ALONG COLORADO HIGHWAY 9

Colorado State Highway 9 runs 138 miles right through the heart of the Rocky Mountains.  Every inch of the highway is within Colorado’s borders—well within.  The old asphalt ribbon represents, highlights, reflects and illustrates this great state like no other stretch of road I know. I have traveled it in snow, sleet, rain, hail and bright sunshine.  The twists, turns, potholes and long straight stretches are committed to memory.  The scenery, always changing in the glorious diversity of Colorado seasons, is indelibly printed on my soul.

Highway 9 has been our home and our refuge, too, for the last ten-odd years.  The Giving Tree Ranch first came to life on 170 acres of the old Rolfe’s place just outside of Fairplay at the end of a long stretch of the highway along the South Platte.  Now, the Giving Tree has a new home along the winding stretch of Highway 9 north of Silverthorne along the gold-medal trout waters of the Blue River.  The serenity and isolation make it a perfect place to reflect on all manner of things—and occasionally—to write them down. Hence the “Highway 9 Journals.”  A place for thinking, writing, living and loving down on the clear waters of the Colorado high country.

The southern terminus of Highway 9 is near the small town of Parkdale, Colorado, about 11 miles west of Canon City on US 50.  Just past Parkdale, US 50 heads into the winding stretches of the Arkansas River Canyon (for which Canon City was named)—a beautiful stretch of road where you are likely to still see Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep traversing the rocky walls of the canyon.  Right at Parkdale, the turnoff to a small county road will take you a few miles south and east to the famous Royal Gorge Bridge.  For most tourists, the only reason to be traveling from Canon City to Parkdale is to take this turn and go visit Royal Gorge. You would be forgiven for missing the cutoff north to Highway 9, distinguished only by a small gas station and coffee shop stop, and a road sign stating “Hartsel 47 miles.”

But for those few who decide to take this route, and for the hundreds more who make it a regular commute to the north, the 47 mile stretch on Highway 9 from Parkdale to Hartsel is some of the most beautiful and serene mountain ranch country in all the west. 

Highway 9 begins its journey north by northeast at about 5,000 feet in elevation—nothing remarkable in terms of Colorado high country—but rises gently all along its first 47-mile path to reach 8,868 feet at Hartsel.  From there, the highway jogs straight west, joining US 24 for just a mile or two, and then jogs back north northeast for 17 miles to reach Fairplay at 9,953 feet, then Alma at 10,361 feet (The tiny town of Alma claims to be the highest incorporated town in America.)  The road tops out on the top of Hoosier Pass at 11,541 feet before beginning the 60-mile downward slide through Breckenridge (9,600 feet), Frisco (9,097 feet), Silverthorne (9,035 feet) and finally Kremmling at 7,313 feet as the Blue River flows into the mighty Colorado.  Highway 9 passes through four counties (Fremont, Park, Summit and Grand) with a total population of around 105,000 scattered in a half-dozen very small villages and three or four small towns, and scores of ranches and ranchettes along the way.  Highway 9 is a kaleidoscope of history, lifestyles, incomes, politics, origins and purposes; and though it might not recognize the full diversity of America today, it does capture a lot of what makes up the modern mountain west along its way.

And that makes it perfect for a series of writings about the road, the lives on the road, the country, the west, the nation and our places in it.  That is what “Highway9Journals” is all about.

At about the 112-mile marker on Colorado Highway 9—and on to about mile marker 120, you pass right though the thousand-acre spread once known as the Clayton Hill Ranch (or, for short, the Hill Ranch). The ranch used to comprise riverine shores, meadow and rangeland property along the both the west and east sides of Highway 9 about 11 miles north of the current boundaries of the Town of Silverthorne. The ranch was owned and ranched by longtime Summit County residents Clayton and Olga Hill since the 1940s, and was conveyed to the Town of Breckenridge around 1985 after Olga Hill’s death. The Town of Breckenridge was primarily interested in obtaining additional water rights associated with the Hill Ranch, but the conveyance also provided a unique opportunity to sell the land to a burgeoning class of semi-wealthy citizens who were looking to Colorado for peace, tranquility, nature, and recreation. No longer was Summit County dependent on mining and extraction for its economic well-being. Like the rest of the state, Colorado was becoming a hub of tourism, recreation and professional enterprises more in tune with the long-term preservation of its natural, cultural and historic beauty. The Hill Ranch was a prime example of this type of resource.

The Hill Ranch lands extended over much of Sections 7, 8, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 of Township 2 South, Range 78 West (6thMeridian). Today, that land is owned by a series of agricultural and recreational owners mostly in parcels zoned Rural Residence-20, single residences on minimum 20-acre parcels. Elizabeth and I are one of those fortunate owners.

Harry Hill was born in Victoria, Kansas, in 1880—about halfway between Russell and Hays—right at the peak of cattle kingdom days in the Great Plains. His father was murdered when he was only 6 months old, and he moved to Junction City, Kansas, and worked on his uncles’ farms until he enlisted in the US Army at age 19. He served in the Army Hospital Corps in the Philippines for three years, and returned to the US and took up a job in a pharmacy near Los Angeles in 1903. He married Alice Ethel Andrews in 1905. Ethel’s family was in the dairy business in Long Beach, so it was a natural fit for Harry and Ethel to start their own dairy farming operation—choosing Riverdale, California, about 26 miles south of Fresno—to establish a 180-acre farm stocked with Holstein-Friesian milk cows. Ethel’s mother and father had come by wagon train to Colusa County, California in 1867. Her father, William Henry Harrison Andrews, was a Civil War veteran who served with the Ohio Volunteers. Trained as an engineer, he worked on farming and logging machines in the foothills of the Sierras until he had put away enough to buy his own dairy farm near Long Beach where Ethel was born. 

“Clayton” Hill, as he was known, moved to Dillon, Colorado, somewhere between the mid-1920s and about 1930. Whether he himself owned ranch land is uncertain, but the farm and ranch life are definitely what interested him in the waning days of the roaring twenties. Ranchers on the Lower Blue River between Dillon and Kremmling were busy producing dairy and beef and shipping by wagon or truck to railheads in the two towns. Ranches thrived around Fairplay and Breckenridge, too. Many were owned by persons of Scandinavian or German descent. Names like Engle, Knorr, Lund, Otterson, Yost, Guyselman, and Lindstrom and the like were commonplace in the history of the Lower Blue River Valley. 

Clayton had the good fortune of meeting and marrying the daughter of one the valley’s most prominent ranching family, the Lindstroms, and soon he and Olga Lindstrom Hill were ranching their family lands up and down the Lower Blue River. Olga Lindstrom, born in Dillon in 1910, was the only daughter of Andrew Lindstrom and Signe Lindstrom. Andrew, born in Sweden in 1871, was a prominent rancher and dairy farmer in Summit County. He served as a Summit county commissioner in the 1920s and 1930s, and died in Dillon at the age of 85 in 1958. Signe Lindstrom was born in Denmark in 1869 and died at age 82. 

Clayton and Olga inherited the bulk of the Lindstrom lands, and then added land of their own to create the Hill Ranch spread. Their three children, Olga (1934-1947), George (1937-1952) and Tommy (1943-2013) probably all attended the Slate Creek School nearby their homestead in the vicinity of Acorn and Slate Creeks. Their daughter, Olga, died at age 63 in Kremmling; George died at the young age of 15 in Dillon, Colorado. It was left to the youngest son, Tommy, to carry on the cowboy traditions of the family. Tommy was well-known and well-liked as a cowboy, conservationist, citizen and rancher.

Around the time of Olga Hill’s death, the Town of Breckenridge came into possession of the Hill Ranch acreage. County records for Hill Ranch Lots 1 and 2 (Section 20, T3SR78W)  were surveyed and platted in February 1987, approved by the County in December 1989, and given title in February 1989. These lots would have comprised most of the land purchased by Stanley Johnson in October 1991 (the eventual Giving Tree Ranch), and perhaps portions of the Hillyard Ranch (which appears to have been purchased in 1989) and the Damyanovich Tract, apparently purchased in 1984 (which implies that perhaps the Town of Breckenridge acquired the Hill Ranch properties earlier than 1986), and later sold to Brad Heinrich in 2008.

The Hillyard Ranch was comprised of two parcels with different tax schedule identification numbers. The parcel directly adjacent to the Giving Tree Ranch, PPI #1845-2030-02-001, is part of the original Hill Ranch plat of 1986 and was known as Lot 1, Hill Ranch Subdivision. Those 20 acres are presumably covered by the aforementioned recital of covenants and restrictions issued by the Town of Breckenridge.

The Hillyards bought the old Hill Ranch Lot 1 for $85,000 in 1989, or $4,250 per acre. Recent transactions in the area show that there has been nearly an 8X increase in the value of land in the Lower Blue River Valley between 1989 and 2018, or an appreciation of 7.4% per annum. Recreation and tourism have clearly driven that value appreciation, one of the reasons that Summit County has gone to such extremes to preserve the open, rural and scenic character of the valley.

Gerald Ryan “Jerry” Hillyard, Jr. was born in Denver in 1942. He attended the University of Colorado, and graduated in 1964 with a degree in business administration. He worked for a decade at Western Airlines as a regional sales representative, but his passion was always for horse breeding and ranching. Ten years after leaving Western Airlines, he succeeded in buying the former Hill Ranch tract just north of our property, and started raising horses and cattle on the Lower Blue, and at a ranch near Encampment, Wyoming.

Jerry was touted as selfless and generous. He contributed time and resources to help the homeless and hungry, and was a trustee of the Helen & Arthur Johnson Foundation for over 30 years.[1]

Stanley Joseph Johnson was the son of British mining engineer, Joseph Johnson (1884 – 1996), of Swedish descent. Joseph married Ruth Anderson, five years his senior (1879 – 1911), while in England and they must have immigrated together to the US sometime around the turn of the century. Since Ruth died in Bingham, Utah in 1911, it is likely that Joseph started his US mining career at the Bingham Pit in Bingham Canyon, Utah—at the time the world’s largest copper mine. Somewhere along the line, perhaps after Ruth’s untimely death, Joseph moved to Arizona with his baby daughter Daisy (1911 – 1966) to find work in the booming copper industry of central Arizona around the town of Globe. There, he worked for the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company (incidentally, my former employer) and met and married Francis Caulkins (1892 – 1974). His son, Stanley, was born shortly thereafter in 1918 in the town of Inspiration. This was followed by four more children, one of whom, Richard, died as a toddler. Joseph and Francis lived out the remainder of their lives in Inspiration.

Stanley Johnson would have been about 24 years old when the US entered World War II. It is unclear whether he joined the US Air Force before that time, but it he did become a fighter pilot in the US Air Force and flew missions throughout World War II and the Korean War. After retiring from the Air Force, Stanley settled in San Diego became a successful aerospace executive. He and his wife, Marjie, had three children—Becky, Michelle and Richard.

In 1991, after years of contemplating a return to his mountain west roots for retirement, Stanley purchased Lot 1 of the Hill Ranch Subdivision from the Town of Breckenridge for $125,000 (roughly $5,680 per acre). That land today is probably worth close to $1 million.

With his intrepid and well-educated daughter, Michelle, Stanley went about the plans for a large log lodge on the property that would serve as a meeting place and retreat for current and future generations of Johnsons’. Michelle drove the process through the myriad details of water rights, well permits, land use planning, design and construction of a 7,000 square foot “Legacy Lodge” that could accommodate more than two dozen adults and children along this gorgeous stretch of the Blue River.

Legacy Lodge was completed in 1993. Landscaping was completed in 1994, including the planting of windbreaks and treescapes in the front acreage in cooperation with Colorado State University Extension Service.

Although Stanley was able to see the realization of vision before he died, it was a short-lived dream. He died in April 1998 just shy of his 80th birthday. Michelle, however, carried on bravely. As an anesthesiologist in Houston, and married to another doctor, Gerald Hoffman; she had the resources and will to maintain the Legacy Lodge and did so bravely for nearly twenty years. She was known as a strong advocate for the environment, wildlife and the cultural legacy of the valley. In addition, she was a valiant proponent for gay rights, and hosted numerous events at the Legacy Lodge in support of LGBTQ rights—a legacy, I am proud to say, continues at the Giving Tree Ranch today.

Age and other priorities finally led Michelle and Jerry Hoffman to list the property for sale in 2015.  Ken Brown and Elizabeth Sanjuan were the lucky buyers in June 2016.

Ken Brown is a fifth-generation and native Coloradoan. His great-great grandfather, Peter McFarlane, emigrated from Prince Edward Island, Canada to Central City in 1867 to serve the gold mining industry as a contractor and machinery engineer. He and his brothers and cousins, all Scottish, created a celebrated mining engineering company that serviced gold and silver mines from Colorado to New Mexico. Always community-minded, Peter and his brothers were the contractors and eventual owners of the Central City Opera House. His heirs eventually donated the properties to the University of Denver in order to ensure the legacy of the Central City opera continues today.

Ken’s maternal grandfather, Ken Brookhart, was born into a ranching family near Las Animas, Colorado, and attended the University of Denver on a track scholarship. After marrying Margaret McFarlane, Ken and Margaret moved to Colorado Springs where he established the very successful “Brookhart Building Materials”, and was the co-founder of the Pikes Peak Range Riders and president of the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Association. Ken’s father, Charles Brown, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and was a Marine Corps veteran and graduate of Colorado State University. Charles was elected to the Colorado Springs City Council in 1975, and later served as a commissioner and chairman of the El Paso County Board of Commissioners from 1983 to 1996. Ken was a graduate of Wasson High School in Colorado Springs, and is a member of the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame. Ken left Colorado in 1970 to attend Cornell University, and in 1975 was selected as a Colorado recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship, attending Oxford and receiving his Master’s degree in engineering science & economics. Ken was preceded at Oxford by his friend, Tom Barron, who has co-authored books celebrating Colorado’s natural heritage with our illustrious Lower Blue neighbor, John Fielder; and the grandson of one of Colorado’s most famous Rhodes Scholars, Byron “Whizzer” White, lives just up the river from the Giving Tree Ranch.

Ken’s first job after graduate school was at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now NREL) in Golden, Colorado, where he was employee number 48. Ken worked and lived in Colorado from 1977 to 1985, when he moved to New York to join a company with Tom Barron. In 2008, after a long career outside of Colorado, Ken and Elizabeth purchased a ranch property just south of Fairplay, Colorado that they named the “Giving Tree Ranch”, in honor of their various charitable pursuits. Seeking property closer to the Breckenridge/Dillon/Frisco area and mindful of increased activity at a discarded aggregate pile near their property in Fairplay, they began looking in the Lower Blue River Valley for an alternative retreat. Their long search eventually led them to the Legacy Lodge, and they acquired the property from the Hoffman Trust in June 2016, renaming the Lodge and ranch “Giving Tree.”[2]

[1]The Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation is a major Colorado charitable foundation that has made over $230 million in grants from inception to 2015. Arthur Johnson was born in Colorado Springs in 1892, son of Swedish immigrants. He attended college only for a short time (at Colorado College), spending most of his youth working for the Midwest Refining Company in Wyoming. When World War I broke out, Arthur enlisted and served on the front lines in France. Returning to Colorado in 1919, he again joined Midwest Oil and proceeded to advance in the company and become a prominent figure in its growth and success. Jerry Hillyard was a grandson of Arthur Johnson.

[2]Those familiar with the famous children’s book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein, will understand our commitment to charity in harmony with our natural world. Credit to our daughter, Lauren, for coming up with the name.