A History Lesson......Part II

The new two-story structure that Charlie Free built in 1903 was roughly 25’wide and 75’ in length, and contained a narrow dining room with a kitchen in the back, paralleled by a narrow lobby, or gathering room, separated by a staircase that led upstairs to the owners living area which contained a bedroom adjoining a small sitting room and five small guestrooms. There were no bathrooms at the time of construction due to the fact that there was no running water or indoor plumbing; as was common of the times, there were chamber pots in the bedrooms and a privy out back, certainly unheated – doubtful that Byers’ Rocky Mountain News was read during the course of one doing one’s business. As the hotel was located near The Grand River, as the river was known in 1903, the name being changed to The Colorado River in 1923, an abundance of clean fresh water for cooking, washing and drinking was no more than short walk away. Maps indicate that the rivers’ course has changed since the construction of the building, as today the western edge of the building is but 10 short yards from the riverbank; back in 1903 the distance was more like the length of a football field.

The new two-story structure shared a common wall with the livery stable; however there was no interior congress between the buildings. As travel by horse and buggy was still the principle mode of transportation, the need for a livery stable was still germane, yet, one of the earliest known pictures of the structure shows a pre-Model T jalopy of unknown make in front of the hotel, the hitching post still evident to which a horse and buggy is attached.

In 1913, Charlie Free exited the hospitality business at the expense of a gentleman named Omar Qualls, who hailed from Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mr. Qualls wife was, as they said in those days, ‘in a sickly way’, requiring continual access to healing waters, waters that were native to her Hot Springs, AR, and as luck would have it, also native to their new-found summer get-away in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. (There is but a little irony here, as I felt that I might possibly die, or at best become deathly ill, if I soaked in the sulphurous brew of those fetid waters.)

Mr. Qualls and family would venture some 1000 miles in the spring of the year, traveling from one hot spring in Arkansas to another in Colorado. They would open and then operate a 5-room hotel and a small café from May through September, then close the place up for the winter and head back to the warmer climes of Arkansas’s Blue Ridge Mountains. That business model worked well for Mr. Qualls for the next 20 years; a business model which I possibly should have adopted, as the down season was critical to our ultimate downfall.

Sometime in the 1920’s, the original structure of the livery stable was transformed into additional housing for both hotel guests and staff, and running water and indoor bathroom facilities were added. The remodeled upstairs consisted of seven guest rooms and one bathroom – a toilet with a tub; the guest rooms were also equipped with sinks with running water – these impossible to buy parts-for accoutrements are still in existence in the current structure. The downstairs consisted of eight rooms, two used for storage, two for staff, two overflow guest rooms, and two ‘utility’ rooms, used during the next few years as a barber shop and next a doctors office from 1935 - 1945. These rooms would ultimately serve as Abner’s office and living quarters, and finally, after being gutted to the dirt and rebuilt, our living quarters. Also, as the two structures were adjoined, so were the dissimilar roof lines - the livery stable had a turreted façade that denoted it as a stable as steeple denotes a church or a dome a Capitol – and replaced with a straight common ridge across the front of the structure.

Sometime in the 1930’s, an additional shotgun arm running the north/south length of the hotel was constructed, in parallel consort with the 1903 two-story structure. The purpose for this addition was to not only add four additional upstairs guest rooms, but to also double the width of the restaurant on the first floor.

The fourth and final addition, the single story River Room restaurant, was built onto the western side, or river side, of the hotel in 1970. It is the only part of the building that has foundation and structural problems. The slope of the room towards the river from a rapidly sinking foundation was so bad that a marble placed on most of the tables in the restaurant would have begun running westward and down once freed from the fingers. None of the windows in the room, and the walls were all but windows so that dining patrons might enjoy the view, could have closed flush on a bet, the building was now so out of square. Apparently they just don’t build things like they used to.

In 1968 construction began on the Eisenhower tunnel, located approximately 50 miles south of Hot Sulphur Springs on I-70, just up the mountain from Dillon, CO to the west and Georgetown, CO to the east. The tunnel construction was expected to bring an influx of workers into the area and they would need places to eat and sleep, and of utmost importance, places to drink, party and spend away their hard earned cash on the weekends. The Perry Family, owners of the Riverside at that time, like many other purveyors of food, booze and rest in Grand County, were quick to cash in on the tunnel labor, thus the final addition to the building in 1970. The tunnel construction, expected to last but three years, ran into numerous delays, including the discovery of a fault line (which apparently had a tendency to skew the efforts of the workers boring through the side of the mountain) and the deaths of six of the workers, wasn’t fully completed until 11 years later in 1979. Shortly after the tunnel was completed, and the workers depleted, The Riverside shut its doors until its 1986 resurrection at the hands of Mr. Abner Renta.

The records on all of this constructing, plumbing and general building cobbling no longer exist, if in fact building permits or any sort of official documentation detailing construction was required; all of this building possibly occurred before it dawned on the public trust that it had the legal wherewithal to filch it’s patronage for any act or attempt at commerce from which they might profit.

The dates of additions and changes to the structure are but educated guesses based upon pictures that hung in our lobby that showed the progression of the buildings architecture, starting with what we believed to be the first 1903 picture, which shows the six window, two-story clapboard structure with a large “HOTEL” and “CAFÉ” painted on the front, adjoined with the turreted building which housed the livery stable. Picture #2 was from approximately 1910 with the livery façade still evident, but the two buildings made to look as one with the use of a faux brick, tar-paper façade. The next picture was taken in the 1920’s, and the turreted roof lines of the livery stable now absent, making it look for the first time in its 20 year existence as one building. Finally, the fourth picture, taken in the 1930’s, shows the hotel with the edition of the West wing, the 15’ widening that ran the length of the hotel, adding four rooms upstairs, and doubling the downstairs dining room and kitchen.

One of the things I loved about these pictures was the fun in dating them by the type of transportation that was parked in front of the hotel. In the 1903 picture there were horses and a hitching post; in 1910, horse-drawn carriages along with a few 1910 Model T Fords. The 1920s-era picture showed no signs of hitching posts, with equine power being replaced by a fancy sedan of unknown make and model. Finally, the 1930’s brought us a regal awning spanning the front of the hotel, offering afternoon shade to a sporty, 1932 Ford Coupe. These pictures were all taken in the summer, as traversing Berthoud Pass in a 1932 Ford Coupe during the winter would have been impossible; much as it can be today, even in a 2003 4WD Chevy Suburban.

It was often while viewing these pictures that our guests would have their feeling of awakening to the history that engulfed them as the stood in the lobby of The Riverside – you could figuratively see the light go on in their head, as their eyes would widen and a smile would break the plane of their face, as many would finally get it with an “Oh wow! I’m standing here, right now, in this place that looked like that 100 years ago.” To many it served as a pleasant little lagniappe in addition to the food and room for which they were about to pay. It is a feeling you don’t often get elsewhere as we live our daily lives in the cities and suburbs of America, and it was certainly one of the feelings that brought us and our dreams to live in Grand County, in that magnificent building.

To Be Continued......