Visit to a Log Cabin

Arapahoe Herald,  Littleton, Colorado    Tuesday, September 21, 1971

<>Scratch Pad    by Garrett Ray
When I first heard about Enos A. Mills many years ago, it was through the back door.  It wasn't till last month that I really discovered what a unique man "the father of Rocky Mountain National Park was.
    Like may native Coloradoans, I have enjoyed the national park as a part of my back yard for years.  We used to stay at the YMCA Camp before it was the comparatively plush resort it is now (bowling lanes, indoor swimming pool, roller skating).  I drove a produce truck over Trail Ridge Road for three summers; one of my special talents is knowing how to find the back door of virtually every restaurant in Estes Park and Grand Lake.
    I spent one hectic and memorable summer as a stockroom and fry cook at the Estes Park Chalet.  And during one summer season my folks leased and ran the famous Phantom Valley Guest Ranch.  No trace of it remains, but I don't blame the Ray management for that; the government bought the ranch to return the land to wilderness.
    All this gave me an acquaintance of sorts with Rocky Mountain National Park.  In my wanderings through the historic lodges and along the trails, but I couldn't help but learn a little about Enos Mills, the Kansas boy who became Colorado's first and most famous naturalist.
    I knew that the old Longs Peak Inn on the South Saint Vrain highway had something to do with Mills.  I knew he had climbed Longs Peak probably hundreds of times, in summer and winter, in sunlight and moonlight.  I had read "The Story of a Thousand Year Pine", and also had run across some of his other tales of wild life and adventures in the park.
    The day we learned about the mountain man and poet, Longs Peak was hidden in clouds which were busy producing the high country's first snow of the season.  I couldn't help thinking how much Enos Mills must have appreciated the many moods of the Rockies as he sat snug by the tiny stove in his log cabin or hiked the wilderness.
    He literally grew up in the mountains, and he seemed to absorb their special qualities.  Born in 1870, he was only 14 when he left home in Kansas to explore the West.  He built his cabin in 1886, at an age when Littleton boys explorations are likely to be limited to the engine of a second hand car in the back yard.
    The young man worked in mining camps, photographed what he saw around him, and kept notebooks on his thoughts and observations.  He traveled widely, but he always returned to his home facing Longs Peak.  "Home" finally was not the cabin, but the nearby Longs Peak Inn, his rustic lodge which became a living nature study center as well as a resort of comfort and fellowship.
    In later years it was Mills' effort more than those of any other man which brought about the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park.  For seven years he lectured in the east, lobbied in Washington, wrote thousands of letters, and acquainted other writers and editors with the potential of the park.  His efforts were recognized with the creation of Rocky Mountain Park in 1915.
    The monumental effort affected his health. He died at the age of 52 on sept. 21, 1922—just 49 years ago today.
    Friends of Enos Mills have reported that writing did not come easy for him; yet it was through his colorful, sensitive writing that he accomplished his most lasting good.  So we were disappointed to learn that his books are out of print now.
    Mills was a conservationist before conservation became respectable.  He understood the environment when others simply exploited it.  And he was a true ecologist—one who studies the relationships between living things and their environment—almost before the word existed.
    Although Enos Mills might have enjoyed even greater success in this environment-conscious decade, Colorado is better today because he was more than 50 years "ahead of his time".



Enos Mills' Earth Day Birthday

By Pasquale Marranzino

Printed in the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Sat. April 18, 1970

IT IS A PURE coincidence, but worthy of note that the 100th birthday of Enos Abijah Mills falls on April 22--the day proclaimed by concerned people "Earth Day."
    The appropriateness of this combination was brought to mind by Robert Kiley of Estes Park who has been dredging memorabilia of the Estes Park area and some of Mills' unpublished works with the idea of writing a biography--one that will be rewarding.
    Mils was the Rocky Mountain counterpart of Henry Thoreau--his Walden Pond the icy-blue lakes folded in the immensity that is Rocky Mountain National Park.  He died in the park in 1922, lies buried in a grave carved out from the granite that is the footing for the cabin he build when he came to Colorado from fort Scott, Kan., to restore his waning health--at age 14.
    *    *    *
HE WAS A SMALL revered hero to us youngers after his death--his books on the park and its flora and fauna must reading on the elementary school shelves.  But nationally he was aprophet of greater honor--known widely in conservation circles, an advisor to another conservationist, President Teddy Roosevelt, and wa the true father of Rocky Mountain National Park.
    He had a true reverence for the wilderness, anticipating 70 years ago what is being carried forward April 22--the knowlege that man, through ignorance, crassness, greed and unawareness is laying waste this great land.
    He wrote with a genuine simplicity--talking to chipmunks, beaver, deer and elk and even the grizzly--which still roamed Colorado's highlands when he traipsed the flanks of Longs Peak and caught the wild and beautiful spirit of the country with pen and camera.
    *    *    *
HE BATTLED almost alone against the commercialization of wilderness, the destruction of animal life and natural beauty by human encroachment.  And he fought--as he traveled--without a gun.  He shared his love of the trail with mountaineers who sought him out as a guide in the search for beauty in the canyons, the moraines and in the never-summer reaches of the peaks.
    He carried his fight to preserve the area for all time for all people to enjoy--and to honor.  His great assist came when his voice reached the ear of Roosevelt, who came to love Colorado on many hunting expeditions.
    Apostle of the High Mountains they called him, linking him with two other great naturalists of his time, John Muir and John Burroughs.
    *    *    *
WHEN HE WASN'T on the mountain trail--in the depth of winter as well as summer--he was lecturing on the need to conserve, to respect and to revere the mountains.  His audiences were wide and large--both at home and abroad.
    Like so many youngers of today, he in his youth was appalled by conformity.  And his free soul found a happy hunting ground in the remoteness, the retreat and the solitude of the Rockies.
    His death inspired the News to reprint in tribute to Mills, the following verse by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Forbearance:

          Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
            Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
            At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
            Unarmed, facing danger with a heart of trust?
            And loved so well a high behavior,
            In a man or maid that though from speech refrained,
            Nobility more nobly to repay?
            O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
 
  


READING HABITS OF KIDS
by Pasquaele Marranzino

Printed in the Rocky Mountain News, June 5, 1956:

    You never get to look time in the eye, but you can tell where he's been by looking at change.  
    I read where John Eastlick, city librarian, began a summer vacation reading program for kids, encouraging them to read at least eight books before school begins in September.     
    So I talked with Misses Eleanor Scweigert and Mary Norton of the Children's Library in an effort to see what kids of today are reading.  
    Two out of three kids who get into the library ask for non-fiction books---books on science and astronomy and flying saucers.  There's very little demand for adventure and that's a bit dissapointing.
    Horatio Alger, Frank Merriwell, Tom Playfair and books that made me writhe with anticipation 25 years ago just gather dust on the shelves.  Rafael Sabatini sails the Spanish Main with Captain Blood and no witnesses.
    *    *    *
    There's a sort of revival for Joseph Altscheler books like "Riflemen on the Ohio," stuff that kept my and my brothers up reading late into the night and going to bed afraid that a Mohawk would scalp us.
    And on the distaff side, Louisa May Alcott keeps her batting average high.
    In my time, Enos A. Mills, the great Estes Park naturalist, was going strong and I climbed Long's Peak with him and tracked Bighorn on the peaks and fought blizzards along the trail until I was exhausted.  What ever happened to Enos A. Mills' fine books?


Back to The Enos Mills Cabin Home Page

Browse in our Gallery for books and photographs by Enos A. Mills

A Brief History of Enos A. Mills

 


Copyright 2005 by Enos Mills Cabin
Email the web designer.