Piper Ranch
written by Mona Worley
August 2005
I was told by the Easterday family, my aunt Deta and Uncle
Harold, that Harry Piper married a woman from our hometown of Greeley. She,
I believe was a sister in law to one of my uncles, Her maiden name may have
been Jones but of that I am not sure. Anyway Harry built her a nice home at
the more upper part of Piper Meadow. They had a baby son. I do not know how
long she tolerated living up there but when the boy was quite young she
rebelled due to the loneliness and hard work. She took their son and moved
back to Greeley, so I was told. Devastated, Harry stayed on by himself. At
some later time he had gone to Estes Park with milk or whatever and he
seemingly left a kerosene lamp on by an open window and when the wind or
breeze came up it started the house on fire and he lost the home. Once again
he was devastated as he had been when his little family left. I was told
that down the hill from the house he had a stable of some sort...the stone
work is still partially there and above that excavation of stone work he
lived in a small cabin the rest of his time there. It must have been quite
small and primitive. Some years back maybe in the 1950s or 60s after Bob
Easterday had returned to Colorado, Harry Piper, Jr. came to see my cousin
Bob. Bob wanted to take him up there to see the old place and young Harry
refused to go. That was very hurtful to Bob who could not understand why Jr.
would not want to go up there. I know also that the Easterdays moved to the
Glen in 1938 and on Sunday afternoons they would hike up to see Harry with a
clean bucket and buy milk from him for the week ahead. That is a long hike
but in some ways time was more ample then and they needed the fellowship of
neighbors. I know that Bob and Bunny went on those jaunts at times also. I
am sure if Bob and Bunny were still here they could tell you so much more.
There was also some story about some Indians going up there but I do not
remember the time frame or what it was about. This is all I know about Piper
Ranch.
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Anderson cabin
from "Glen Haven Memories" by Bunnie Batie
I was born in the summer of 1933 so my reminisces will be
from about 1938. I remember hiking up there many times, mostly with my
mother. She was an artist and would sit and paint or sketch South Rock while
I played house in the Anderson cabin and reflected always upon what my Aunt
Deta Easterday told me about the Anderson place. Aunt Deta and Uncle Harold
were married in 1910 but Harold's mother had bought one of the first lots in
Glen Haven in 1901, I am told, so Harold's knowledge of the Anderson's was
not that long after Robert and Amanda Anderson left their place above the
livery stable in Glen Haven. Duke knows the year they established themselves
there and about when they left. But this is what my Aunt Deta told me while
I was growing up and I went to the Glen often as a child in the 30' and 40s.
Mother and I spent a week up there most every summer in one of their cabins.
Well Aunt Deta had a very small child's little red wooden chair that had
belonged to the Anderson children or child. I think she presumed it
belonged to a little girl because every time I would go to the Glen I would
ask her to tell me about the Anderson's when I sat in the little red chair
(JoAnn Batie Pappas now has that little red chair, she being the
granddaughter of Deta and Harold.) This is the story Deta told me over and
over and over: The Anderson's ran cattle up there and he would have grown
lettuce, potatoes and things that grow well in the mountains. She always
stated that lettuce grew well in the mountains because of the cool air and I
have been growing it 17 years in Estes, just because she told me that!
Anyway she said Robert took things to Estes to sell to the eateries.
The Stanley hotel came in 1910 so it was before that. I do not know the
eating places here at that time as I think this would have been before the
turn of the 20th century! Anyway one day their little girl died and they
were so grieved that they wrapped her in a blanket, got in their wagon and
left for good. Deta said when she first started going up to the Anderson
cabin that Amanda had been baking and the rolling pin, flour etc was still
out on the kitchen table...it appears they did leave suddenly. Deta said
they went back to Indiana, she thought. Duke has proven that incorrect for
it seems they went to Farmington, NM. Duke has also has correspondence with
a son or grandson of the Andersons and he says there was no little girl,
just him! Well my feeling is that HE was the toddler who sat on the little
red chair and that because of his age, he either does not remember a baby
sister or she was stillborn and that is why they left in such a
hurry....they were grieved and thought they had to get out of there. She
could have had a difficult birth up there without any female or doctor
assistance or the child could have died in infancy from SIDS or something. I
do not like to speculate history for it can start historical rumors but I
know my Aunt would not fabricate a story about a little Anderson girl if it
were not true so it must have been something like I just related. I checked
with the Loveland Cemetery a number of years ago when Duke and I were
comparing notes and they did not have an Anderson baby buried there. I also
do not know when that cemetery came into existence but this child's death
would have been before the automobiles. If the family has an old Bible that
might unlock the clue as if the child was stillborn or died in infancy it
could be recorded in the Bible. Such things as those were recorded in my
grandfather's Bible during that same period of history. We may never know
the truth on this subject.
The Anderson cabin was a two room house shaped in an L. The living
room/kitchen area ran East and West and the bedroom was just off the living
room next to the stone fireplace which still stands there. I would judge
that the living room was about ten by 15 at the very most. The bedroom was
probably only about 10 by 12 or less. The outside of the cabin was vertical
slab ponderosa with the bark still on. The inside was rough sawn ponderosa
and the floors the same. On the long wall of the living room running East
and West, North side ,they had had a beautiful sofa. As a child I remember
thinking how fine a sofa they had and how hard it would have been to get it
up there. All that remained in my childhood was the frame and a small piece
of drooping velvet still attached to the bottom of the frame. I would lift
the piece of velvet and look at it each time I went up there. It was a dark
teal velvet with a sort of gold fleur de lies pattern in it. This had been a
beautiful sofa and was very like the one my Aunt Deta had in her mountain
home! As I remember the kitchen table was still there in the 30s and a
few rusty utensils as I played house there. In the bedroom there was still
an old iron bedstead, double in size and I am sure that was all that
remained there for many years. When I returned to Estes to look at property
in 1987, Bob, his wife Betsy and my friend, Carolyn, from IL hiked up there
and the roof had caved in and there were just timbers laying about. A friend
told me it would not have caved in had it had a ridge pole of good strength.
Of course I was dismayed to see that I could no longer go inside the cabin
in 1987. I hiked up there in 1994 and really all that was left was the
fireplace which is quite sturdy and Duke knows who probably stoned it. In my
younger days I remember that the outhouse was perhaps 200 feet from the
house to the North and it was a "two holer". As a child I would talk to my
mother about the smaller hole for the children and I always thought how kind
that daddy was to make a small hole for the children. There are no remnants
of that whatsoever now. To the East of the house maybe 200 or 300 feet was a
small barn. There are no remnants of that now so no one would no where it
had been placed. In 1944 and 1945 I was at Trail's End Cheley Ranch for
girls and we often
rode our horses up to Anderson meadow to the East of the cabin and the
counselors would let us race our horses. What a delight that was until we
had to quit and dry the horses as they sweat so much with all the fast
exercise. I have always had fond memories of the Anderson Place and this is
all I know about it
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Harry Piper
from "Glen Haven Memories" by Bunnie Batie
Harry Piper was born Huber B. Piper, October 6, 1886,
in Illinois. He came to Colorado as a young man in 1913 and took up land in
the big valley since called Piper's Meadow. The meadow is over the ridge
behind the stable. His mother came to live with him later.
He built a lovely home, a large barn and a dairy house.
He ran a dairy, chicken farm and a saw mill. During my childhood when we had
no store in the Glen, my dad would hike up to Piper's in the evening for a
pail of milk and usually a bunch of youngsters went along as it was such fun
to visit with Harry. He was always ready to saddle a horse and let the kids
ride. He had the only player piano in the vicinity and what fun it was to
listen to it.
We always took house guests for a hike to Piper's and
that is how in the 20's Harry met his wife whom he married in 1920. She was
Helen Jones of Greeley, a sister of my mother's sister-in-law.
They had one child, Howard Piper, but the marriage
didn't last long. The lonesome ranch in winter didn't appeal to the city
girl, and she divorced Harry and later remarried another man and took their
son, Howard, to California. This was a blow to Harry. He loved children.
The Estes Park Trail, June 29, 1923, tells of
the ranch fire when Piper's home burned to the ground. He had taken a load
of wood to Lester's Hotel (now the H-G Youth Hostel) and left a lamp burning
near an open window. A wind came up and blew the curtains onto the lamp. His
home contents were totally destroyed. Harry moved into his dairy house.
Piper died in May 1932 in a Longmont Hospital and is
buried in Loveland.
Today, there is no trace of the house which was south
of the barn, although the foundation is still standing. Lower down, near a
fence, are remains of the old dairy house. He circulated ice-cold well water
under the milk to keep it cold. West of the barn, near the small stream, is
the old, rusty boiler that powered the saw mill.
The road to Lester's was Harry's only way in and out of
the ranch, as the trail to Glen Haven was just that - a trail.
On this road is an old deserted cabin known as the
"Anderson House". A young couple homesteaded there and had a barn,
well, vegetable cellar and a cozy home.
They had a small child who died. The Andersons were so
grief stricken they left the cabin boarded up - never to return. I have a
small tot's chair my dad found in the trash in the yard. He brought it home
and repaired it for me when I was two years old.
South Rock overlooks the meadow and east of it is
Crosier Mountain named for an early trapper, hunter and prospector.
An old trail in the gap between Crosier and South Rock
comes out at the 7 Pines Motel in the Big Thompson Canyon. Northeast of
Piper's house was an old trail leading to Bath Rock, an outcropping of large
rocks with deep "bath tubs". They are full of warm water during the rainy
season. Harry Piper first led us to this place and said that often on warm
summer nights he'd ride up to the rocks and take a dip.
In 1974, my Grandson and I hiked to Bath Rock and found
strange creatures swimming in the pot holes. We brought some home in our
water jar and later they were identified by the Natural Park naturalist as
"Fairy Shrimp", a creature that lives dormant through dry spells and comes
to life when there is water in the pot holes.
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