TRAIL THROUGH TIME

Monday, October 30, 2017 through Sunday, November 5, 2017

Dan drove Nzou out of Colorado on a mostly sunny morning. The beautiful red rocks of the Colorado National Monument ringed the city of Grand Junction and Interstate 70. We passed yellow fields, white and red sands, and squatty green juniper shrubs.

“Colorado” means “red colored.” The name fit because I had never seen so much red rock in my life.

A sign read “Trail Through Time, Next Right.” We didn’t turn in its direction. We know about trails through time. We’d been on a number over the past seven days in Colorado.

We visited three couples with very different lifestyles, but there was something similar. Perhaps it was an openness to new people and experiences and a love for travel. In Denver, we met an air traffic control friend of Dan’s who he hadn’t seen in twenty-six years and her husband. They spent two years or so on a medical rotation in Metlakatla in Southeast Alaska. They walked with us around Denver.

Dan was entertained by the Uber ride back from dinner, an exchange of band name dropping among the driver and passengers that has joined the catalogue of Dan comedy sketches kept at the ready:

“Is that ‘Sand Paper Scratch’ playing? I love ‘Sand Paper Scratch.’”
“Have you seen them in concert?”
“Of course!”
“You know, I gave a ride to the drummer of ‘A Flock of Buggers.’”
“I knew them when they were nothing but ‘Drip Snot and His Buddies.’”
“No way!”

The music, whatever the band name, was very good.

 

 

In Monument, we visited a couple originally from northwest Italy. We met them seven years ago in King Salmon, Alaska at the King Ko. They shared engaging conversation and their beautiful home in the conifers near Monument.

 

We stayed with Dan’s air traffic friend and his family in Castle Rock. Kiva learned about life with two excitable little dogs and we met my son in an alternate reality: Zach who went to Rice University, has a girlfriend named Jacklyn, and spent two years studying far from home on an island off the coast of South America. If there is a dark universe, Zach from Castle Rock is certainly a part of it.

 

 

 

Before Denver, we stopped at Eldorado Springs. At that point, I thought that it might have remnants of the old hotel that Pansy Stockton’s parents, David and Jennie RePass, ran back in the early 1900s. I didn’t realize the wealth of history and importance this area held for my ancestors and for Roscoe and Pansy and their love story. Sometimes you have to set foot on a place to figure things out.

It was a frustrating drive to Eldorado Springs for Dan. We did not enjoy the roads or the drivers in Colorado during our week there. Some of the roads are made with concrete strips and the joints between the pieces get warm and it makes for a washboard ride. Seeing Kiva’s curious bobbling head made us laugh. When we spoke, we talked wobbly, jittery teeth talk.

Then, there was a sequence of left turn, right turn, left turn, right turn, ad nauseam. No straight lines in Colorado.

I looked toward the hills and said to Dan, “Those are the hills where my great grandparents fell in love.”

It was nothing like I expected. First, we drove into the small, quaint community of Eldorado Springs. Sort of like Ester in Fairbanks. It was a residential commune. We drove past the Eldorado Springs Resort, closed for the season, complete with a now empty outdoor pool. Just beyond the resort were beautiful rock formations and canyons and we were surprised to see an entrance to Eldorado Canyon State Park. We decided to enter and pulled off near the bridge over a beautiful stream. It was like a fairy land. Snow lit on the red rocks and spongy green brush. Everything shot straight up and wound around. Water trickled in a nearby stream.

Thinking it was alone, a deer stepped into the brook to drink and, discovering us, ran startled away.

I knew, deep in my gut, that where I was standing was important to my great grandparents. I also knew that there was more. We headed toward Denver and a pizza reunion with Dan’s old friend from 26 years ago, intending to return before we left Colorado.

Before visiting, I’d known the spot as the site of the Grand View Hotel. I didn’t know that in the early 1900s Roscoe’s mother, Jessie Stockton, apparently a known writer and public speaker, purchased 160 acres of land above Eldorado Springs. At some point a cabin was built there in the cleft of a canyon near what they called “the Monolith.”

While visiting Dan’s air traffic control friend and his family in Castle Rock, Colorado, I did some research and found out that there was a trail that went up to my great-great grandmother’s former property and that the cabin I’d heard about for so many years that was called “Springbrook Cabin” was referred to as “Stockton Cabin” on the local hiking maps.

The City of Boulder Colorado website goes into detail about the history of the Stockton Cabin:

“If you are up for a steep hike, continue up the Shadow Canyon Trail (west) for about another mile and half to the Stockton Cabin.

The land on which this was built was homesteaded in 1910 by Jessie Stockton, a well-known Denver writer and public reader. When she homesteaded this land, the cabin was known as the Spring Cabin.  Her son, Roscoe, was a poet, composer, inventor, schoolteacher, radio artist, drama coach as well as an avid mountain climber.  He often referred to himself as the “hermit of Spring Brook” and he owned the cabin and the 160 surrounding acres until his death in 1950.

Roscoe’s wife, Pansy, was an artist whose “sun paintings” were known all over the world.  Instead of watercolors or oils, she used plant materials found near the cabin.  Her two sons remembered their mother packing lunches for them in the morning and saying “come on boys, we’re going naturing today!”

In 1970, Boulder mountain parks ranger Jack Kissell took the Stockton’s sons, Oakely and Paul, on a trip up the steep trail to the old cabin. The sons had remembered making most of the trip in a Model T.  The road ended about a quarter of a mile from the cabin and everything had to be carried up on their backs after that – including a pedal organ that had to be carried all the way up from the McGillvray cabin!

Roscoe died in 1950 and his ashes were scattered near the cabin.  His family carved his initials in the base of The Matron, a popular climbing area.”

So the cabin was at Eldorado Springs! And my great grandfather’s ashes were there. We had to go back and hike the trail to the cabin.

The morning we arrived, cloudless blue skies and temperatures in the 60s were promising; the closed trail was not. We tried to find information about another way to the cabin, but decided instead to come back yet a third time the next day when the sign stated the trail would be open.

From my ancestral past we headed down Highway 285 to the lodge Dan’s father built back in 1930. It was a tumultuous year not only for the United States, but also for young Dan Waldron, a policeman in Kansas City, Missouri, and his wife Margaret Waldron. The 1930 census shows them living on Tracy Avenue. By 1931, they no longer existed. A string of train and bus tickets all around the middle western United States — Oklahoma City, Denver, Wichita, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Salt Lake City — was all that remained and by the time they were in Shawnee, Colorado, they were Ray and Peggy Bandel. We don’t know what happened in the fall of 1930 in Kansas City. There is a hint that Dan Waldron may have been involved in some way with the Pendergast mafia family. And we know nothing about the past of Margaret Waldron/Peggy Bandel. The 1930 census indicated that she was born in Canada to a French father and British mother and was naturalized to the United States in 1909. That is all we know.

Ray Bandel kept pages and pages of building plans for Scenic Singleton, the lodge he built in Shawnee, Colorado, advertised to have a chicken dinner so good it was the talk of Denver.

The twisting road took us through beautiful pine forests and little emerald lakes. Shawnee is a small town ardent in its resolve to preserve its history. The General Store was more of a museum and talking place for locals with a few bags of chips and cokes for sale, and Shawnee history books and photographs on prominent display. It was closed when we arrived, but we met the shop keeper’s daughter who let us in, gave us the general tour, and exchanged information with us. She looked at the photograph we had of Scenic Singleton and immediately knew its location. Eighty-seven years later, though changed, it was still standing. Due to an ownership dispute, it was no longer in use, but the woman remembered going there for events and dinners when it was a lodge.

We drove to the site. History will speak to you when you stand on its soil with your own feet. We made photographs of the building with the little lake in front. There was a tree growing in the middle of the lake that wasn’t there then. Dan touched the door of the building and the surrounding trees and listened to the wind through the pine needles before heading back to Boulder to prepare to set foot into more history.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a frustrating evening. So far, we’d had success finding last minute lodging, but Boulder appeared to be in the midst of some kind of weekend event. The crazy driving was getting on Dan’s nerves. Finally, we found a quiet La Quinta right next to I-70 in Golden. We were practically in Denver again.

The next morning, we started early for Eldorado Springs, but the only open hiking parking lot was already full. The parking lot specifically for the trail to the Stockton Cabin is the South Mesa Trailhead lot. It remained closed. There were other people eager to hike what turned out to be a very popular set of trails, especially for walking dogs.

Passionately, I announced my resolve to visit my great-grandfather’s cabin and this passion gave some enthusiastic little old ladies I met at the gate the resolve to hit the trail in spite of the closed gate. I was glad.

The problem was parking. Dan’s ankle had been giving him trouble, so he was eager for a reason not to hike. You and Kiva go, he said.

My heart sank. I wanted to share this with him, for him to be a part of my history, too. And what was he going to do for three hours?

Disappointment is an awful thing and a problem for me at times. It took at least a mile of Kiva dragging me uphill, sniffing at the tracks of deer and dogs, to begin to enjoy the beautiful day and the brook murmuring nearby. Kiva was thankful to have that fresh water source on the way up the trail although she ended up with a number of matted burrs embedded in her fur.

The history of the area is full of rattlesnake tales. One young homesteader mistook a snake for a vine. What would Kiva do if she saw a rattlesnake move through the grass?

The uphill was gradual, so with some stops to enjoy the magnificent views, it was not arduous. The trail was mostly exposed, so the hot sun hit us hard until we turned toward Shadow Canyon. And there was the cabin.

Small for someone to live in. Tucked right into the canyon. The front porch was surrounded in wire fencing and padlocked to keep out the constant stream of hikers. There was a huge rock right in front of the porch that Kiva and I climbed up on to peer inside the best we could. We climbed down from the rock and found the brook nearby. Springbrook Cabin. I kept looking at the boulders, wondering which ones might have been the ones my great grandparents sat on in the photograph of the two them while young and in love. I didn’t realize there were boulders called “The Eagle” that Pansy stood on for a photograph. I didn’t realize the initials of my great-grandfather and his parents were carved into another boulder. Not until after. Someday, I wanted to come back with my children, Crystal and Zach, and maybe my brother Alex would want to come, too, and we could look for the initials together.

Kiva and I rounded the corner of the canyon and saw “the Monolith.” I was glad to have a marker so that I would be able to look up and know where the cabin was when looking from below. There was also a great view of the cabin from across the canyon.

I met some hikers. They said they’d just been sitting up on a rock and looking at the cabin and wondering about the man who’d lived in it so long ago. They figured the winters would be cold because the sun didn’t come through the canyon. Must be a tough old bird, they said. I told them about Roscoe Stockton, figuring it would be a great addition to their hike to have this piece of living history.

Roscoe was a poet. He wrote the song that was the Colorado State Song for a number of years and also one of the Boy Scout songs. He was a teacher in the Denver public schools for many years, living with his family on Holly Street. He was a radio announcer and coached other radio personalities. He married Pansy Stockton on June 25, 1918 in nearby Pine Cliff, Colorado.

We ended up doing a loop. Thanks to Kiva, I walked it differently than I’d planned, which I think made for an easier walk. The way back was mostly wooded, so there was shade. Every now and then the views of the rock formations above were stunning.

Dan spent the day sleeping in the parking lot of the Eldorado Springs Resort, closed for the season. He met us as we emerged from the trail after Kiva’s first sight of a horse out in the open and a cool off and drink in the creek near the parking area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were eager to leave Colorado. Nothing but a goat rope, Dan said. Yuppie living at altitude. The quick building of same-looking houses close together. Thick smog over the Denver skies. Drug use and vagrancy. So many convoluted roads and drivers and roadblocks. The roads we’d learned about in Wyoming were designed by women, it appeared the ones we encountered in Colorado were not.

After passing through some beautiful and very high country with the highest point on the US interstate system in the 1.6 mile Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel, 11,158 feet, we stayed the night in a motel run by friendly and earnest Polish immigrants in Grand Junction, Colorado. Within walking distance was the best dinner of the trip so far at Rib City. The best fall-off-the-bone succulent ribs I’ve ever eaten with endless barbecue sauces and also the best pecan pie.

The next morning, we enjoyed views of the majestic Colorado National Monument and crossed into Utah with a sense of relief.