David E. Steiner

Retired USAF, Teacher, Dad, Grandfather, Curmudgeon

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The Estes Park Museum

 

“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember, ” observed Messrs. Sellers and Yeatman in 1066 and All That.  “All other history defeats itself.”

Richard Shenkman in his new book, Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History notes that “…in many cases history is written by the victors and is filtered through the prism of their prejudices.” So it is that we still believe the Spanish Inquisition, for example, was one of the lowest, meanest, most reprehensible forms of injustice in human history because, says Shenkman, English Protestants wrote the history books. The Inquisition did kill quite a few folks: some 25,000 in a little more than three centuries. But during the same period the Protestants killed several hundred thousand as witches. We don’t hear much about that.

I have been thinking about history lately, not only because I’ve been to a couple of board meetings at the Estes Park Area Historical Museum, but because in January I spent two weeks prowling the museums, galleries, archives, monuments and historic sites in and around Washington, D.C.

As a result, I have a new respect for accurate recording and preservation, and the keeping of what some people might call junk. You have some of it around: things that belonged to parents or grandparents that reflect life in the mountains many years ago. Others might call it junk, but you correctly regard it as a link to the past and a lesson for the future you hope to pass on to someone who will care. I saw quite a bit of that sort of thing in Washington.

The Estes Park Museum has, in its newly renovated museum, a theme illustrated by  a picture you’ll see as soon as you enter the building. It’s a picture of a family having a picnic beside what appears to be a 1915 Buick, next to a river presumed to be the Big Thompson. The part I like best is the straw hat, a skimmer, perched on one post of the windshield. That speaks to me of the spirit of that time and the connections between the leisure and the mobility that made Estes Park and Allenspark, and many other distant and difficult destinations,  possible.

Some of my earliest memories of this area are connected to picnics and the cars that made them possible: the ‘47 Dodge, the ‘51 Buick Special. We often went to Wild Basin. About a mile upstream from Copeland Lake there is a big rock sticking into the stream that was ideal. About halfway up the Fall River Road there’s a rock outcropping some twenty feet above the stream, perfect for a picnic.

For many years we went to Bear Lake, until it became so crowded and noisy we had to move on. In the late ‘40s and ‘50s we went once a year with Joe and Ann Mann to a picnic spot about two miles above timberline on Trail Ridge Road. Joe and my father put together some rocks to form a platform for a grill we took along, and we hiked about a quarter mile up in the tundra, hauling food and wine and wood for a fire, and stayed until we ran out of wood, telling stories and singing until the chill drove us away. Dad lost a nice Ronson cigarette lighter up there. He looked for it for years. It’s probably still there. A picnic like that is against the law now, probably rightly so. We were careful about the tundra, but many weren’t.

For about ten years in the ‘50s and ‘60s we went to Central City to the opera. We found an old mine about a mile above the Glory Hole mine and we ate fried chicken and curried deviled eggs (we didn’t worry about cholesterol in those days), drank whiskey sours and threw our chicken bones down the mine shaft. We left the place as we found it, and returned year after year. A few years ago we went back, to find the whole area trashed, garbage everywhere, the buildings vandalized.

We still go to Fall River every year, but now we often have to share the picnic spot and last year there was a couple in a tent nearby. Still, to us it’s an important ritual, and we honor it.

I look at the picture of the family having a picnic, able to drink the water from the stream, not in a picnic area, but at just a spot by the side of the road, and I think I begin to understand; even though we can never live that bucolic scene again, it’s still important to make it memorable, because that’s what history is, and it is what museums can do.

To do that, our museum needs our help, not just in preserving artifacts, but by supporting what it does, with our time and our money. It won’t take much of either to make sure that our children and their children can make those important connections between the past and the future.

 

 

Columns

© 1985 – 2003, David E. Steiner

Allenspark Wind Columns:

Introduction

Why Allenspark?

Going Riding [August, 1985]

Electricity

Used Cars

Peace and Quiet [1986]

Liberals & Conservatives

Going to the Movies

The Screened Porch

The Beginning of The Season

The Weather

The Hilltop Guild Bazaar

The End of The Season

The Gift of Time

The Beavers

Addresses [1987]

Hiking

Watching the Trees Grow

Postal Rates

Changes in Estes Park

Square Dancing at the Pow Wow

Back to the Hilltop Guild Bazaar

The Solstices

Bird Feeders

Elevators

The Estes Park Hardware Store [1988]

Visitors

Limousine Service

A Memorial Service

A Hummingbird

Garbage

A Hiking Trip

The Estes Park Public Library

Wild Life

Riparian Rights [1989]

Weather

Fences

Commuting

Mountain Friendliness

A Motorcycle Trip

Satellite Television

“Weaving Mountain Memories”

Hotel Rates in the Old Days

The Price of Propane [1990]

The Front Range Almanac

June

Modes of Transportation

Miller Moths

My 50th Column

Modern Conveniences

Rock Climbing

On the Death of Otto Walter, Postmaster

Otto’s Memorial Service

A Big Owl Pot-Luck Dinner

A Whine About Telephone Service [1991]

After the Persian Gulf War

Some Changes in the WIND

The Trip to the Mountains

The Mountains in the Summer

Visitors

Of Dogs, Music, and Children

Muhlenburg County

To My Grandson

The Sale of Longs Peak Inn

World War II  [1992]

Murphy’s Law and the Computer

The South St. Vrain Canyon

“Whiteout”

The Hazards of Volunteering

Crime in Our Valley

Infestations

On the Death of Charles Eagle Plume

Can We All Get Along?

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Lost Horizon [1993]

Walking

Rumors About a Visit by the Pope

Progress?

More About Fences

Woodpeckers

The Visit of Pope John Paul II

Forest Fires

The New Sewage System

The Snow Pool

The Good Old Days [1994]

The WIND’s 20th Anniversary

The Bunce School

The Shooting Gallery

The Estes Park Museum

Our Government

U.S. West Takes a Hit

The Year of the Hummingbirds

A New “Yield” Sign

Growth in Allenspark

Private Telephones?

The Salvation Army

Creation Science [1995]

Devolutionizing Big Government

Risks

Airports

Fort D.A. Russell

Domestic Terrorism

Old and New

Barney Graves

Life in the Wilderness

What’s In a Name?

Arthur C. Clarke

 

The Estes Park Trail-Gazette Columns:

July 1983

Carpentry

Estes Cone

Johnny Grant

Observations in Estes Park

The Bath House

Waving

The Sutherland’s Ice House

How Old is Charles Eagle Plume?

Dogs

Christmas Trees

Tree Murder

Mountain Driving

Garbage

Mail Boxes

More About Mail Boxes

“Are you related to ....?”

Spring

An Accident

The Wild Cat

A July Reunion

A Visit to Baldpate Inn

Opening Cabins

Summer

The Times, They Have Changed

Death and Transfiguration

The Population Explosion

The March of Time

Faith-Based Social Services

Looking for Pitch

Recent Writings I

Recent Writings II

Recent Writings III

Recent Writings IV

Recent Writings V

Recent Writings VI

 

 

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