An Environmental History of the Kawuneeche Valley and the Headwaters of the Colorado River, Rocky Mountain National Park

An Environmental History of the Kawuneeche Valley and the Headwaters of the Colorado River, Rocky Mountain National Park Thomas G. Andrews Associate Professor of History University of Colorado at Boulder October 3, 2011 Task Agreeement: ROMO-09017 RM-CESU Cooperative Agreement Number: H12000040001 Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Abbreviations Used in the Notes iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: 20 Native Peoples and the Kawuneeche Environment Chapter Two: 91 Mining and the Kawuneeche Environment Chapter Three: 150 Settling and Conserving the Kawuneeche, 1880s-1930s Chapter Four: 252 Consolidating the Kawuneeche Chapter Five: 367 Beaver, Elk, Moose, and Willow Conclusion 435 Bibliography 441 Appendix 1: On “Numic Spread” 477 Appendix 2: Homesteading Data 483 Transcript of Interview with David Cooper 486 Transcript of Interview with Chris Kennedy 505 Transcript of Interview with Jason Sibold 519 i Acknowledgements This report has benefited from the help of many, many people and institutions. My first word of thanks goes to my two research assistants, Daniel Knowles and Brandon Luedtke. Both Dan and Brandon proved indefatigable, poring through archival materials, clippings files, government reports, and other sources. I very much appreciate their resourcefulness, skill, and generosity. I literally could not have completed this report without their hard work. Mark Fiege of Colorado State University roped me into taking on this project, and he has remained a fount of energy, information, and enthusiasm throughout. Maren Bzdek of the Center for Public Lands History handled various administrative details efficiently and with good humor. At the National Park Service, Cheri Yost got me started and never failed to respond to my requests for help. Paul McLaughlin, who supervised the latter stages of the project, provided a wealth of valuable feedback, not just from himself, but from numerous other NPS employees. Paul has also proven generous in extending me extra time in which to complete the project, and I have appreciated his thoughtful counsel. Judy Visty and Ben Bobowski championed this project from its very inception, and I am very grateful for all of the help they have provided. Michele Simmons helpfully copied the materials located in binders at the Fleshuts Hut and insured that they reached me. Ernie Bernhard joined Paul McLaughlin, Michele Simmons, Judy Visty, and others in commenting on drafts of this report and suggesting improvements. This report is certainly the better for their attentive reviews, though all errors remain mine alone. Last but hardly least, this project would have difficult if not impossible but for the expertise of Tim Burchett at the Rocky Mountain National Park Archives. I also want to thank the staff of RMNP i for graciously hosting me on a number of visits to the Park, ranging from daytrips through the Kawuneeche Valley to a couple of writing retreats at McGraw Ranch. Though I sometimes take a critical approach toward the NPS in the pages that follow, I also have immense respect and gratitude for the difficult, essential, and, too often, thankless work that Park employees devote in hopes of advancing the public good and the ecological health of Rocky Mountain and surrounding areas. The National Park Service provided most of the funding for this report, but I have also benefited from the generosity of the Department of History and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Denver. I thank JoAnn Porter of CLAS for helping me out with the subcontract and other financial arrangements. Myra Rich and Marjorie Levine- Clark, successive chairs at the department, helped me to fund Dan Knowles’s research assistantship. Elizabeth Huerkamp stepped in and performed valuable work on the bibliography. Professional development funds generously advanced by Dean Dan Howard helped to fund summer salary, thus helping me make ends meet while working on this project. And Tabitha Fitzpatrick handled various financial details with her characteristic nonchalance and adeptness. Flannery Burke of the history department at St. Louis University provided pointed critiques that greatly improved my first chapter; Katherine Benton-Cohen provided an encouraging critical reading of chapter two. They have tried to keep me honest and save my readers from irritation, confusion, and contradiction. Paul Sutter has allowed me to bend his ear on many occasions regarding the histories that appear in these pages; I appreciate his thoughtful questions and support. David Cooper, Chris Kennedy, and Jason Sibold kindly shared their time and knowledge with me on several occasions; not least, each agreed to be interviewed. The resulting transcripts ii are part of this report, and will be placed in the RMNP Archives in Estes Park, together with recordings of our conversations. A number of other scientists also proved helpful at various points in sharing their work. The staffs of the Denver Public Library, the National Archives and Records Administration branch in Denver, the Grand County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, the Grand County Judicial Center, and a number of other libraries and archives played critical roles in helping me and my researchers to find the various historical sources that serve as the basis for this report. My father, John T. Andrews, and my mother, Martha Andrews, discussed this project with me on several occasions, always offering suggestions based on their wide knowledge of various fields related to past human-environment interactions in the Colorado high country. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Amy McMaster, and our children, Santiago and Fiona. Completing a project of this length and difficulty on such a short schedule sometimes took me out of their lives when they needed me most. I appreciate their generosity in that regard. But I am even more grateful to them for the love and diversion they have provided. iii Abbreviations Used in Notes DPL Denver Public Library GLO Records General Land Office Records Homestead case files from Kawuneeche Valley. Originals in NARA, Washington, D.C. Copies placed in RMNP Archives as a result of this project NARA National Archives and Records Administration RMNP Archives Rocky Mountain National Park Archives, Estes Park, Colo. RMNP Library Rocky Mountain National Park Library, Estes Park, Colo. RMR Ranger’s Monthly Report From west-side ranger district or districts (administrative changes over the years mean that these lack consistency), referred to by month report concerns; reports located in RMNP Archives SMR Superintendent’s Monthly Report, RMNP Reports located in RMNP Archives iv Introduction This is a rather large study of a rather large place. Its subject is a stretch of country that few outside of the Rocky Mountains of north-central Colorado have ever heard of: The Kawuneeche Valley, a high mountain valley that runs from north to south along the headwaters of the Colorado River between the Front Range and the Never Summer Mountains. Though this study is geographically focused, the pages that follow nonetheless examine an expansive topic: the relationships human beings of various sorts have cultivated with different parts of the valley environment since people first inhabited this region more than twelve thousand years ago down to the present day. The questions that guide this journey through the Kawuneeche Valley’s environmental history are easy to frame but difficult to answer: How has this landscape and its ecosystems changed over time, and what continuities have endured in the face of change? What factors best explain these changes? What ideas, worldviews, perceptions, and value systems shaped how different groups of people made sense of this place? How did the “nature” people imagined in their heads align with the material world that confronted them in the Kawuneeche, and what struggles ensued as various people struggled to make their visions manifest here? What unintended consequences did people unleash in consequence, and what did they learn as a result? The great virtue of such questions is that they draw our attention to the far-reaching and often intense interrelationships that have prevailed along the Colorado River headwaters across the ages. 1 One way to picture the Kawuneeche Valley is to imagine how it looks to airline pilots, cartographers, and an occasional high-flying bird. The axis of the valley runs almost directly north to south. The head of the Kawuneeche comprises a broad shoulder known as La Poudre Pass occupying a comparatively low saddle (in the Colorado Rockies, “low” is a decidedly relative term—La Poudre Pass is well over 10,000 feet above sea level) connecting the Never Summer Range with Specimen Mountain and the Front Range. From our vantage high in the sky, the top of the valley curves around like the tip of a finger pushing upwards from Grand Lake, Colorado’s largest natural lake, to poke the Continental Divide into form rarely witnessed in the Southern Rockies: All the lands the land beyond the crest of the mountains that define the edge of the Kawuneeche’s finger drain into the Platte River, and hence into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River; the Kawuneeche itself, meanwhile, drains into the Colorado River, and thus into the Gulf of California. This is one of the few places in Colorado, in other words, where the so-called “Western Slope” that ultimately flows into the Pacific Ocean (at least in theory— the Colorado River now dissipates before reaching saltwater). It is a strange phenomenon, this U-shaped

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