTS
Take a lawn chair for a front-row view of on-screen stars, and the dark-sky stars above.
by ERIC PETERSON
AMIDST A SEA of farmland, the silver screen at the old Frontier Drive-In has stood sentry near the town of Center in south-central Colorado’s San Luis Valley for most of the last century.
Times have changed, and so has the business model. Rebranded with an extra ‘n’ as the Frontier Drive-Inn, the place still features the outdoor screen, but overnight lodging is now the big ticket.
New ownership has reinvented the Frontier for a new generation of moviegoers. Ringed by walls of hay bales, the stark white monolith is now fronted by a green lawn, with the San Juan Mountains on the horizon. Here, people gather at dusk to communally watch the movie of the night, just as they did nearly 70 years ago, minus the cars. It’s now strictly lawn chairs.
gather at dusk to communally watch the movie of the night, just as they did nearly 70 years ago, minus the cars. It’s now
In our increasingly fragmented world, the Frontier is a reinvented throwback, a mashup of old and new. One thing has remained the same: When the sun goes down, it’s time to watch a movie.
Originating in the early 1900s and patented in the 1930s, drive-in movie theaters boomed in mid-20th century America. About 4,000 operated in the 1960s; today, just 300 drive-ins still light up at night.
The original Frontier Drive-In was one of the casualties. It opened in 1955, closed around 1990, and then sat in a state of stasis until Denver-based Born Hospitality Group reopened it in 2022. Frontier co-owner Luke Falcone spearheaded the project with his sister Sonya Falcone, his stepmother Ellen Bruss, and his father Mark Falcone, a real estate developer and founder of Continuum Partners, Born’s parent company.
Before shuttering the drive-in, Spanish-language films entertained a migrant workforce that harvested San Luis Valley potatoes during the day.
When the Falcone family bought the drive-in, they took their time updating the place.
The checklist included replacing 1950s-era arc-light projectors, constructing lodging and restoring the snack bar.
The drive-in screen had stood the test of time, and San Luis Valley winds; they refurbished it, pulling it down to the corrugated metal screen, then sanded and repainted it.
The old snack bar is now a kitchen shared with guests. Sean Chavez, the projectionist, also operates the popcorn machine. The drive-in is part of his family’s valley heritage.
“My great-grandfather, my grandfather, and even my father ran the projector at times,” said Chavez as he meticulously seasoned and served big cups of popcorn. “That was the old kind of projector.”
The longstanding drive-in’s old snack bar is now a kitchen shared with guests.
Valley already had one drive-in with an adjacent motel, Best Western Movie Manor in Monte Vista, so differentiation was a necessity. “That’s why we’re not a traditional drive-in anymore,” Luke said. “We wanted it to be a really immersive kind of a place where you would meet new people and really have the whole experience together, instead of sitting in your car and not talking to anybody.”
The Frontier Drive-Inn screens movies Thursdays through Saturdays. Each weekend’s schedule is themed, running the gamut from baseball to Sandra Bullock to horror.
The new digital projector is compatible with anything with an HDMI port.
Luke Falcone said that kind of experimentation is central to the Drive-Inn’s strategy: The San Luis
Movies “can’t be your core business,” Luke continued. For the Frontier, “That means leaning on what the San Luis Valley has to offer. The San Luis Valley is this unbelievable gem of Colorado in terms of recreational activities and culture and history. We knew that one of the things we had to do was at least get people out there, so overnight accommodations were always part of the vision.”
Frontier Drive-Inn
With 10 yurts, four suites and lawn space for about 500 people, the Frontier is just getting started. The next phase includes RV and tent campsites, more suites and restored Airstream trailers.
The Falcones also are restoring the old 100-seat Center Theater, about two miles north of the Frontier in downtown Center, with an eye towards film festivals and other events. General contractor Randy Barrientez, who oversaw construction at the Frontier, has directed the renovation, which includes four second-level apartments for overnight guests when the theater opens in late 2024.
Like the Frontier, the Center Theater dates to the 1950s, with vintage seating, door handles, and a façade straight out of Hollywood’s golden era.
The theater, like the local drive-in, was dormant for decades before construction commenced. “E.T. was one of the last movies people remember seeing here,” laughed Barrientez. “When we have opening night, we ought to have E.T. again.”
Back at the Frontier, a sense of the extraterrestrial emanates from eight chimney-like structures to the right of the screen, their open tops framing the sky above them. Ronald Rael, an architect with Berkeley, Calif.-based Rael San Fratello, created these “Skylos” with a robotic arm that 3D-printed them from adobe.
Rael noted that the Skylos were designed as celestial observatories in this certifiably dark-sky valley. “It gives you the opportunity to have two different experiences. One is about the moving picture and about light, and the second is about solitude and silence in the dark sky at night.
“So it offers both those juxtapositions, and I think it connects you back to the landscape in a way. Maybe it’s the cosmos, but still, it allows a visitor for a moment to get out of the heat during the summer, to experience the stars at night.”
The drive-in offers four retrofitted sheds with wood-paneled interiors, 10 yurts grouped around gas firepits and spa-like bathhouses, and lawn space for 50 people.
Frontier Drive-Inn
Frontier Drive-Inn
Frontier Drive-Inn
BETWEEN A MOOSE AND A HARD PLACE
Dawn Wilson
MOOSE ARE AN INTRODUCED SPECIES HERE IN COLORADO. JUST LIKE WOLVES. AND PEOPLE, FOR THAT MATTER. CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?
by PETER MOORE
LAST WINTER I SKIED Steamboat Springs, after the new chairlift on Mahogany Ridge opened. I followed a virigin cat-track through the woods to the Edge of the World Trail and emerged on a freshly groomed slope. I saw a sign posted mid-trail above me, but I was too lazy to sidestep uphill to read it. Instead, I pointed my skis downhill.
Later I would learn that the sign said “TRAIL CLOSED. MOOSE IN AREA.”
In my ignorance, I cut delirious arcs down the untracked corduroy. Then I blitzed around a bend to find a yearling moose eating snow on the right side of the trail. A few cautious turns later, I spotted its mamma browsing pine boughs on the left side of the trail.
In between: 25 yards of no-skier’s land.
The #1 rule of moose encounters is: Never come between a mamma moose and her offspring. And yet, that’s where the trail went. I was on the horns – or maybe the antlers – of a dilemma.
I might have been better prepared for this encounter had I known about the Colorado Hunting Atlas, which provides a searchable map for Colorado beasts. When you click on “moose” and scan the north-central part of the state, you see a vast green blob spreading over Steamboat Springs. Mom and her yearling were at home; I was skiing their turf.
Bruce Hutcheon, the CEO of HutchonHunting. com, introduced me to the Atlas. A former data analyst for the Research Institute of America, he now crunches numbers of charismatic megafauna to counsel hunters as they stalk bighorn sheep, elk and moose. And to hear him tell the tale, he does it in the name of environmental responsibility. More on that, later.
But for now let me say: I could have used Hutcheon’s animal expertise to negotiate the gap between mother, child and the hoofbeats of doom.
LIKE MANY COLORADO RESIDENTS,
moose are newcomers here. In the 1850s, hunters were killing bull-moose in our state. And the First People probably hunted an occasional moose, before the Europeans arrived to upset the natural order. But the animals they stalked were probably just single moose that had wandered down from higher latitudes, where they’re happiest.
Now you’ll see moose stomping around the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, Brainerd Lake State Park, Steamboat Springs, Grand Mesa and the area around Creede. We have perfect moose habitat: willow flats, weedy ponds, browsable mountain sides, cold winters, cool summers at altitude and plenty of room to roam. In
fact, those skinny moose legs can carry an animal a long way, fast, which is good for us short-legged humans to remember.
In the 1970s, momentum built to reintroduce a breeding supply of moose to Colorado. Wildlife officials of the time got an earful from ranchers who shared their concerns about how moose, as aggressive browsers, might compete with their cattle for fodder. Biologists considered, and dismissed, the potential for a moose-bovine hay battle. In 1978, wildlife officials traveled to Utah and Wyoming to capture 24 Shiras moose – a smaller variety than those found in Alaska and Maine – for introduction to North Park, near Walden.
If you poke around in the Moose Vis-
itor Center in State Forest State Park, southeast of Walden, you’ll see a photo of a tranquilized moose, lowered by sling from a helicopter. That’s one way to speed up migration. Wildlife officials monitored the two-dozen transplants for a decade. Satisfied with the results (and the relative silence of ranchers on the matter), they recruited other moose from overpopulated habitats in the west, plus spare North Park moose. They established seed populations along the Laramie River in north-western Larimer County, on the Grand Mesa and the White River National Forest. Now there are about 2,500 moose galumphing around Colorado, including the mother and child I went skiing with.
A cow and her calf drink and eat as the sun begins to set in the Kawuneeche Valley in western Rocky Mountain National Park. Moose number around 2,500 in Colorado. They benefit from the grasses and shrubs that grow in well-lit, fire-burned areas.
Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston
TO OBSERVE MOOSE without the risk of being trampled, stream Sean Ender’s documentary Colorado’s Moose, available on Amazon Prime. The filmmaker lives in Evergreen, where elk have been known to gore golf carts, so he knows how to get along with large ungulates. And moose are the largest – 6 feet at the shoulder! –as Ender well knows. A cow weighs in at around 700 pounds, and males can tip the scales in excess of a thousand. They seem docile, and almost ridiculous, unless they’re provoked. On a cross-country ski trip to Yellowstone, I talked moose with the snow-cat operator who drove me into the park. Her voice got all quiet as she recounted the time a moose held her hostage; the moose wouldn’t leave her campsite, and wouldn’t let her leave, either. The standoff lasted for hours, until the moose walked away.
“My scariest moose encounter was with a bull who was shedding his velvet,” Ender said. “That’s just before the rut, when moose hormones are running high and they’re kind of ornery.” In that scary moment in the documentary, a large bull, with blood and tattered skin decorating his enormous rack, stares down the camera. If you need a warning about moose encounters, that’ll do just fine.
“He grunted at me, so I backed off,” Ender said. Then he mimicked a bull grunt, and I wanted to back off as well.
Not all moose encounters are dangerous, of course. Some are sublime. My personal favorite came when I was climbing Mount Katahdin in Maine. A majestic bull was snacking on water weeds in Sandy Stream Pond, at the base of the mountain. I found a rock to sit on, and admired nature in all its grandeur. But I wasn’t the only one heeding nature’s call that day. As the moose munched the lake bottom, it suddenly released a voluminous stream of urine, which foamed the water at its feet and flowed seemingly forever.
Eric Bergman, a wildlife biologist with CPW, has been studying our moose populations for a decade. “There are 300,000 elk in Colorado and 400,000 deer,” Bergman said. “But there are only 2,500 moose, so there wasn’t enough incentive to study
From a safe distance, moose encounters can be sublime as they roam freely across Mineral Creek near Silverton. In preparation for the rut, or matting season, bull moose lose their velvet to reveal hardened antlers underneath, weighing up to 75 pounds.
Vic Schendel
Jason Soden
A bull moose emerges from Maroon
after dipping his head underwater to munch on the aquatic moss.
Lake
Jeremy Swanson
them, until recently.” But as moose populations in New England and the upper Midwest became threatened by parasites, habitat loss and changing climates, researchers noticed that our moose tribe was thriving. Now, there’s more impetus to see what we’ve been doing right.
One unlikely moose helper in Colorado: our abundant wildfires. “When a fire goes through, it allows sunlight onto the forest floor,” Bergman said. “That encourages growth of the grasses and shrubs that moose feed on in the winter to help them recover from the stress of the rut.”
One sure sign of the health of our moose populations: If you see a mom trailed by twins, she had a good winter. Moose cows under stress may spontaneously abort a
fetus, so they can delay birth until a year when food is more abundant. So far, our moose populations have been growing, if slowly – a testament to our high elevations and chilly climate. A moose doesn’t even start shivering until it’s 10 degrees below zero, and our summer climate at altitude protects moose against heat stress. At least it has, so far.
Meanwhile, Bergman and Hutcheon agree on how we can protect our moose: encourage hunters to shoot them.
“I’m a firm believer in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation [NAMWC],” said Hutcheon, firing off an email link to make sure I understand it. He’s suspicious of “anti-hunting radicals,” as he calls them, so he wants to make sure
I’m not one of them.
In a nutshell, the NAMWC posits that wildlife belongs to all of this nation’s citizens, that species should be managed for healthy and balanced populations, that hunting licenses and fees should pay for conservation efforts and that science – not sentiment, or God forbid voters – should rule the day. So, whether you want to eat wild animals, or merely admire them in Walden (“the Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado”), they need to appear in a gunsight near you. Hunting fees pay for conservation efforts, to keep animal populations balanced, make sure they have enough food and territory to thrive and not overwhelm their human neighbors.
Places like Brainard Lake offer perfect moose habitat: browsable mountain sides, cold winters, cool summers at altitude and plenty of room to roam. A moose’s diet consists of mostly wood, like willow and aspen, shrubs, aquatic plants, grasses and mosses.
Dan Walters
This year 600 applicants will earn a license to kill Bullwinkle. State residents pay $366, while out-of-towners cough up $2,686.
Does that make you queasy? It shouldn’t. According to the CPW website, this high-caliber conservation initiative has supported populations of many of our favorite critters, including lynx, elk, turkeys, black-footed ferrets and yes, moose.
So, you’d think that Hutcheon, who has claimed impressive wolf trophies in Alaska, would be in favor of the wolf reintroduction, as another impressive creature to track and kill. But no. Hutcheon is up in arms, so to speak, about canis lupus in North Park, in part because of the impact wolves may have on moose.
“The North American Model is built on science, and CPW does a great job in managing it,” he said. “But the voters took the decisions out of their hands.” He notes that elk populations in Yellowstone National Park were cut in half after the reintroduction of wolves there. He fears a similar devastation of moose populations in North Park. An adult moose can provide a banquet for a wolfpack. A moose calf would be a nice hors d’oeuvre. And while a moose flounders in heavy snow, wolves run right on top of it.
“Citizens are usurping the authority of scientists, and they don’t know what they’re doing,” Hutcheon said. “We paid millions of dollars to reintroduce moose, and now wolves will threaten them.” He starts doing multiplication tables of wolf
THERE’S PLENTY TO ADMIRE ABOUT MOOSE
• When a bull is growing his rack each June and July, he can add a pound of antler every day.
• Fully grown, those antlers will spread six-feet wide and weigh 80 pounds.
• An adult moose can run 35 mph.
• By the time a baby moose is five days old, it can outrun you.
• Moose hairs are hollow, which help them float, and keep them warm in winter.
• Moose need cold to survive. That’s why, in February, you can spot them in Cameron Pass and other frigid Rocky-Mountain high places.
• Their name derives from the Algonquin word “moz,” which means “eater of twigs.” They consume about 10,000 calories a day.
populations, year by year, and predation by predation, on moose and their calves, and makes me feel guilty about my “yes” ballot for wolf reintroduction.
“Voters know nothing about conservation,” Hutcheon said.
I asked him if, once the wolves are established here, perhaps CPW will launch a wolf hunt, and incorporate them into the same management strategies that are maintaining a healthy moose population.
“That’s my hope,” he said. But he doesn’t sound hopeful.
WHICH BRINGS ME back to my moose encounter at Steamboat. I was caught between a moose and a hard place. How best to manage my personal humanmoose encounter?
One thing to consider: To a moose, man’s best friend looks like his biggest enemy – the wolf. Dogs are, of course, nothing but domesticated wolves, and moose can’t distinguish between your golden doodle and a deadly predator. “A lot of the moose-human interactions come when a person has their dog off-leash in the wilderness,” Bergman said. “When a dog is chased by a moose and runs back to its master, the moose follows the dog.”
That won’t end well for moose, man or dog.
As a moose maven, Bergman has had hundreds of encounters in the wild. His approach: If he can see the moose, that’s close enough. If they’re paying more atten-
tion to you than they are to browsing the willows, you’re stressing them out. And if they can’t eat comfortably, they won’t mate abundantly, which means fewer moose for you to see next year, and the year after that.
On the trail at Steamboat, neither the moose mama nor her yearling were paying much attention to that weird creature up the trail, in a helmet and goggles. The baby kept eating snow, and the momma continued to prune the pine tree. Soon more skiers skidded to a stop behind me, and we discussed our predicament. “Hey!” one of them shouted, “There’s a trail through the woods over here!”
He poled into the forest, sidestepped up a little slope and circumvented the moose family. I followed along, warily, until I finally made it back onto the trail, and glanced up the slope. No pissed-off moose in pursuit. I made it!
Will moose survive these close encounters – with me, with their hungry new neighbors? That depends on climate change, wolf reproduction rates, and how much moose habitat is gobbled up by ski condos. Meanwhile, they’re ours to enjoy – at a distance.
Filmmaker Sean Ender said, “My favorite thing about moose is that they don’t immediately run off. They let you into their world. It’s up to us not to bother them, just to be with them. So, I advise people to enjoy being out there, watch birds and animals do their thing and let the moose just be moose.”
Vic Schendel
early-morning,
A cow moose takes an
springtime stroll through a meadow in Kawuneeche Valley.
Dawn Wilson
RIO GRANDE LIFE & LOSS ALONG THE
by JENNIFER YOUNG PERLMAN
WE WERE NEAR South Fork, Colorado, at our cabin along the upper Rio Grande River, when my brother Kris died. It was the summer of 2003. It was our annual family trek to the mountains from our different corners of the country. My parents and brother had driven up from Texas, and I had flown in from Washington, D.C. We had come for the smells of pine and coffee, in the morning, early, with the sun barely rising above the mountains. We had come for the river, always moving, always steady.
The morning after we arrived, I slipped out of bed, tiptoed past my sleeping brother and joined my dad downstairs. He greeted me with his quiet smile and asked if I was ready. I was. I had been ready for days.
The Hungry Logger was crowded as the early morning fishermen swarmed over the breakfast buffet. We waited in silence for our biscuits and gravy. I craved those moments with my dad; it was everything unsaid that seemed the most poignant. He asked me about my new boyfriend. I rambled on, but Dad could see through the fog.
“Do you like him?” he said.
“I do. Yes. A lot,” I said back.
“Okay then.”
Right. Okay then.
When we returned, Kris was brewing coffee, and Mom was out walking Sadie, our white Labrador. The sun, higher now, was lighting the
Theresa DiMenno, Jennifer Young Perlman
canyon and the Rio Grande that cut right through its heart. Several summers ago, the river had been so low that I walked straight across it. Several summers before that, my best friend mooned my mom while we rafted down the river. The river, it seems, has always been with us.
Stretching almost 2,000 miles, the Rio Grande has a long and busy journey, snaking through changing landscapes, irrigating farms and fields along the way, separating Mexico from the United States, and finally merging into the Gulf. Dad once tried to find the source, hidden high in the San Juan Mountains, but was blocked by the swell of the river after a downpour.
“So, what do you think about Schwarzenegger running for governor?” Kris said as he sat next to me at the table.
“No way. He won’t win,” I said.
“I don’t know, I think it could happen. He’s popular.”
“It doesn’t matter. People are not going to elect a movie star as governor.”
“They elected Ronald Reagan.”
I sipped my coffee and looked out the window.
Kris had been sober since Christmas. I wanted to be proud of him, but I was too angry. I was angry with him for sabotaging his engagement to his girlfriend of two years, angry with him for almost missing his law school graduation because he was too drunk and too high from the night before, and angry with him for the cycle of sobriety and alcoholism he had foisted upon our family.
But here he was in Colorado, 31 years old, clean again and open to change. To prove this, he said he would apply for a job as a server at the Hungry Logger. He said he felt good about the possibility, a chance at something new. He said he would stay through the summer and then in the fall, as the weather changed, reconsider his options. He said, maybe Taiwan next, maybe China, maybe India. I rolled my eyes. I knew they were just words to be filed away along with all of the other declarations he had made so many times before.
“It’s mine,” he said, two days into the vacation. “The job at the Logger. They just gave it to me.”
“That’s great, Kris,” I said. “Just don’t leave the cabin a wreck
after we’re gone.” I just wanted him to be normal again.
Normal. As if I had any idea what normal meant for him, knew anything about what it meant when he wrote in his journal “I surrender,” knew anything about what it meant when he wrote “I need help and I can’t do it alone,” knew anything about how to help him so he wouldn’t feel alone. All my notions of normal would change when the man with the white polo shirt knocked on the cabin door the next evening.
“There’s been an accident,” he said to my mom as we stood on the porch, underneath a canopy of stars, so luminous in their intensity. I stared at the words “Victim Advocate” stitched into the top left corner of his shirt.
Six months earlier, when I had come home for the holidays, Kris and I went to hear our friend’s band play at a local bar. Since Kris was newly sober, I decided not to have a drink that night.
“How do you feel? Do you wanna get out of here?” I said, after a few songs.
“No, we can stay. I don’t mind.”
“Should we split dessert? I saw apple pie on the menu.”
He smiled, and we stayed for the rest of the set, pushing the plate back and forth as we shared the pie.
The rest of the man’s words were fragments, slipping in and out of my consciousness: “Highway 149…90 miles per hour…wind-
H. Mark Weidman
shield…glass…pavement…head…spine…”
“But he’s okay,” Mom said, as if the sheer force of her will would make it so.
When the man said the word, it ricocheted in my mind for several seconds. Died. Dead. Done. Deceased. Expired. Perished. Passed Away. Checked Out. Cashed In. No Longer with Us. Never to Be Seen Again.
Then my mom collapsed, right there in my arms, right there on the front porch, right there in a place that was supposed to be easy. Right there.
A stand of cottonwoods has forever blocked part of our view of the river. Those loathsome trees have menaced my mom for years. She has plotted ways to knock them down but only manages to stretch the weed whacker cord far enough to trim the tall grass. Now she just drags her lawn chair past the trees to the water’s edge so that riverfront means what it’s supposed to mean.
The day after Kris died, we collected his belongings from the wrecked truck, returned his unused apron to the Hungry Logger, and started the thirteen-hour drive to Texas, where we would bury him. We followed the Rio Grande south. It was the Fourth of July, and fireworks followed us home. Halfway, I pulled over to throw up behind a gas station.
I don’t know if it was for me or for Kris, my urge to destroy the
road that quieted his heart, to scream at the bartender who served him the drink, to blame my mom for the Xanax he took from her when she wasn’t looking. I just hated that time had stopped for him, still hate that his passport lies, in my shoebox, unstamped and waiting for passage to places far away.
Rivers have always moved words. As Norman Maclean writes in A River Runs Through It, “I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched … Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.”
The next summer, I went kayaking on the Rio Grande. Gentle and forgiving, it is the kind of river that any novice could try. So, I was surprised when I hit white water as the river dropped in elevation – it nearly flipped my boat. I held on. I paddled furiously, looks of desperation and determination commingling on my face. My boyfriend, floating next to me in an inflatable, erupted in laughter.
The Native Americans who lived along the Rio Grande attributed a living spirit to the moving water and blessed it for giving them life.
Kris is gone, but we still come. We come for the smells of pine and coffee, in the morning, early, with the sun barely rising above the mountains. We come for the river.
The water moves memories.
Jennifer and her family spent every summer in a cabin nestled along the Rio Grande River, just three miles from South Fork. In 2003, her brother, Kris, died in a tragic car accident outside of Creede. The river now shares her family’s memories, both life and loss.
Theresa DiMenno
One day, the disturbed land of Trapper Mine will become reclaimed land full of vegetation for elk and antelope to forage.
DIGGING DEEPER
THE COAL TOWN OF CRAIG SEARCHES FOR ITS FUTURE IN ITS OLD WEST HERITAGE
GRAHAM ROBERTS STEERS his company-owned off-road Ford truck, dirt caked behind the rear wheel wells, out of the way of 100-ton trucks hauling Trapper Mine coal on the hillside sloping eastward toward Craig.
Roberts stops on the left side of the road, following mine safety protocol. He’s pointing to the place downhill where Roberts and his father hunted years ago – an area where he shot his first deer as a boy. Like so many other Craig households at the time, he and his father hunted to put meat on the table.
Both his father and his grandfather helped build Trapper Mine on those hunting grounds. Roberts himself would work the mine all his adult life. And he might be one of the last of 130 Trapper Mine employees to leave when the mine closes, likely in 2028. “That’s going to leave a hole in the community,” Roberts said.
story by TOM HESS
photographs by JOSHUA HARDIN
Trapper Mine and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s Craig Station next door will become part of Craig’s history: a town that chooses to remember the Old West, a place where outlaws once rode hard toward the setting sun, toward Utah, to avoid the law in the 19th century.
Side by side on Graham’s hill, the power station’s three smokestacks rise like totems to the coal economy next to Trapper Mine’s 7,000 acres. The mine’s black-asnight coal seams cut deep into the earth, their depth dwarfing machines with wheels taller than a man. The machines crawl up winding, steeply graded roads, steeper than any public road in Colorado, and out to the power station next door. The trucks will add their loads to a growing pile of coal on power station grounds, one slow, short roundtrip after another, delivering 9,800 tons a day.
The power plant and Trapper Mine were built to operate together; they were born conjoined, one connected to the other. Roberts’ job as Trapper Mine’s environmental supervisor ensures that in 20
years, all around the open pits and disturbed land at Trapper Mine, will be reclaimed acres that look as though they’ve never seen a shovel, hidden by vegetation, elk and antelope feasting on it.
The mine has reclaimed 4,496 acres; another third is still active with mining. The available forage for wildlife on the reclaimed acres is three to five times what it was before mining, Roberts said, making it attractive to wildlife.
Elk greatly outnumber Moffat County’s human population: 303,190 to 13,327. That’s a fact that Craig shouts to the world; the town calls itself the “Elk Hunting Capital of the World.” Coal jobs may disappear, but elk will continue to bound through Moffat County. And hunters come from next door and all over the world to hunt down elk and antelope.
SCOTT MOORE GREW up in Craig, and like Roberts, he and his father hunted for meat. Moore started at age 10 with small game – grouse or rabbit. As he got older, Moore began hunting with bow and
arrow, preferring proximity to his prey over the longer distance of rifle hunting. His kills were for both meat and trophy. Whereas Roberts later became a miner, Moore chose a different path. Taxidermy got his attention when his parents brought home an antelope – “a nice buck.”
“I begged them, told them, that I would do chores, whatever to have the antlers. So, they took me to the local taxidermy, and we got the hide tanned, and he helped me mount the antlers,” Moore said.
When Moore shot his first buck at age 15, he offered to work at Mountain Man Taxidermy, on level land on the opposite side of town from Trapper Mine, in exchange for mounting the buck’s antlers. Six years later, in 1991, Moore took over the business. As it grew, he moved to one building, then another.
Mountain Man Taxidermy looks outside and in like an upscale art gallery you might find in Taos – the exterior’s clean lines, brown and tan siding, the business name in orange cursive. Inside, the voluminous display room tall enough for a gi-
Trapper Mine feeds coal to the power plant next door, just as the designers of both intended. They’ll shut down together, too.
raffe displays Moore’s handiwork – animals he’s felled and those sent by clients from around the world. In a shop next to the display room, Moore turns elk, antelope, zebra, and giraffes – whatever game comes through the doors – into a work of art, each in a position unique to the animal.
An antelope on display, bent down to drink from a footprint, tells a Moffat County story. Moore hunted another antelope for a week, following it to the only waterhole within two miles. Moore saw him drinking rainwater out of a footprint. Several seasons later, after he shot an antelope, he positioned it in his workshop drinking from a footprint. He’s also mounted a customer’s zebra, its stripes and the angle of its neck oriented with the sweep of a large tusk – a work of art requiring a client’s high-ceiling living room.
“I have gotten addicted to the wow factor,” Moore said. “I love when people walk through the door, and their eyes adjust to the light, they see the zebra, or a giraffe, or the antelope drinking from a footprint, and the first word out of their mouth is ‘wow.’ ”
PAUL KNOWLES WANTS a similar reaction to the collections he’s assembling and authenticating at the cityowned Museum of Northwest Colorado, a rigorous, Smithsonian-style museum in downtown Craig that aspires to separate fact from fiction. Located in the restored 100-year-old armory, the museum houses one of the largest cowboy gun, leather and spur collections. When Knowles moved far away from urban life to wide-open northwest Colorado, he became deeply fascinated with what he considers to be the richest, overlooked history in the American West.
The Museum of Northwest Colorado displays a 16-footby-10-foot watercolor by local artist Israel Holloway picturing local cowboy Clint Chew and his horse Arrow walking in the Yampa River; the Colt revolver of murderous outlaw Harry Tracy; and native pottery.
Knowles earned the trust of descendants of the Bassett family, who became protective over their misreported history, specifically the accused cattle rustler and outlaw associate, Queen Ann Bassett. Knowles received from the Bassett family a marked-up copy of the book The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy & The Wild Bunch by Charles Kelly, long considered a bible of Old West history. It includes a chapter on Queen Ann Bassett. Ann’s sister Josie Bassett lived much of that history, and her remarks in her copy of The Outlaw Trail identify parts that she considered false.
“I was there; that’s not what happened,” Knowles quotes Josie’s inscription on many points. That includes the famed
outlaw Butch Cassidy, whom many believe died in Bolivia, as portrayed in the 1969 Paul Newman and Robert Redford movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “He was not killed” in Bolivia, Josie wrote in her copy of The Outlaw Trail, Knowles said.
Knowles is also continually researching the provenance of a so-called Custer Colt, part of the museum’s Cowboy and Gunfighter Museum. Its 5126 serial number suggests it was held by an officer with the 7th Cavalry, which fell at Little Bighorn. But with further research, its authenticity has become less clear. “We now have to say, either we don’t know it is authentic, or we’ll let this one go,” Knowles said.
OLDER, OLD WEST history is getting new attention in Craig. The local college, the two-year Colorado Northwestern Community College (CNCC), offers a course in paleontology and access to a unique repository of exceedingly rare dinosaur skin fossils. That collection began with a leisurely walk in Rangely, 92 miles southwest.
A couple on a walk with their Great Dane, Walter, in 2014 spotted fossil bones protruding from a cliff wall on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. Eventually, a team from CNCC’s Field Museum recovered the bones, which included the fossilized skin impressions of what might be a new species. CNCC calls the dinosaur Walter.
Scott Moore touches up his animal art at Mountain Man Taxidermy; Sue Mock holds fossilized dinosaur skin at the Northwest Colorado Field Museum; Lou Wyman compares antique tires at the Wyman Living History Museum; and Kirstie McPherson surveys inventory at her 518 Wine Bar.
Trapper Mine’s trucks haul 9,800 tons of coal every day, slowly driving up steeply graded roads to the power station.
Walter’s ribs, radius and other body parts are laid out behind a locked door at the Colorado Northwest Field Museum at the college. In a windowless room below ground, fossil fragments and large, fractured pieces clutter the room. There’s a lot of Walter’s skin, bumpy to the touch. Some skin impressions appear stretched; why is anyone’s guess, but fossil repository manager Sue Mock’s got a theory. “Maybe he had a full meal when he met his demise,” Mock said. “Being a paleontologist is a lot like being a coroner, except all your stuff’s been left in the rain for 75 million years, and all your witnesses are dead.”
CNCC students on the paleontology track go on a two-week summer dig, into a bone bed larger than a football field near Rangely. Students learn geology and mapping skills as they explore the field filled with the fossils of large sauropod dinosaurs, carnivorous theropods and small dinosaurs. They prepare the bones they find in the repository for a presentation, learning museum protocols and data tracking, and Mock said, sometimes making a mess, so they learn to properly store and label the precious samples.
The students share a camaraderie with those in Craig who exercise care in dig-
ging deeper into Moffat County’s history. There’s been talk about a passenger train that might someday run from Denver to Craig, bringing hunting, dinosaur and Old West tourism dollars. As coal power fades away, Tri-State is moving toward creating a New West energy center for the people of Craig. Tri-State in June bought Axial Basin Solar, a 145-megawatt project near the Colowyo Mine, 30 miles southwest of Craig – another mine that will likely close around the same time as Trapper. Tri-State has a long way to go to replace its power plant, which generates 1,427 megawatts –10 times the solar project’s output.
Craig town fathers also look to an experiment in Idaho to fill Craig’s energy gap: a small, modular nuclear reactor. The Idaho project shut down in 2023 for lack of buyers of its energy, but Craig leaders think it could work in their community as the coal mines shut down
Craig the coal town might become Craig, the new energy center for solar and nuclear, and Craig, the world center of dinosaur research.
And then there’s what already is: Craig, home of the Smithsonian of the West; and Craig, the Taos of animal art, and Craig, the home of people who never stop digging.
Craig locals take full advantage of Loudy-Simpson Park, built by the employees of Trapper Mine. Revenue from the mine helped fund the town’s infrastructure; businesses, schools and homeowners must now dig deep for new revenue and energy.
GAME DAY GREATS
Hall-of-fame sliders score big-time flavor
recipes and photographs by DANELLE
McCOLLUM
PREP FOR GAME day early with these savory, sweet and spicy sliders. Make them mini to snack and share or use hamburger buns for big game day meals. Whether you’re hosting a big party or preparing a quick meal, these sliders will have you cheering for more.
Shredded Buffalo Chicken Sliders
Top the sandwiches with either blue cheese or ranch dressing. Use leftover buffalo chicken to fill tacos, burritos and quesadillas. The crunch of carrot and celery sticks go well with the buffalo flavor.
Place chicken breasts in lightly greased slow cooker. In medium bowl, combine buffalo wing sauce and ranch seasoning. Pour hot sauce mixture over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Shred chicken breasts in the slow cooker. Stir in butter until melted. Place slices of cheese on bun tops and melt under broiler for 1-2 minutes. Pile shredded buffalo chicken onto buns. Top with ranch or blue cheese dressing.
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 12-oz bottle buffalo wing sauce
2 Tbsp ranch mix seasoning
2 Tbsp butter
6 hamburger buns
6 slices cheddar cheese
Ranch or blue cheese dressing
Ser ves 6
Pepperoni Pizza Sliders
Consider using small rolls, like King’s Hawaiian. Offer marinara on the side for dipping these savory treats; putting the sauce directly on the rolls may make them soggy. Adapt this recipe by adding peppers, mushrooms and olives, or switch up the pepperoni for Canadian bacon or sausage.
Arrange bottom halves of rolls on a baking sheet. Layer the sliced provolone over the rolls. Top with pepperoni. Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella. Place the tops on the rolls. Melt butter in a microwave safe dish. Stir in garlic salt. Brush mixture over sliders. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Uncover and bake 5-10 minutes more, or until sandwiches are heated through and golden. Serve with warm marinara sauce for dipping.
12 slider buns or small rolls 8-10 slices provolone cheese
3-4 oz sliced pepperoni
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese Marinara sauce for dipping
Ser ves 12
Cherry Cola Pulled Pork Sliders
For dinner, use full-sized buns and add some coleslaw or pasta salad with barbecue sauce on the side. The pulled pork is also great over rice, or for filling taco shells, enchiladas and burritos.
In a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Season pork roast generously with salt and pepper. Brown on all sides, then transfer to a lightly greased slow cooker.
In a medium bowl, whisk together cola, cherry preserves, paprika, chipotles in adobo and garlic. Pour over roast in slow cooker.
Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours, or until pork shreds easily with a fork. Remove pork to a large platter and shred. Turn slow cooker to high.
Whisk cornstarch into the juices in the slow cooker until smooth. Return the shredded pork to the slow cooker. Cover and continue cooking 10-15 minutes more, or until sauce has thickened slightly. Serve warm on sandwich or slider buns.
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
13 lb boneless pork roast
Salt and pepper to taste
1 12-oz can cherr y cola
1 cup cherr y preserves
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1-2 tsp minced chipotles in adobo
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp cornstarch
Sandwich buns for ser ving
Ser ves 8-12
What’s in Your Recipe Box?
The editors are interested in featuring your favorite family recipes. Send your recipes (and memories inspired by your recipes) to editor@coloradolifemag.com or mail to the address at the front of the magazine.
OUR STATE THROUGH THE WORDS OF OUR POETS
From golden forests to snow-capped peaks and vast sand dunes to grassy plains, Colorado is generous with its beauty. Serene and quiet landscapes can be found across the state where our poets share on the bounty only known to Colorado.
Flatlander Transition
Beverly Saylor, Centennial
Six decades of calling Denver home, a transplanted Iowa Farm girl who fell in love with the mountains. Georgetown getaways, exploring ghost-towns, Walden writing retreats, or climbing a 14er. Countless weekends in every direction.
Years of driving to work each morning admiring the steadfast snow-capped range, an inspiration in coping with life’s challenges and celebrating joys.
Crossing the eastern plains to visit my roots, then seeing that first glimpse of the Rockies when I return!
Bountiful Colorado.
Treasure in These Hills
Zachary Waanders, Centennial
There’s treasure in these hills they say
The wealth to find abounds
All one has to do I hear
Is search these fertile grounds
Gold aplenty dots the sky
Within the aspen trees
And there among it lies the emerald
In those yet unchanged leaves
Alabaster coats the earth
On those most far-flung peaks
As silver falls from up above
To feed the sapphire creeks
Flowers, berries, the robin’s breast
The final rubies of the year
The columbine begin to fade
The amethyst so dear
Winter falls and seasons change
As this precious treasure wanes
Nature again renews its bounty
From the mountains to the plains
Seed Time and Harvest
Sandy Morgan, Colorado Springs
The breeze is dogged today, and westerly; the dew deep on this blue-white morning.
That means more hot days before summer slumbers sometime in September, as she always does.
So, ripen, you rough tomatoes that hang on and on. Go to seed you zinnias and dogged marigolds.
As the autumn of my days ripen, give me the grace to indulge in this life – and go to seed, too.
Joshua Hardin
The Waning Days of Summer
Robert Basinger, Rifle
In the waning days of summer
Fruit ripens on the vine
The light grows ever softer
So gentle on the mind
Soon it will be autumn
But there’s no need to fret
October is a coming
And it gets better yet.
The temperature is dropping
One night it’s going to freeze
And add a little color
To all your favorite trees
The days are growing shorter
The work is all but done
It’s chilly in the shadows
And toasty in the sun.
The sky is filled with blackbirds
But they’re just passing through
To usher in a season
That’s cold and fresh and new
And when the moonlight in the meadow
Comes from that harvest moon
It only serves to tell us
Summer ends real soon.
A Place of Bounty
Jean E. Sidinger, Greenwood Village
Blue skies stretch on forever. They’re wide and high and clear. When nightfall brings stark darkness, gazillion stars appear.
Tall peaks, some fifty-five…whose sharp summits pierce the sky, wear sparkling crowns of snowpack well into late July.
Bright wildflowers and bold aspen… they cover scores of miles. There, folks are kind and friendly: firm handshakes and warm smiles.
So, if you’re “bounty hunting,” you need no more to roam. Just visit Colorado, the place that I call home.
SEND YOUR POEMS on the theme “Winter Days” for the January/February 2025 issue, deadline Nov. 15, and “Snowmelt” for the March/April 2025 issue, deadline Jan. 1. Email your poems to poetry@coloradolifemag.com or mail to the address at the front of this magazine.
Chris Eaton
Signs warn motorists on Colorado State Highway 69 and 96 of Amish wagons in the roadway. Evening rides under the area’s dark skies are especially popular.
Joshua Hardin
Custer Country Life
AFour farm and ranch experiences in the remote Sangre de Cristo Mountains
by LISA TRUESDALE
LTHOUGH CUSTER COUNTY is one of the smallest in the state in both population and area, it’s big on tourism. The area draws visitors all year long for activities like hiking, biking, rock climbing, camping and stargazing. It’s home to a vibrant arts community, with engaging galleries all along Main Street in Westcliffe. It's filled with historic sites, like pioneer cemeteries, one-room schoolhouses and the bizarre and beautiful Bishop Castle.
Yet, it’s on the county’s farms and ranches where visitors can truly immerse themselves in the spirit and the essence of the Wet Mountain Valley with its majestic, wide-open spaces of the remote Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Here are four farms and ranches where visitors can experience Custer County ag life, up close and personal.
BECKWITH RANCH
For a historical perspective of ranch life in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Beckwith Ranch is the best place to start. The Beckwith family had no experience in cattle ranching when they moved to the Wet Mountain Valley in south-central Colorado in 1869.
What they did have was the astute business sense to profit from the gold and silver seekers swarming the area. These folks, they reasoned, would need a trusted source for cattle and horses, and they were willing to step up.
So, Edwin Beckwith and his father purchased 200 head of longhorn cattle from Charles Goodnight in Pueblo. Edwin's brother Elton headed west from Maine to join him soon after. (Their father, George, established his own cattle ranch up in Longmont.) Other cattle ranchers were lured to the valley, too, and thus began the long history of ranching there, where the land and weather are ideal for growing hay and raising livestock.
Today, the Beckwith property – just north of Westcliffe – is in the hands of Friends of Beckwith Ranch, a nonprofit organization. Beginning in the late 1990s,
The Beckwith family introduced cattle farming to the Wet Mountain Valley in 1869 and established an empire. The Friends of Beckwith Ranch work to preserve its history.
Friends began an extensive restoration of the ranch’s Victorian-style buildings to their historically accurate 1903 glory.
Volunteers lead informative tours of the Beckwith Ranch Headquarters from June to October and maintain a small gift shop on site. For a series of popular holiday
events, the volunteers lavishly decorate each room in the home, and visitors can vote for their favorite room. The property is also available to rent for meetings, weddings and other special events.
beckwithranch.com
Beckwith Ranch
Beckwith Ranch
SUNSET RANCH
Yellow signs line Colorado State Highway 96, warning motorists to be alert for traditional Amish wagons in their midst. Visitors may think they’re back east somewhere, until they learn that Custer County is home to hundreds of Amish who have joined settlements here over the years, making the trek from places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois.
Freeman Miller moved to Silver Cliff 10 years ago to be closer to his sister and her family, and he and his family run the picturesque Sunset Ranch, perched on a hill just outside of town. It’s a favorite with visitors because of the authentic Amish wagon rides he offers a few days per week.
The evening rides are especially popular; the Westcliffe and Silver Cliff area was designated as Colorado’s first certified Dark Sky Community in 2015, and the blanket of stars above is truly mesmerizing. Riding in the valley offers uninterrupted views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
“Our wagon rides give guests a true glimpse of the stunning valley,” Miller said. “They’re a popular attraction because they’re reminiscent of a simpler time, and a simplified lifestyle is our goal.”
Miller and his family also stay busy with other ranch-related pursuits, like training difficult horses. They also recently took over ownership of Valley Feed Ranch Supply and Saddlery and moved it to Sunset Ranch.
It’s a one-stop shop for everything their fellow ranchers need.
sunsetranchequine.com
Sunset Ranch
Sunset Ranch
Rides aboard a horse-drawn Amish wagon at Sunset Ranch bring city guests back to a simpler time, and a slower pace for viewing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Sunset Ranch
WILLOW WIND FARM
When you have more than a hundred alpacas, it might be somewhat of a challenge to remember all their names – let alone give them all names in the first place. Yet Annie Hunt of Willow Wind Farm knows the name of every single one of her animals and their unique personalities, too.
Herold, for instance, has a wildly inquisitive nature. “This little man is always in your pocket,” Hunt said. “He responds when he’s called, and we use him as our greeter and our mascot. Everyone who visits gets a hug, and maybe even a kiss, from Harry.”
Hunt moved to 85 acres in the Wet Mountain Valley four years ago from Berthoud, intent on living off the land. She has since welcomed a menagerie of animals besides the alpacas: sheep, chickens, goats, llamas, a rooster and a turkey named Maddie.
Nothing is ever wasted at Willow Wind Farm. An avid grower since the age of 7, Hunt has a goal to eventually get at least 80 percent of her nutrition from her farm. She grows fruits, vegetables and herbs in her greenhouse, and she collects eggs daily from the chicken coop. She makes cheese and soap from goat milk. She takes her abundance of fine alpaca fiber and merino wool and has it handcrafted into high-quality apparel and home goods.
To show others how to live off the land, Hunt offers farm tours three times a week, unless she’s busy assisting an animal in labor. Hunt also welcomes guests to The Treehouse, a gorgeous new short-term rental, so named for the green vines that cascade like a waterfall from the loft to the main level.
Hunt always encourages her overnight guests to head to the alpaca barn in the afternoon. “That’s when all the young alpacas get the zoomies,” she said. “They have a gait that we call ‘pronking.’ They launch as a group into a circular jaunt around the outside pen and back through the barn, over and over.
“They are clearly engaging in some form of joyous activity. If I could pronk, I would.”
willowwindfarm.net
Willow Wind Farm invites its overnight guests to visit the alpaca barn and watch the young alpacas “pronk.” The alpacas' wool is used to handcraft apparel and home goods.
Donna Holt
Deb Adams
Deb Adams
THREE PEAKS RANCH
Across the Wet Mountain Valley, nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos, is Three Peaks Ranch. Seth Fender and Kyle Helenbolt fell in love with the Westcliffe area during their first visit in 2020 and discovered their sloping, 85-acre property soon after.
Both had plenty of experience with mountain life. Helenbolt’s family has property near the town of Howard, and spending time there instilled in him a lifelong love of animals and the outdoors. Fender’s family founded Pingree Park in northern Colorado, and he spent his childhood summers exploring the mountains and learning about ranching at elevation. He went on to train horses and win multiple world championships. Yet after living on the hectic Front Range, both were drawn back to the mountains and the slower pace of life.
The couple’s 2022 wedding at Colorado Mountain Lavender Farm in Cotopaxi, north of Westcliffe, was a turning point, inspiring their dream of creating a special place to share with others – a peaceful retreat for weddings, family reunions and other gatherings.
Three Peaks Ranch now hosts 20 upscale weddings per season, Memorial Day to October. Four well-appointed ranch cabins, including a luxurious honeymoon suite with floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the stunning views, are also available as short-term rentals on non-wedding days.
Fender and Helenbolt also host special events, such as sunrise and sunset yoga sessions several times per week during the summer, plus weekend-long wellness retreats. As a bonus, the ranch is walking distance to the South Colony Lakes
Three Peaks Ranch takes full advantage of its scenic backdrop to host upscale weddings, up to 20 per season.
Trail, which offers access to several 14ers, 52 alpine lakes and hundreds of miles of scenic trails.
For Fender and Helenbolt, Three Peaks Ranch is more than just a business they’re running; it’s about nurturing a piece of land they truly love.
“The most rewarding part is being part of something bigger – witnessing the start of beautiful new chapters for couples embarking on their journeys together,” Helenbolt said. “From the moment they book their ‘I do’s,’ we really connect with each couple. They become like an extension of our family.”
thethreepeaksranch.com
Sunrise Media Co. & Kendall LaCombe Photo
Indy Pop Photography
Paula B Photo
STEP BACK IN TIME TO
The grandeur of a bygone era awaits you at Rosemount in Pueblo! Built in 1893, this 37-room, 24,000 squarefoot mansion was the family home of prominent businessman John A. Thatcher and his family. Take a guided tour of the mansion, and step back in time.
Open
COLORADO’S CALENDAR OF EVENTS
by LAUREN WARRING
RALLY
ANIMAS VALLEY BALLOON RALLY
OCT. 18-20 • DURANGO
Once a year, dozens of vibrantly colored hot-air balloons fill the skies of the Animas Valley and downtown Durango. From early morning flights to downtown glow nights, pilots will ignite their colorful ships for flights and demonstrations for this year’s 9th annual Animas Valley Balloon Rally.
On Friday and Saturday night, balloons and their pilots line Main Avenue in front of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Depot for the Downtown Balloon Glow. By 7:30 p.m. each night, the balloons will stand up, ignite and rise above the streets, illuminating the historic downtown in fire-colored light. Featured balloons include two hand-painted hot air balloons, four regular hot-air balloons and a few remote-control balloons. Candlesticks, or burners and baskets without a balloon, will also flare through-
out the night. Children are encouraged to join the pilots in the basket and pull the burners to see and feel the heat that powers the balloons’ flight.
On Saturday morning, 30 balloons will take to the skies at the same time for the Mass Ascension at Sylvia’s Air Park located at the corner of Hermosa Meadows Road and Highway 550. The launch site is named after balloon meister and event organizer Doug Lenberg’s late wife Sylvia, who passed away suddenly in 2022.
Previous special balloons included the Rubber Ducky, aptly named for its duck-shaped balloon, piloted by Robert O’Brien, and Humpty Dumpty, a 105,000-cubic-foot balloon piloted by Rich Lawhorn. Visitors can witness the Mass Ascension from below or join free tethered balloon rides to see the colorful designs from up high. (970) 375-5067.
Brightly colored hot-air balloons add flair to nature’s autumn palette in the Animas Valley near Durango.
WHERE TO EAT
HERMOSA CREEK GRILL
Classic American breakfast, burgers and sandwiches. Try the Southwest Scramble with bacon and hashbrowns smothered in Hermosa’s famous green chili sauce and cheddar cheese. 32223 Highway 550. (970) 247-0014.
WHERE TO GO
THE GENERAL PALMER HOTEL
Built in 1898, the historic hotel has been a hub for Durango’s downtown with close access to the mountains, Animas River and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Depot. Stay in one of 39 luxury rooms, including the Presidential King Suite with a large soaking tub. 567 Main Ave. (970) 247-4747.
MaryAnne Nelson
OCTOBER
APPLEFEST
Oct. 4-6
• Cedaredge
Since 1977, Cedaredge Applefest has celebrated its local fruit growers and the harvest season in the Surface Creek Valley. Enjoy live music, car shows, a chili cookoff, golf tournaments, a 5K race and, of course, apples and apple goods from local orchards.
FALL FESTIVAL
Oct. 5-6
• Cripple Creek
Enjoy live music in the beer garden, a pie judging contest, chili cook off, pumpkin carving contests, food trucks and craft vendors. All proceeds benefit the local wild donkey herd that roams the town. (719) 270-1999.
MINER’S PUMPKIN PATCH
Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26 • Colorado Springs
Try your hand at gold panning, watch mining demonstrations and ride along tractor-pulled hayrides. Pick your own
pumpkins to take home or launch with the pumpkin catapult. Tickets start at $11 and benefit the Western Museum of Mining and Industry. 225 N. Gate Blvd. (719) 488-0880.
OKTOBERFEST
Oct. 8-12 • Rangely
Compete in a pumpkin carving contest, traverse haunted houses and escape rooms, and race in a 5K costume run. Enjoy craft beers and pints in the park, food trucks, a casino night and a White River Knife Show. (970) 675-5290.
TELLURIDE HORROR SHOW
Oct. 11-13 • Telluride
This three-day feature and short film festival showcases horror, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, sci-fi and dark comedy stories in Telluride’s historic downtown buildings. Hear from directors, filmmakers and writers before and after shows. (970) 708-3906.
The Colorado Springs Thanksgiving Tradition!
CRAFT SPIRITS FESTIVAL
Oct. 11-13 • Breckenridge
Enjoy craft brews from Colorado breweries like Axe and the Oak Distillery from Colorado Springs and Mile High Spirits from Denver. The Still on the Hill Grand Tasting on Oct. 12 features Colorado’s best brews paired with wild game meatballs from Fatty’s and prime Colorado beef tartar from Rootstalk. 150 W. Adams Ave.
EMMA CRAWFORD COFFIN RACES
Oct. 26 • Manitou Springs
Since 1995, Manitou Springs has hosted an annual coffin race in memory of beloved resident Emma Crawford. Four costumed racers push an “Emma” in a decorated “coffin” uphill. Racers compete for best entourage, best coffin, best “Emma” and fastest time. Artists also compete for best t-shirt design every year. (719) 685-5089.
James M. Robb State Park’s Island Acres section offers easy camping near Grand Mesa
THE YEAR WAS 2020, and we all remember what we were doing back then. Or more correctly, what we weren’t doing. With campgrounds closed due to the Covid pandemic, my camping gear spent all spring and early summer collecting cobwebs. When the parks again opened for camping, my wife and I made summer reservations for a trio of Colorado state parks on the Western Slope.
While two of our campgrounds lay tucked up in the cool conifers, our first stop would be James M. Robb Colorado River State Park Island Acres section, which lies just off Interstate 70, a few miles up the Colorado River from Palisade.
An easy drive from the Front Range,
Island Acres has long been a favorite spring and fall stopover for us. This time, we’d be spending two weeks there in late summer. My wife was leery of canyon-country camping in the height of summer heat. I convinced her that we had air conditioning in our trailer, we could head up the hills during the daytime, and in the cooler evenings back in camp, we could comfortably sit back and watch the sun set behind the cliffs.
The state park campground offers 74 sites, many of which are full-hookup, pullthrough sites. It provides all the RV amenities we love, such as flush toilets, showers, a swim beach, a kid’s playground, a dump station and my wife’s favorite amenity – laundry facilities. Located beside the Colorado River in De Beque Canyon, the scenery features towering cliffs on both sides of the river.
One of the best features of Island Acres is the ease of getting reservations. While its sister campground downriver in Fruita fills up fast, sites at Island Acres often can
be found on shorter notice. With minimal advanced planning, we were able to secure a full-hookup site along the river.
The downside of camping at Island Acres is its canyon-hemmed location. I-70 runs along the cliffs on the south side of the park, offering a background din of traffic noise. Like owners of those multimillion-dollar homes overlooking the freeway in Vail, we’ve learned to tune out the noise. Across the river from the park run the Union Pacific rails, and the roar of occasional freight and Amtrak trains take a little getting used to. As a kid who grew up with model railroads, I find I don’t mind the trains. That’s why we always try to reserve riverside sites.
Just as winter camping in cold country involves concessions, summer campouts in warm spots require a few compromises. For folks like us who hike, that means getting early morning starts on the trail. We did that on a hunt for wild horses nearby in the Little Book Cliffs Wild Horse Range. With a few miles’ trek up Main Canyon, we encountered several of the wild steeds. Apparently accustomed to people, a few even allowed us to get close enough for some frame-filling photos. As the morning warmed, we turned around, drove back to camp and cranked up the trailer’s air conditioner.
When temperatures rise, the best thing to do is go higher. From Island Acres, a half-hour drive leads to the top of Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flat-topped
mountain. With an elevation of more than 10,000 feet, summer temperatures remain quite pleasant. The mesa offers over 300 lakes to fish, dozens of trails to hike or bike and the lodge at Mesa Lakes offers an outside deck from which to devour posthike burgers and brews. Trail information can be obtained at the U.S. Forest Service visitor center atop the mesa.
For those wanting to venture farther, Island Acres offers an acceptable hub for visiting the central part of Colorado’s Western Slope. Heading west, Grand Junction and Colorado National Monument lie around two dozen miles down the interstate. Campers wanting mountains with loftier peaks can head south toward Montrose, Ridgway, Ouray, Telluride and beyond.
Even though temperatures were lofty, we enjoyed our summer stay at Island Acres. We spent cool days atop Grand Mesa. Evenings were pleasant in camp, and we had shade trees and a picnic table awning to sit under. Best of all, our camping gear was not stuck at home collecting cobwebs.
James M. Robb Colorado River State Park Island Acres section lies off Interstate 70 at exit 47, five miles east of Palisade. The park’s campground features 74 sites, 36 of which offer full hookups, 32 feature electric plug-ins and there are six basic sites for tent campers. Most sites feature wind-break canopies over picnic tables.
The campground offers flush toilets, hot showers, laundry facilities and an RV dump station. Full-hookup sites run $41 per night, electric sites are $36 per night, and basic sites go for $26. Campers without an annual or a Keep Colorado Wild pass will also need to purchase vehicle passes for $10 per day. All sites require reservations (800-244-5613, cpwshop.com).
TRIVIA ANSWERS
Questions on pages 16-17
1 Montrose
2 Kokomo Gulch
3 Ute (or Nuche) for Utah
4 Arkansas
5 International Dark Sky
Community
6 a. Vanadium (Uravan combines the words “uranium” and “vanadium”).
7 b. Fraser Valley
8 a. Coyote (Coyote Valley Trailhead)
9 c. Mountain goats
10 c. Zapata Falls
11 False (Both are named for the Grand River, now known as the Colorado River)
12 True
13 False (They’re distinct basins, and the longest valley is the Great Rift Valley in Africa)
14 False (Twin Falls has two parallel waterfalls)
15 True
Page 16, Top Paradox Valley near Pardox in Southwest Colorado.
Page 16, Bottom Zapata Falls in the San Luis Valley near the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
Page 17 Rabbit Valley near Mack. Trivia Photographs
FALL
COLORS
teach about life’s changes
Fall in the West Elk Mountains shares a welcome lesson about necessary change.
story and photographs by DEAN ALLEN
AFTER WEEKS OF planning, and three days of backpacking in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, it finally happened. Change. A storm system slowly moved in, the wind started to blow, and the aspen leaves fell like golden rain all around me. Clouds skittered across the sky leaving their shadowed footprints on the landscape that was now below me. Light poured in from above, below, and around the clouds forming contrasts and edges.
I never knew what to expect as the drama slowly unraveled. Would the clouds dissipate, leaving the land exposed to the harsh light of the full sunshine? If so, all the colors would desaturate and become flattened, blown out by the unrelenting light. Or would the clouds build, forming a bleak gray landscape with no life? I sat on the edge and watched the slow play of light unfold across the land and sky.
I had never seen anything like this before. The entire valley floor was arrayed in
jewels. Bright yellow, gold and orange aspen danced with lime and viridian greens. Deep evergreens dotted the scene here and there in contrast with the colorful aspen. Entire slopes were covered in the rusty reds of autumn scrub oak. Gorges, hillsides, plateaus and ridges were dressed in royalty.
A massive mountain, garbed in emperor blue, rose above it all. The clouds were dark above, but the colors persisted. Periodically, a break in the clouds would allow a shaft of light to spill down like a spotlight. Brilliance radiated from that single spot, then faded away as the clouds blocked the sun again.
Author and photographer Dean Allen spent four nights backpacking through the West Elk Mountains. An idyllic aspen grove was his home for the first night. Late afternoon light filtered through the canopy onto the forest floor, a contrast of rusty red autumn scrub oak and golden aspen.
The sun began breaking through as the first snowstorm of the season lifted above the West Elk Mountains. The author stopped frequently on his hike homeward so that he would not miss a single, otherworldly moment.
I pointed my camera at the mountain, zoomed in a bit, then locked everything tight. For the next four hours, I babysat that exact composition. I stood, I sat, and I wandered about the edge, but my eyes were continually drawn back to the scene before me. I wanted to drink it all in. Each time a shaft of light came through, I pressed the shutter button.
As sunset neared, two things collided. Smoke from a small forest fire shifted into my scene, and a break in the clouds sent sunlight streaming from the heavens. They struck the mountain at the same time, and I ecstatically pressed the shutter as this smoke-born crepuscular ray descended to the jewels below.
What had been a sublime experience for the last few hours became transcendent. I was in awe as the drama continued to unfold until the sun finally set. This is what I came for: a massive mountain clothed in blue shadow, soaring above ridges of aspen lit up like fire from the slanting rays of the sun.
How much better is it to be on the edge of things? To be where the storm meets the calm, where the light meets the shadow. Our lives are made richer by changes. One thing flows into another creating a contrast of events, shadows of uncertainty, the light of hope and saturation of emotions.
If we were under gray skies every day, it would be easy to lose hope for the sunshine. But to be stuck under unabated blue skies with nary a breeze to mix things up; this too would grow tiresome.
So, when it looks like the clouds are building, pay attention. This contrast between good and bad is when you experience and learn the most.Just by knowing that a change from blue to gray occurred, you can have the confidence that the blue will return in due time. Without the edges of shadows there would be no way to find the light.
