About 20 miles NNE of Hot Sulphur Springs lies the village of Grand Lake, Colorado, home to Colorado’s deepest and largest natural lake and the headwaters of the Colorado River; Grand Lake is also the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. In the county of Grand, with all of the spectacular vistas, fishing, hunting and recreational opportunities, Grand Lake, Co can lay claim to the first established vacation spot in the Colorado Rockies, dating back to the late 1800’s. The setting of this cerulean jewel surrounded by sloping pine forests and the ensuing spires of The Indian Peaks is rivaled by few places in terms of its natural beauty. Sadly, at the bottom of this visually bountiful natural bowl lies the actual town of Grand Lake, replete with a faux rustic Old West street of bars, restaurants, art galleries, souvenir shops, a bowling alley and some less-than-quaint motels and lodging establishments. Oh well, we all gotta make a buck.
The Historic Grand Lake Lodge, which opened in 1920, some 17 years after the opening of The Riverside, was the crown jewel of Grand Lake – a magnificent lodge, guest quarters and cabins – the standard bearer for food, beverage and lodging on the western slope of the Continental Divide; this until a fire burned the better part of the place to the ground in the summer of 1973. The owners took a painstaking 8 years to rebuild, careful to extract historic furnishings and native memorabilia from the charred rubble before finally re-opening in the summer of 1981.
Why is this little NNE travelogue germane to the story of Abner Renta and The Riverside?
Approximately 50 yards north of the resurrected Grand Lake Lodge, just at the edge of the majestic pine forests that surround this iconic structure, sat a pile of pre-1940’s kitchen equipment that barely survived the fire, and only because the fire didn’t get hot enough to melt the 2-ton cast-iron gas stove, oven and attached griddle that had been the heart and soul of The Grand Lake Lodge kitchen for the past 30 years. They’d been talking about replacing that big, old, outdated locomotive of a stove 10 years prior to the fire; it was now dead and forever out of that kitchen, figuratively if not literally buried at the edge of the woods - for the kitchen crew a silver lining in the dark cloud that was the destructive blaze of 1973. Truth be known, they’d hoped that it would sit there forever and become a permanent part of the flora and fauna, as the effort required of hauling it off would have been monumental.
Enter Abner Renta, Gollum on his eternal quest for a magic ring’s worth of cheap furnishings and equipment for his newly acquired mountain hostelry.
Abner bought the stove for $25, had his bus-depot servant and probably 15 others help load it onto a U-Haul trailer and install it in the newly remodeled kitchen at The Riverside in 1986, prior to the grand reopening. No big deal that not all of the burners worked, the flat top was half melted, it was rife with rust or that the scald and char from the 1973 fire was literally welded to the exterior of this gargantuan hot-box; what was key was that it was cheap, and it worked…..barely, but worked vs. not working at all, in a very black and white sort of way.
Stove assembled in place, to a yellow paisley linoleum sheet floor, probably installed in The Riverside kitchen sometime in the 1930’s, Abner and his servant adhered speckled, beige asbestos linoleum tiles – I’m certain upon completion, they stood back and proudly gazed upon the bright new floor, which now looked something like a glistening diamond in a goats’ ass.
The perimeter of the kitchen was then outfitted with built-in plywood and pine shelves, cabinets, pantries, drawers and worktops, painted with a heavy coat of high-gloss white paint; it was here that utensils and dry goods were stored, and food was ultimately prepared. These cabinets and shelving were very well constructed by Abner’s illegal; so well constructed that they would end up being a screaming bitch to remove 22 years later in our effort to get the kitchen up to code: (take a peek in any commercial kitchen - you won’t see anything constructed of wood, as wood tends to have a soft spot for harboring bacteria.)
The dining room tables and chairs as well as all of the furnishings in the guest rooms were a hodge-podge assortment of yard sale, estate sale and thrift shop items; an eclectic mix, but functional and inexpensive. Bedding, sheets and towels were also collected at various sales or second-hand stores – no boring, bleached white sheets for The Riverside beds; if the linen wasn’t loud enough to keep you awake at night, you wouldn’t be sleeping on it in Abner’s place. Many guests found the wacky sheets and funky furnishings charming, as it gave the place a ‘homey’ feel; we got rid of them the first week we owned the hotel.
The dishware, glasses and cutlery were also vintage garage sale – nothing was a set, no two pieces alike; it could be all but dizzying to look down at the swirls, stripes and floral patterns on the plates before stabbing your fork at some of Abner’s finest fare. Also, for certain an advantage to using loud, colorful stoneware was its ability to hide the adhered flecks of yesterdays’ food that might have been missed by the no-dishwasher sink dunking method of tableware hygiene that Abner chose to employ, as the Grand Lake Lodge did not have a rusted, charred, barely working dishwasher for sale.
And then there were the beds. Abner didn't need to go searching after bargains on mattresses, pillows and bed frames - they came with the hotel at the time of purchase...and had been there since the dawn of time. While driving home from The Riverside after our first extended winter visit, I realized for the first time in my life that I actually had a back, because it hurt so freaking bad after sleeping on that bed for four nights! Most of the beds consisted of a 6" thick 1940's era mattress laying on a frame of naked rusty bedsprings. Go back and watch some old war movies from the 1950's, and you'll see beds like this in scenes from German POW camps. We had Abner's beds at the curb within two months, replaced by new queen mattresses.
The final accoutrement to The Riverside was no bargain basement thrift shop fire damaged piece of junk, rather, it was arguably one of the most spectacular pieces of furnishing in all of Grand County – the magnificent, historical Brunswick Bar. Manufactured in 1895 in Dubuque, IA and eventually brought to The Riverside from it’s original home in Leadville, CO in 1920, the bar was a burnished oak and cherry wood masterpiece of ornately carved borders and corniced columns that beckoned the thirsty traveler to gaze in awed admiration, often forgetting that an icy beer sat sweating before him, waiting patiently to be consumed. When Abner arrived at The Riverside, the bar was stored out back of the hotel in one of the storage sheds amid piles of clutter that had accumulated over the past 80 years. Enlisting the help of a few locals with the promise of a round of free drinks after the bars assemblage, Abner had the booze-fueled locals lift, haul and reassemble the bar in what had previously been a small storeroom off of the kitchen. After a 20 year hiatus, the glorious Brunswick Bar was back in business at The Riverside.
And so began Abner’s tenure as proprietor of the newly refurbished Riverside Hotel, Bar and Restaurant; he had the roof replaced, the walls wallpapered, the rooms furnished, the bar stocked and the kitchen cooking in time for the start of the summer tourist season of 1986.
21 years later, he was pulling out every stop imaginable to convince a naive couple from Kansas, with just enough money to get their asses in serious trouble, that Hot Sulphur Springs was a garden spot that would rival Mecca, that there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the smiles of satisfied customers as they pass through your door having been unknowingly insulted and unwittingly filched to their gills, and that in spite of the seemingly high asking price, The Riverside was an idyllic yet affordable dream-come-true that these flatland hospitality rubes could make happen with the stroke of a pen.
To be continued………
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