LEGENDS & LEGACIES
CLASSIC ASPEN
by TIM WILLOUGHBY
Aspen High School’s junior class of 1927 parties in the Durant Tunnel, deep inside Aspen Mountain.
PARTY WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN aspen was typical of industrial cities of the 1880s-1890s. Children
were children and attended grammar school through eighth grade. After that education, boys from working-class families went to work and girls either worked or married young. The percentage of kids who graduated from high school increased each year, but did not reach a majority during those decades. Few ranch family children attended high school because they had to find — and be able to afford to pay — a town family to board with.
NINETEENTHCENTURY educators and psychologists joined the labor movement to end child labor. The Democratic Party included a platform plank in 1890 to cut off child labor before age 15. It did not become law, so unions pushed individual states to adopt child labor laws with mixed results. It wasn’t until 1938 that President Roosevelt signed a national law banning child labor. During the 1920s, my parents’ generation, high school attendance in Aspen reversed, with most teens shifting their working hours to after school, weekends and summers. As marrying age crept upward, teenagers found time to develop their
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own subculture. Many attribute the end of child labor to the beginning of adolescence, often ascribed as an American
and a little financial autonomy freed teens from parental scrutiny at home. As ever, the goal of any gaggle of gawky teens was to find a place where
CHILDREN GROWING UP IN ASPEN WERE WARNED TO “STAY AWAY FROM THE MINES,” SO NATURALLY TEENS GRAVITATED TOWARD THEM. invention. Since then, adolescents have formed their own tribal rituals, distancing themselves from their parents literally and figuratively. Access to an auto, abundant free time,
Febr u ar y 7-13, 2013
adult eavesdropping and supervision were impossible. Children growing up in Aspen were warned to “stay away from the mines,” so naturally teens gravitated
toward them. In the 1920s, after the Newman Mine on Castle Creek closed, its ponds became a summer swimming hole and party picnic place. The Smuggler Mine was still operating, but its vast collection of mine dumps a short walking distance from town allowed privacy for teenage lollygagging. Teens thrive on the adrenalin rush of facing danger and the danger of the vast underground was tempting indeed. The Durant Tunnel became the most popular site. Its adit near the present location of the Aspen Alps was just blocks away for most east end youth. The Durant Tunnel bore was wide and safe. The first hundred feet passed through unstable ground and startled intruders with unmaintained timbering, occasional sand and rock falls, and muddy water flows between ceiling boards; beyond that, the tunnel was located in hard rock. Water tinkled along the floor of the tunnel in a covered trough, breaking the eerie underground silence. About a quarter-mile into the mountain, an underground waterfall ensured that any Durant excursion was wet, wild and wonderful. A couple of candles and a crowd of teens guaranteed a boisterous underground party. The entrance to the Durant (and most other Aspen tunnels) caved, but the will and imagination of teens to locate privacy on the edge of danger never subsided. Subsequent generations drove clear out of town for “woodsies.” Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching for Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn@schat.net.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WILLOUGHBY COLLECTION