Grand County was established in 1874 by the Territory of Colorado, thus becoming a county two years before Colorado became a state. It was named for the Grand River, the name by which the Colorado River was known at that time. The headwaters of the today’s Colorado River are in Grand County. The county was formed from a portion of Summit County but acquired its current boundaries in 1877, when part of the Grand County was used to create Routt County. The county seat is Hot Sulphur Springs. The area of 1,854 square miles consists of meadows, river valleys and mountains.
R.C. Black, Island in the Rockies. Pruett Publishing Company, 1969
William Bright, Colorado Place Names. Johnson Publishing Company, 1993
Hafen and Hafen, Our State: Colorado. Old West Publishing Company, 1971
Grand County was established in 1874 by the Territory of Colorado, thus becoming a county two years before Colorado became a state. It was named for the Grand River, the name by which the Colorado River was known at that time. The headwaters of the today’s Colorado River are in Grand County. The county was formed from a portion of Summit County but acquired its current boundaries in 1877, when part of the Grand County was used to create Routt County. The county seat is Hot Sulphur Springs. The area of 1,854 square miles consists of meadows, river valleys and mountains.
Prehistoric
7000 BCE to 900 BCE: Paleo Indians (Yarmony, Rollins Pass, Windy Gap) use Middle Park as summer hunting area
1819 – 1860
1819:Adams-Onis Treaty – Middle Park partitioned – Sites of Granby, Fraser, Grand Lake and Hot Sulphur are in the U.S, Kremmling still part of Spain
Middle Park well known to “Mountain Men” by 1820
1828: Kremmling becomes part of Texas
1837: T.J. Farnham’s expedition crosses the Blue at Grand River
1839: Grand River named on a semi-official map
1842: Rufus B. Sage visit
1844: Captain John C. Fremont’s second expedition, accompanied by Kit Carson, enters Middle Park over Muddy Pass and exits up the Blue River
1854: Sir St. George Gore, an Englishmen, accompanied by Jim Bridger enters Middle Park for hunting expedition
1859: First appearance of prospectors; interest in Hot Sulphur Springs
1861 – 1874
1861: Berthoud crosses Berthoud Pass and traverses Middle Park
1861: Middle Park becomes part of Summit County
1863: Trouble begins between the Utes and white men
1864-1868: Wm. N. Byers acquires Hot Sulphur Springs
1866: Gov. Cummings signs Treaty of Middle Park
1868: John Wesley Powell visits Grand Lake, makes first recorded ascent of Longs Peak
1867: Joseph Westcott settles at Grand Lake
1871-1872: Clarence King surveys area
1873-1874: F.V. Hayden surveys area
1874: Creation of Grand County (two years before Colorado became a state)
1874: Toll roads opens over Rollins and Berthoud Passes
1874: William H. Jackson, renowned photographer, takes first photographs of Middle Park
1875 – 1888
1875: First mail routes to Hot Sulphur Springs
1875: Silver ore indications in Never Summer Range
1875: First school opens in Hot Sulphur Springs with 12 students, (school “year” was 20 days)
1877: Routt County detached from Grand County
1877: Stokes-Dean political crisis
1878: Tabernash and Abraham Elliott killed
1879: Ute Indian War produces excitement, anxiety
1879: Lulu City & Teller City formed
1880: Gaskill City formed
1881: Four railroad projects frustrated
1881: County Seat moves to Grand Lake, height of mining boom, Grand Lake Prospector is launched
1883: Commissioner shootings at Grand Lake
1884: Shooting of Texas Charlie in Hot Sulphur Springs
1884: Kremmling formed
1885: Kremmling Post Office opens
1885-1886: Collapse of mining, North Park separates from Grand County
1888: County Seat moves back to Hot Sulphur Springs
1889 – 1904
Expansion of ranching
Development of public education
1890: Grand Ditch construction begins... carries water from Grand Lake mountains to the front range
1891: First platting of Kremmling
1891: Berthoud Pass route becomes state road
1893: Construction begins on Byers Canyon road
1896 et seq.: Organized religious congregations develop
1892: First diversion of water to eastern slope
1898: First high school opens in Kremmling
1902-1904: Moffat – Harriman struggle
1903: Hot Sulphur Springs incorporates
1904: Kremmling incorporates
1904: Moffat Road crosses Rollins Pass
1904: First motor car arrives Grand County
1904: First telephones installed
1905 – 1914
1905: First Forest Reserves
1905: Fraser develops, Granby is founded
1905: Moffat Road reaches Hot Sulphur Springs
1905: Parshall is founded
1906: Moffat Road reaches Kremmling
Proliferation of competitive newspapers
1905-1908: Heyday of Monarch
1908: Arapaho National Forest established
1911: First Hot Sulphur Springs Winter Carnival
1912: First Middle Park Fair
1913: Eleven motor vehicles are registered in Grand County
1913: Tabernash established as railroad division point
1915 – 1930
1915: Rocky Mountain National Park founded
1917-1918: Participation in World War I by 151 Grand County residents
1918-1919: Influenza epidemic
1919: Grand County Pioneer Society founded
1919: Fall River Road completed
1921: Grand River name changed to Colorado River by U.S. Congress
1922: First radio receiver
1923: Gore Pass opens to motor vehicles
1923: Improved Berthoud Pass road opens
1923-1928: Moffat Tunnel built
1926: Fred Selak murder
1929-1941: The Great Depression
1930-1932: Berthoud kept open all winter
1932: Trail Ridge Road completed
Since 1930
1938: Colorado-Big Thompson irrigation and power project begins
1940: Winter Park Ski Area opens
1941-1945: Participation in WWII
Late 1940s – early 1950s: Construction of Colorado– Big Thompson Project
After 1879 there were no Native Americans in Grand County.
In the 1800, the leading cause of death in Grand County was accidents followed by pneumonia.
Between 1887 and 1902, Grand County had no divorces.
The total resident population of Grand County in 1900 was 741. The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Winters in Grand County often were severe, but nothing as terrible as the winter of 1898-1899. Warm weather preceded the storm which began on February 2nd. Four feet of snow fell by that first evening and the residents did not see the sun for the rest of the month as the snow continued to fall. The snow continued into March and April and while few residents died, but the loss of livestock was tremendous.
David Moffat was a wealthy Denver businessman who saw the need for a rail link between Denver and Salt Lake City. His vision, a 6.2 mile long tunnel beneath the Continental Divide, made this link possible.
He was born in 1839, the youngest of 8 children. Heran away from home at age of 12, went to New York City and found work as a bank messenger. He was an assistant teller by the age of 16 and became a millionaire through real estate by the age of 21.
Moffat was admired for his qualities of courage, adaptation to the “barbaric” West and his goodness of heart. He married his childhood sweetheart, Francis Buckhout, moved toDenver, and in1860 opened a bookstore/stationary/drug store with C.C. & S.W. Woolworth on the corner of 11th and Larimer.
Moffat and others formed the Denver Pacific Railroad to reach Cheyenne. The rail line to the Moffat Tunnel was the highest standardrailroad ever built in theU.S.(11,660 ft). It went over the Continental Divide at Rollins Pass and came into theFraserValleyin 1904. At the time, it was the most difficult railroad engineering and construction project ever undertaken. It involved boring numerous tunnels through solid granite, as well as constructing precarious timbered trestles that bridged deep mountain gorges.
David Moffat was a multi-millionaire when he started the Moffat Line and was nearly broke when he died in 1911 trying to raise money for the tunnel that would eventually be built and bear his name. It was finally completed in 1928. The west portal of the Moffat Tunnel can be seen from the Winter Park Resort.
Tradition holds that an army party led by one Lt. Col Johns gave the name of Troublesome to what had sometimes been called Oties Creek. The Army was plotting a road in 1865 and had to go north to the forks of the East and West Troublesome in order to cross it, because of the soft soil, thereby being a “troublesome” creek. Some historians claim that mountain man “Colorado Charley” Utter had built a cabin on the creek in 1861, which became a popular stopping place for early hunters and trappers in the region. Another report credits John S. Jones of Empire with a cabin near the mouth of the Blue River, a few miles away, that same year.
Among the earliest settlers on the Troublesome were Barney Day, Henry King and Martin “Dock” McQueary, who had a cabin there in 1871. In 1878, a post office was established at the King home.
By the end of the century, many ranches had been established at on Troublesome Creek. Farthest upstream was the remote George Hendricks ranch, difficult to reach year round and totally cut off from the rest of the world during winter snow. Mrs. Hendricks had a large library and gave her children a sound education prior to their high school years in Kremmling.
Among the most prominent ranches were those of George and Forrest Wheatly. Probably the largest ranch (3000 acres) was that of the family of Con Ritschard, lying just north of current day U.S. Highway 40 east of Troublesome Creek.
Life was hard for the settlers in the area. Like much of Grand County, the soil was frozen as deep as eight feet in the winter. One memoir noted that when there was a death in the winter, the corpse was placed in the roof of a cabin, well swathed, until the spring thaw allowed for permanent burial.
There was a six year school (second to seventh grade) and a post office established at Pearmont about half way up the Troublesome, in the 1920s. This area was named for local settler Gus Pearson.
Ranching was not the only pursuit along the Troublesome Creek. Settler Roy Polhamos grew lettuce and shipped it through the Granby Cooperative to Denver. He also had a potato contract with one of the Denver grocers. Other growers contributed to the 125 refrigerated train carloads of lettuce that were shipped from Granby in 1924. By 1929, 34 farmed from Granby to Troublesome netted $46,000, a highly respectable profit in those days.
Maggie and Jimmy Crawford came to Middle Park in the summer of 1874 with their three children. They were given a piece of property and built a one room sod roofed cabin in Hot Sulphur Springs. They were probably the first family to stay the winter in Middle Park.
As they settled in for a long hard winter, Jimmy continued exploring lands to the west. He found prime land near a spring that made a unique chugging noise. That sound reminded him of the steamboats on the Missouri River back home. After that winter, Maggie returned to Missouri with her family, while Jimmy built a cabin on the new filing, which would later become known as Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
By 1876, Maggie and the children were back in Colorado, and the family became founding members of that new community.
Starting in the late 1870s, ranchers took in guests to supplement their income during hard times. Early adventure-seekers from the East made the long rail journey to the wilds of MiddlePark in search of big game and unspoiled mountain scenery.
With few accommodations available, travelers looked to frontier families for room and board. Ranchers soon discovered guests, or "dudes" as they came to be known, would pay to fix fences, ride horses, work cattle and sleep in tents....sometimes for an entire summer! Entertainment was eventually incorporated into the guest experience.
Located on the stage stop between Georgetown and Hot Sulphur Springs, William Z. Cozens was the first rancher in GrandCounty to provide room and board to travelers starting as early as 1874. The Lehman and Sheriff families also ran well-known turn of the century dude ranches.
The years following World War I were the height of the dude ranch era. By the late 1950s, Granby had as many as ten guest ranches between Granby and GrandLake with others scattered throughout the county. TodayGrandCounty is still home to six dude ranches, which attract visitors from all over the world for their western charm, high-quality accommodations, horseback riding programs and superb fly fishing.
Sources: A Dude Ranch Is... 1874-1986. GrandCounty Historical Association Journal, Volume VI, Number 1. June 1986. GrandCounty Historical Association
Here is the story of how Joyce and George Engel became legends in Winter Park and Fraser. In 1945, Winter Park Resort hired George Engel as their very first paid ski patroller. Little could George have known that this job would lead him to his wife, Joyce Hanna, disembarking from a ski train, and together they would call Winter Park and the Fraser Valley their home for life. Along with Joyce and their daughters, the Engel Family would have a lasting influence not only on Winter Park Resort but on the Fraser Valley community as well.
In the year following his hiring as Winter Park’s ski patroller, George Engel took on different responsibilities at the ski area, such as plowing the parking lot and collecting rental fees in the bunkhouse. Gordy Wren and Frank Bulkley formed Colorado Outings in 1946 and started the ski school at Winter Park. As director of the ski school, Gordy Wren hired George Engel as a ski instructor. That same year George passed one of the first ski instructor certification exams ever held. By 1949, the Professional Ski Instructors of America was formed and Engel held pin # 12.
Gordy Wren was busy practicing for the 1948 Olympics and consequently sold his share in Colorado Outings. This gave George Engel the opportunity to buy into the company and he became director and eventually sole owner of the ski school. George added the Winter Park Ski Shop onto the ski school.
George met the love of his life, Joyce Hanna in 1951 as she disembarked from the Winter Park Ski Train. Joyce, with two BA degrees from the University of Colorado, was ready to ski and work. After dating for three weeks, George proposed to his future bride and business partner. The Winter Park Ski School under George’s leadership, and the Winter Park Ski Shop with Joyce at the helm, became fixtures of the ski area. George and Joyce’s two daughters grew up on the slopes.
Daughters Wendy and Janet tell wonderful stories from when the family lived in an apartment above the Winter Park Ski Shop. After Winter Park Resort bought the ski school in 1982, they demolished the shop and apartment to make way for the West Portal Station.
Along with skiing, another Engel passion was horses which led to their acquiring 40 acres along County Road 5 where they built Casa de Engel. From their ranch, the Engels helped to establish the Winter Park Horseman’s Association and the High Country Stampede Rodeo at John Work Arena in Fraser. Naturally, Janet Engel became a rodeo star. The Engels were also involved with the Middle Park Fair and Rodeo for decades.
As community leaders, the Engels transformed Winter Park Resort and the Fraser Valley. They helped start the Fraser Valley Metropolitan Recreation District, the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce and the Winter Park Sanitation District. Joyce Engel was a founder of the Grand County Concert Series bringing live classical music to this rural community. In 1968, George Engel was instrumental in bringing the National Sports Center for the Disabled to Winter Park. The family’s wide-ranging passions enrich all our lives then, now and into the future.
A little over a hundred years ago the few residents of Fraser were awakened by a sound new to their town.The railroad had finally arrived in 1904, just over 30 years after it had first debuted in Denver.That same blaring horn, followed by the rumble of iron wheels on rails is waking up the good town-folk of the FraserValley today.As the local Manifest has documented recently, many residents have long been annoyed by the noisy disruption the train makes as it announces its passing through town.Additionally, parents of school children rushing to FraserElementary School in the morning can attest to the intrusive obstacle the slow moving behemoth becomes at in the morning.
A hundred years ago, residents of the FraserValley complained loudly of the intrusion of the iron horse on the tranquil lifestyle.It has long been rumored that the course of the railroad was determined by an angry old timer by the name of Billy Cozens.Cozens was a pioneer of the valley having homesteaded his ranch in the area in the early 1870s.According to legend, when the engineers were surveying the route of the future Denver, Northwestern, and Pacific Railroad through the valley, Billy Cozens bullied the crewmen into the woods.As the railmen would lay their flags for the roadbed, Cozens, an expert marksman, would shoot the markers out of the ground.As the story goes, this was the reason the tracks were laid through the forest, rather than the meadow.
The reality of the chosen route for the D.N.&P. was due to grade and not fear of the rifle.Whether Cozens despised the railroad is anyone's guess.According to Robert Black's book, Island in the Rockies, the railroads designing engineers actually consulted Cozens concerning the lack of snow on the continental divide.Regardless, the rumors have persisted over the years about the "Old Sheriff's" contempt for the railroad.It has even divulged to me that the ghost of Billy Cozens will not allow anything concerning the railroad in his former home, the CozensRanchMuseum.Whenever railroad exhibits have been attempted they have mysteriously vanished and were never seen again.
As far as the townfolk of Fraser were concerned, many of them regarded the railroad as an opportunity that had eluded the region for years.Unfortunately for Fraserites, their town was to be bypassed as the major hub for the area.Further down the valley Tabernash was chosen as the location for the workshops and roundhouse for the forthcoming trains.As a result, the trains would move through Fraser without their engineers paying the town much notice outside of their blowing whistles.Nonetheless, the people of the valley would embrace the iron horse.Economic potential in GrandCounty would erupt due to the advent of relatively efficient transportation.Specifically, the lumber industry would boom with the outlet that the railroad would provide.Additionally, people could move between Denver and GrandCounty easily compared to the wagon roads that formerly provided the only passage to the outside world.As timber and cattle traveled to the Front Range, mail and hard goods traveled back to the FraserValley.
In years past, just like today, it has been easy to forget the benefits that the railroad has brought to our lives.Certainly, when the train moved into the valley, the people that day realized that their life could slow down a bit.The reality was that the short inconvenience that the passing train brought with its blaring horn, bringing traffic to a momentary standstill enhanced the life and character of the FraserValley.It provided power, people, and materials in a unique way that simplified life here.This is as true today as it was in 1905.
GrandCounty has a stunning variety of terrain, landscapes and distinctive regions.The county encompasses 1869 square miles with almost 68% of the land is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management or the National Park Service. The Continental Divide marks the northern and western boundary of the county and the county is also the headwaters of the Colorado River.Regions have been established by proximity to water sources (The Troublesome, The Muddy, The Blue, and ThreeLakes) or by their geographic features (MiddlePark, ChurchPark, and the FraserValley).
Jim Bridger spent quite a bit of time in Grand County and has been cited as "one of the three or four most able, influential, and best known mountain men' according to historian Dan Thrapp. Born in Virginia in 1804, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in St Louis at the age of fourteen, and in 1822, left to join Ashley's fur trading operation in the Yellowstone area of Wyoming. He claimed to have discovered the Great Salt Lake in 1824, believing it to be an arm of the Pacific Ocean. He was a co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, along with Tom Fitzpatrick and Milton Sublette.
While Bridger was illiterate, he was noted for both his intimate knowledge of the Rocky Mountains and his prevarications to impress newcomers. He was engaged in some battles with Indians, but was married to two Indian women; a Ute woman who died in childbirth, and then Shoshone women who bore him two children.
Jim's friendship with Louis Vasquez led to construction of a fort named Fort. Bridger on the Green River in Wyoming. As a guide, he led the infamous expedition of Sir George Gore through Grand County in 1855, in which Gore killed many thousands of animals and birds. During the excursion, he would join Gore for luxurious dinners with fine table service and discussions of Shakespeare. Bridger hired a teenaged boy to read him some of Shakespeare's plays but thought that many of the story lines were just "too vicious or ridiculous".
He was one of the most sought after guides of the West during his lifetime and guided American troops in the so called Mormon War of 1857-8. In his later years, Bridger acquired a farm near Westport Missouri, gradually became blind and died in 1873. His two sons buried him in the present Kansas City, but in 1904, his remains were moved to Mountain Washington Cemetery in Independence Missouri. Jim Bridger is immortalized with his name being given to many places in the West.
Though few, high altitude water ditches have had a major impact on Grand County's history and economy, there were many early valley ditches transporting this precious commodity from water-right sources to the owner's ranch. However, the threat of transporting great volumes of water from our county to Boulder County via high altitude ditches appeared back in 1889. Certain interests east of the Divide talked the Legislature into appropriating $25,000, for surveying and developing a 20-mile-long canal over South Boulder Pass to South Boulder Creek. Amazingly, neither Grand County residents nor very many others opposed this notion. Luckily the state engineer found the terrain so difficult that not even $2000 was ever spent on the project.
The next effort occurred also in 1889. This privately financed plan was to develop a two-branched canal system that would move 700 second feet of water to a half-mile tunnel just beneath Berthoud Pass at over 11,000 feet, thence down to Clear Creek and on to the Golden area. Initial surveys were begun that fall and roads laid out the following year. The effort bogged down but was resurrected in 1900 under the Agricultural Ditch Co., supplemented in 1902 with the Berthoud Canal Co. The canal was partially completed by the Frank Church family ranching interests of Jefferson County by 1906. The ditch, which can be walked today, runs from Second Creek to Berthoud Pass, though it no longer carries much water. However, the Church Ditch water rights coming from Clear Creek still exist and today are owned by Northglenn.
Proposed in 1890 by the Water Supply and Storage Company of Fort Collins, a greater canal was to be built 1000 feet above the Kawuneeche Valley, that would tap the high tributaries of the North Fork of the Grand River, sending the water over Poudre Pass to a reservoir and then into the Cache La Poudre River and on to agricultural areas east of the Front Range. The water company, later known as the Grand River Ditch Company, appropriated 525 second feet at the time of the initial diversion in 1892. (When the Grand River was renamed the Colorado River in 1921, the company was changed to the Grand Valley Irrigation Company.) The ditch was dug by hand, primarily by Japanese and Mexican laborers. By 1900, water was flowing eastward.
By 1906, this major canal, known as the Grand Ditch, and draining water from the Never Summer Range, had a capacity of nearly 358 second feet with 12 headgates within 8 miles, running from Baker Creek to the pass at 10,179 feet, plus a smaller canal carrying 183 second feet within 11 miles, coming from Specimen Mountain. In 1936, using machinery, the ditch was lengthened to 14 miles. The Grand Ditch is about 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep, though the water is rarely more than 3 feet deep, and this water irrigates some 40,000 acres in Weld and Larimer counties.
The National Park Service has argued against the allocation of all this water to the canal as it is needed to support plant life and animal habitat. Becuase river water flow was cut in half, the immediate effect was a reduction in the fish population in the Colorado River. More recently, a major washout in the ditch caused devastating damage to the slopes below the ditch and to the Colorado River itself. Hikers climbing up from the valley use the Grand Ditch as a route to the high peaks and lake. But as viewed from below, the Grand Ditch is often considered an ugly scar on the landscape.
The mountains of Grand County may not boast any of the famous “fourteeners“ (14,000 feet and above), but Middle Park is defined by some of the most majestic ranges in the state. These include parts of the Front Range, Gore Range, Rabbit Ears Range, and the Williams Fork Mountains.
The only range Grand County can call entirely it's own is the Never Summer Range. It's highest point is Mount Richthofen (12,940 feet). Other major peaks include: Mount Howard (12,810 feet), Mount Cirrus (12,797 feet), Mount Nimbus (12,706 feet), and Nokhu Crags (12,485 feet). The name Never Summer is translated from the Arapahoe name, Ni-chebe-chii, which means “the place of No Never Summer“. The cloud names of Cirrus and Nimbus, and Stratus and Cumulus were the idea of James Grafton Rogers, a founder of the Colorado Mountain Club.
The Never Summer Range stretches for ten miles from Cameron Pass to Bowen Mountain. This range is darker and harder due the tremendous heat produced when the peaks were a localized center of volcanic activity.
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