Allenspark Wind Article for April 2026
Roger Sherman

 A Curmudgeon  Looks Back

 So instead of the rant about the potential loss of our Public Lands and the gutting of our National Park Service, Forest Service, BLM and others, I thought we might take a trip down memory land.  How my family got our cabin and what it meant to my youth. 

My family moved from Berkeley, California to Denver in the early 1950’s so my father could take a job with the Lincoln-Mercury division of the Ford Motor Company.  We had done some camping in California but when we got to Colorado our vacations for a few years were at the Fall River Lodge in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Two weeks of riding, hiking, using the game room and having all our meals at the Lodge.  But things changed when my mother reconnected with a grade school friend and we got to stay at the Osgood cabin in the Tahosa Valley in the middle to late 50s.  This cabin had been homesteaded by Dean Babcock in 1906 and was called The Ledges after a large rock area nearby which hosted many campfires, singalongs and outdoor concerts. 

 In about 1959, two cabins came up for sale on the same hill and my parents purchased our cabin, Lodgepole, named, I imagine, for the exposed logs which hold up the second floor.  It was actually designed by the owner Edwin Gillette of Chicago, who for at least one summer ran Columbine Lodge (now part of the Salvation Army Camp), and who designed at least three other cabins, two on each side of the northern Tahosa Valley.  These cabins were featured in an Estes Park Museum Historic Homes tour a few years ago. 

The cabin had been rented out for many years and had some issues, the uphill side was starting to rot as soil and debris were building up, the “one butt kitchen” (my mother’s term) needed work, there had been some water damage on the interior, but it also needed a new sewage system as we were tied to the “cesspool” of the cabin next door.  Lon Havens fixed most of this in pretty short order and I, a young pre adolescent, got to help. The most spectacular thing was the 9 or 10 holes he drilled outside and the 9 or 10 sticks of dynamite he put in each one to blow a hole in the very rocky ledge outside so we could have a metal septic tank put in.  He put branches over the site, we sheltered in the garage and it rained rocks for quite a while!

 So for the t summers my mother would take up residence, mail would be forwarded and Brodie’s Grocery in Estes Park would deliver.  My father commuted up on weekends and vacations and they settled into the Valley.  My parents also surprised everybody by having my brother so we kids were, my sister Judy at CU, me in my middle teens and our brother who got to grow up there.  My parents, Roger and Lesllie,  rapidly made friends and had an active social life including lots of golfing for my father and many cocktail parties and jeep trips.  My mother would get a nanny for my brother, usually a relative or a daughter of one of the hill families.  So she took a job during the summers working at Charlie Eagle Plume’s which led to my getting my first job there at 16.  I even managed to get him to pay me minimal wage, $1.25 an hour!

So as I think back, I really came of age in the Tahosa Valley.  I had the acceptance of the other summer mountain kids that I didn’t have with most of my school friends.  I was very active in hiking and climbing and was pretty “free range”. Square dancing was a big part of the social scene as there was one nearly every night at one of the Lodges.  So I looked forward to the summers as it was the best part of my life.  At 17 I started working as a dishwasher for Joe Droesher (?) at the Aspen Lodge which really changed my life heading into college.  Much 3.2 beer was consumed at bars in Estes on my fake ID. 

In those days Lodges predominated in the Valley, besides Aspen Lodge and Wind River, there was Columbine and Longs Peak Inn.  As the focus was on the summer season most of the inns and camps hired young college age students.  At Aspen Lodge there were about 16 of us, all male, rooming in a “dormitory” on the premises.  Our pay was $75 a month and then we would get a share of the tips at the end of the season.  This was typical even in Estes Park at places like the Stanley and the Elkhorn Lodge.  We were encouraged to mingle with the guests at the pool, required to attend the weekly square dance, and sing at a Hootenanny on Sundays.  It was American Plan, most guests stayed two weeks and rode horses and mostly stayed at the Lodge.  We always knew how many we would have for dinner and only rarely had people come in to eat off the road.

Of course things are different now but I can still remember how upset I was when two developments happened and cabins (houses) were built in Lion’s Gulch and on Goblin’s Castle, childhood hangouts.  But some things are better now.  Roads for sure, there are fewer horses, we get fewer trespassers as campers are more supervised than lodgers, it is still pretty quiet, though the glow from the south does intrude on our view of the stars.  But mostly it is the world that has changed let us keep our Valley as it has been.