Memories of Marble’s very own “Heartbreak Hotel” Up the Crystal By Charlotte Graham Sponsored by the Mt. Sopris Historical Society Last time we met here we were hobnobbing with Hattie Thompson in the Roaring 20s. Time flies in the Sopris Sun’s history column world. Now, the year is 1956. Ponytails and poodle skirts. Ducktails and blue suede shoes. Even upvalley Marble had heard of Elvis Presley. The rock ’n’ roll king’s first million-record hit song; “Heartbreak Hotel” had blasted off the charts.
Since my baby left me Wade and Wilma Loudermilk had built Beaver Lake Lodge. Readers will remember from the Marble Memorial Airport story in Memoirs, Vol. 1, that Wade had all the right excavating equipment to build the airstrip. The family would come up from the Phoenix area to escape the summer’s heat. They rented out horses and guided Jeep tours besides housing and feeding their guests. Business was running at a good clip when they began to host annual visits for Baylor University’s summer geological field course. There just so happened to be a male majority of the 30-35 students in attendance from early June to mid-July; the odds of which did not go unnoticed by the Loudermilk daughters — college-aged Raquel and her high-school sister, Kareen. Pretty much the only two girls in Marble at the time, they decided to share their summer social largess with Raquel’s USC sorority sister, Ann Smith. They invited her to come to work with them. “We were the slave-labor force, “ said Kareen. “It was a lot of hard work but we didn’t mind. We had a lot of fun.”
There’s room; you’re skinny!
18 • THE SOPRIS SUN • JUNE 2, 2011
Dear John It became a common event those summers that the postman would leave “Dear John” letters at the lodge for the boys staying there. After all, in teen time, June to July was oh, so long. “the bellhop’s tears keep flowing, the desk clerk’s dressed in black.” “We would have big bonfires every night,” Kareen said. “That was our entertainment in those days. There would be a guy with a guitar and we would sing songs. “Heartbreak Hotel” was a popular request. I remember one lovesick guy who was a newlywed. He wouldn’t change his watch from Waco (Texas) time where his bride was.” While Raquel and Ann played the field, Kareen caught the eye of young man named Ben. Ben Man was a third-year geology student that summer of ’56. Spurred by the competition, it took Ben nearly three years of long-distance letter writing and courting before the couple became engaged over Christmas of ’58 in Marble. They wed at the Marble church the following October. “I always wanted a fall wedding up here,” said Kareen. “Turned out it was the earliest snowstorm in history that Oct. 3. Our best man and minister were stuck on Loveland Pass due to the snow. They did finally arrive and I’ve never heard the end of it about my wanting a fall wedding.” Last October, Ben and Kareen Man returned to Marble and celebrated their 50th anniversary at the Redstone Inn with friends and family. All Kareen’s stories were corroborated by Ben, sister Raquel and Ann Smith.
If your baby leaves you Actually, I first heard about “Heartbreak Hotel” from the delightful storyteller and lifetime Marble resident June Blue back in 1997. It was certainly an honor to meet itty-bitty June with the waist-long silver hair. The Blue family home was, and still is, adjacent to Thanos Johnson’s place and across the road from the little cabin with the broken-hearted reputation. June told me during a visit with her one time that, “every spring, there was a lot of activity over there, like musical chairs, people moving out, others moving in … winters here are long, you know … and tiring! The losers ended up at ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’” By the early ‘70s, the cabin was absentee-owned and suffered the indignities of neglect. Occasionally, bargain-priced paint would be slapped on, such as the time it was covered with highway-stripereflective-yellow. It glowed in the dark. Made it much easier for inebriates to find their way home at night, I’m told. Alas, for years and years it sat lonely, abandoned and forlorn.
“Heartbreak Hotel” is located just east of Beaver Lake Lodge. Teens used to sing Elvis Presley’s first million-selling hit around a bonfire in back of the place in the 1950s. Photo by Lynn Burton
A legend waits “Heartbreak Hotel” has a new owner and like other ladies of a certain age, has had a flattering facelift. Now a sparkling bride-white paint job dresses up new windows, roof and porch, but alas, there are no
new tales to tell. I’ll watch and await the next chapter of this legend. For more on this story, get a copy of “Memoirs of a River … Up the Crystal, Vol. 1,” at the Mt. Sopris Historical Society Museum.
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Beds in the lodge and its cabins were stacked to the rafters and they still ran out of room. They had another cabin down towards the Crystal River across from the old Marble jailhouse and their horse stables. It isn’t clear if they sometimes used the pokie and paddocks too. But even that wasn’t enough. The Loudermilks then rented a small cabin east across the road from the lodge. None of the accommodations had running water or indoor toilets. Rows of metal bunkbeds were the only adornments. Ann was quite the artist, so she painted a sign to put over the door of the cabin closest to the lodge, thusly christened “Heartbreak Hotel.” Later on, folks would arrive at the lodge and ask to be booked next door at the Heartbreak. “They really thought it was a hotel,” Kareen said. Those poor fellows stuck down at the decidedly unromantic cabin next to the horse stables felt left out and pouted. So Ann penned another sign for them: “Leper Colony.”
“We eventually had to take the ‘Leper Colony’ sign down as it scared the tourists,” Kareen told me,“but we got a lot of mileage on the jokes about both places.” “and though it’s always crowded, you still can find some room, for brokenhearted lovers to cry there in the gloom.”
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Memoirs of a River…