Clik here to view.
Never far behind, Wheeler’s woes catch up
Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a three-part series on one of Aspen’s most influential early characters, B. Clark Wheeler. Read part one here and part two here. Though a brash name in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aspen mayor and defendant
Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series about B. Clark Wheeler. Read part one here and part three here. In an endorsement with gracious caveats, news of the 1890 mayoral election in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
B. Clark Wheeler, a nimble man in his time
“Yesterday was a regular B. Clark Wheeler day — windy!” “About the City” column, The Aspen Democrat, 1909 Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part series chronicling the life and times of B....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Western Slope’s nuclear fracking legacy
Near the end of a washboard gravel road climbing uphill about five miles off Interstate 70 at Parachute, it feels a bit incredulous that in 1969 a 40-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated directly underfoot...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Better ideas wrestle a brave new world
Not to be hindered by mortal restraints, the keynote speaker of the Aspen Institute’s 1949 Goethe Bicentennial Convocation, Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), welcomed attendees to Aspen Ideas: Health...
View ArticleClik here to view.
APSPA: From corporate burr to community asset
In part two of the history of ski patrol unions (read part one here), a dramatic loss of benefits leads to the formation of the Aspen Professional Ski Patrol Association in 1986. As APSPA nears its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
You fall, we haul
“When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion.” Ethiopian proverb In the first of a two-part story, the history of ski patrol unions unfolds in Aspen between 1959-1986, leading to the Aspen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Masterminds mull in the mountains
In the second of a two-part series that examines the potency of the Aspen Institute’s 2024 annual Aspen Ideas Festival, humor, reality and hope marble ongoing topical issues. Things got underway at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Embedded with the eggheads
In this two-part story, The Aspen Institute’s annual capstone event renders reflections on the potency of the 2024 Aspen Ideas Health and Aspen Ideas Festival. Part one sets the scene and frames Ideas...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From Bauhaus to birdhouse
Eggheads meet cowboys in this story about Herbert Bayer’s journey from Austria to Aspen. Indelibly shaped by World War I and his studies at the German Bauhaus design school, circumstances chronicle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ute removal policy comes to a head in the 1887 ‘Colorow War’
Editor’s note: This is the third and final part of Aspen Journalism’s series on the removal of the Ute people from western Colorado. Parts one and two detailed the Battle of Milk Creek and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tensions erupt in violent retribution at Meeker’s Indian agency
Editor’s note: The second part of our three-part series on the removal of the Ute people from western Colorado begins on the first day of the six-day Milk Creek stalemate, which provoked the killings...
View ArticleClik here to view.
At Milk Creek, Northern Utes defend their territory
Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on the events that led to the Northern Utes’ expulsion from western Colorado. Part one focuses on the events leading up to the historic Battle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drive here please, said Aspen in the Quiet Years: Aspen’s history by car,...
This is the second part of a two-part series, beginning with “From wagon roads to two-lane,” which can be read here. Part one explored motoring in Aspen from the first car in 1906 up to the completion...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From wagon road to two-lane: Aspen’s history by car, part one
Once celebrated in 1906 Aspen as the transition from horse and buggy to metropolitan, the circumnavigation of the first car through town brought looky-loos into the streets. Who then would have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unbridled optimism meets mining realities
“Young People face death in Hope Tunnel ” after an all-night struggle, the Aug. 19, 1915, Aspen Democrat-Times headlined. A “gay auto party” of Ted Cooper, Albert DeMarias, Esther Wheeler and Mary...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pioneer pluck in Hunter Creek
Aspen’s long-taken-for-granted backyard of Hunter Creek — once slated as an alternate road route to Leadville in the 1880s — attracted a group of five prospectors in late fall of 1879. Those “ ‘79ers”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Town of Ruedi submerged by reservoir, but not by history
Many know the Ruedi Reservoir on the Fryingpan River 14 miles above Basalt as a fun place to camp, fish, water ski or sail. But few people realize that the water storage there flooded the onetime...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Big bore in hard times
One August day in 1930, John H. Cowden, president of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company of Ordway, Colorado, and his engineer O.R. Smith stood atop Independence Pass looking for water sources....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aspen’s rich history of befouling the Fork
On the afternoon of Aug. 23, 1895, Frank Klangel felt the urge and went out to the privy behind his uncle’s saloon, Adam’s Place, on Cooper Avenue between Hunter and Galena in downtown Aspen. As the...
View Article
