An 1880s Victorian Mansion in the Colorado Rockies: The Estemere Estate at Palmer Lake

by Edwards, Daniel

  Girault had to leave teaching in 1930 and enter a sanitarium in Colorado Springs for treatment of tuberculosis. He recovered slowly but had to resign his teaching position. He later worked as chief of the field division in the Denver office of the Internal Revenue Service for more than 15 years. Girault also served as president of the Board of Trustees for the three Colorado state colleges of education. Thomas Girault died in Denver in 1977. “Aloha” cottage is still in the Girault family, and Thomas’ daughter, Emily, of Palo Alto, CA, still comes in the summer to her home on Verano Avenue in Glen Park.

  Florence Crannell Means

  Florence Means was born in the state of New York in 1891 and spent summers as a child in her family’s Glen Park cottage. She was one of the storytellers at Estemere’s story hour and participated in the second term of the RMSS in 1929 by reading poems to the English class. Florence served on the RMSS Board of Trustees in 1927 and 1929. Later she became a successful author of juvenile fiction and wrote more than 40 books. Her books told the stories of young people of different minority groups, but she based her books on careful research, often living among racial minorities to become more familiar with their lives and beliefs. Florence received the Childhood Education Association annual award in 1945 and the Nancy Bloch Annual Award in 1957. Florence lived for many years in Boulder, Colorado, where she died in November 1980.

  Raymond S. Niswanger

  Ray Niswanger was born in Kansas in 1883 and moved to Palmer Lake in 1911 when he was working for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. He left the railroad in 1914. He bought a part-interest in a grocery store east of The Rocklands Hotel, two blocks from Estemere. Niswanger took over the store in 1917. He carried groceries, fresh meat, and also sold coal, kerosene, hardware, school supplies, and gasoline. He opened a second store in Glen Park that was managed by his daughters. Niswanger was a member of Palmer Lake’s town council, an organizer of the RMSS, and the secretary-treasurer for its Board of Trustees for several years. About 1930 he set up a room in the back of his store that was used for cutting and polishing meteorites Nininger had purchased; the meteorites then were sent to museums around the country. Niswanger had an interest in bird taxidermy, and probably assisted Nininger with his bird studies as well. Niswanger moved to Kansas in the 1940s and died in 1951.

  Sterling M. Price

  Sterling Price came from Ohio where he was born in 1872. He was floor manager of a dry goods store in Denver in 1920 and later operated Price’s Café in Palmer Lake where he also sold groceries, medicine, and notions. He was elected an RMSS trustee in 1927.

  Otto H. Shrull

  Otto Shrull, born in Palmer Lake in June 1894, served as a private in World War I. Then he worked as a general farm laborer around the town. He was on the RMSS Board of Trustees in 1927 and 1929. Shrull died in New Castle, Colorado, in January 1980.

  Florence Marshall Stote

  Florence Stote was born in Kansas in 1871. Her husband, William Herbert Reed Stote, was born in England and arrived in Colorado Springs in 1889. He formed a partnership in the city, worked in real estate, and later sold life, accident, health, and fire insurance for many years. He was very active in the First Presbyterian Church. Florence served on the Colorado Springs Board of Education in the early 1900s and was on committees that reviewed textbooks, school curricula, and libraries. She was President of the Women’s Club of Colorado Springs; and a member of Denver’s Woman’s Educational Society, the Colorado Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She was elected vice-regent of the Colorado D.A.R. in 1910, and in 1918 she ran on the state Republican ticket for superintendent of public instruction. The Stotes had a cabin in Glen Park for many years. Florence is credited with giving the name “Little Log Church” to the Palmer Lake Friends Community Church, and she served as President of the church’s Fellowship Group in the 1930s. Florence was a member of the RMSS Board of Trustees in 1929.

  John Stutzmann

  John Stutzmann was born in Prussia in 1889 and immigrated to America in 1902. He was the notary public that certified the RMSS articles of incorporation in 1926 and was a guarantor of its mortgage. He volunteered to drive RMSS students on many day trips to Colorado Springs and beyond in his large old touring car. Stutzmann may have been a member of the RMSS Board of Trustees for all 5 years, but there is documentation of his serving as Vice President in 1927 and 1929. Stutzmann had a poultry farm at Palmer Lake where he bred high-grade chickens and sold eggs. In later years, he also sold insurance.

  The Palmer Lake Friends Community Church—“The Little Log Church”— across the street from Estemere.

  There are more items related to this chapter on the DVD.

  Chapter 6

  Estemere Hosts a Private School, Youth Camps, and Vocational Training Programs (1929-1938)

  The Pikes Peak Woodland School (1929-1930)

  Omer A. Coppock and his wife, Esther, came to Palmer Lake in the mid-1920s and became teachers in the town’s public school. They were Quakers, and Evalena Macy had been one of their classmates some years before at Friends University in Wichita. Evalena was recuperating in Colorado Springs from an illness she had contracted while serving as a missionary teacher in Cuba. When her doctor said she could leave the sanitarium, she wrote to Omer and Esther; they invited her to stay with them. The year was 1927. Evalena moved to Palmer Lake and began teaching the high school girls’ class at the Palmer Lake (Friends) Community Church.

  Omer and Esther then decided to establish a private home school to meet the special needs of children. The Pikes Peak Woodland School, using the premises and facilities of the Rocky Mountain Summer School, opened at Estemere in September 1929. It aimed to be a “progressive” school whose general philosophy “was to give the greatest possible freedom to each individual child to develop along his own best lines, and in this way to avoid the production of a stereotyped pattern [and to provide] an environment and education which aims at so complete a co-ordination of [its students’] physical, mental and spiritual forces as will result in the formation of the finest type of character.”

  The School was designed for children who

  need special attention, for the child whose physical growth demands an outdoor life, the child who needs individual guidance…. The exceedingly bright child who finds class work among the average irksome, is promised an outlet for his talent in this unique school.[78]

  The School also welcomed children with physical disabilities and those from broken homes. Its focus was on family life, diet, and personal hygiene. The students would engage in nature study, botany, ornithology, and geology, not just in the classroom but out-of-doors; would work in gardens; and make handicrafts out of wood, clay and willows in a large studio on the premises. For recreation, the students would learn music, folk dancing, and folk songs, and go swimming and horseback riding. They also could keep and care for pets.[79]

  Omer Coppock was the School’s director. Its teachers included Esther Coppock, Evalena Macy, and Winifred A. Slavick. Dr. L.H. Hill, child specialist of Colorado Springs, was also associated with the School. The teacher of dramatic arts and the School’s “field secretary” was Mrs. M.O. (or M.V.) Atwater of Los Angeles. Her daughter, Meredith, was a student. Only the names of five other students are known; one was Randall Warthen, who became mayor of Palmer Lake in the 1970s. The Coppocks, and probably Miss Macy too, lived in Estemere to provide supervision for the students boarding in the mansion. Evalena Macy gave piano lessons to a few of the students at Estemere.

  In September, the Coppocks and Mrs. Atwater enrolled in a once-a-week evening class in Denver on the mental health problems of childhood. Later on, visitors from a child’s guidance clinic and the child placement bureau of Colorado Springs came to the School. During the fall, the students gave a program at Monument High School and went swimming at the Broadmoor. Other visitors came to stay at Estemere with the Coppocks for a few days. The local Girl Scouts entertained the Boy Scouts at a Halloween party at th
e mansion. The general secretary of missions for the Friends spoke to a group at Estemere, as did a former Methodist missionary to Japan.

  We have very little information about the Pikes Peak Woodland School—how many students enrolled, the fees charged, and whether the school achieved its educational objectives. It clearly did not achieve commercial success. We have found no mention of the Pikes Peak Woodland School or its staff after April 1930, but the institution presumably remained in operation long enough to complete the school year in June. At its beginning, Coppock had sketched ambitious plans for a five-week’s educational tour for the boys during the summer of 1930. The route would take them through Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming, with two weeks spent camping at Yellowstone. During the trip, the boys would be taught woodcraft, and enjoy fishing, hiking, and swimming. There is no evidence that such a tour was ever made, or that the school reopened in the fall of 1930.

  The Gamma Phi Beta Camps for Girls (1931-1932)

  Although McPherson College’s Rocky Mountain Summer School had closed for good in August 1930, the Rocky Mountain Summer School, Inc. still owned Estemere, and its investors needed to find ways to generate some revenue from the facility to pay for utilities and upkeep. Fortunately, the national Gamma Phi Beta sorority came to the rescue by renting Estemere to hold camps for underprivileged girls during the summers of 1931 and 1932.[80] The sorority also ran a second camp at Boundary Bay, Washington, near Vancouver.

  The Campers

  The girls at Estemere those two summers were all between the ages of 8 and 12. They came from the Denver area, and were considered “underprivileged.” They were of Italian, Mexican, and other ethnicities. Many of the girls had never been to the mountains before. The nation was in the grip of a severe Depression in the summer of 1931, and families often lived under difficult circumstances. Of the campers it was said:

  Hardly a child in the Denver Camp [held at Estemere] had a father, and the few who did had left them too ill to leave their beds. Most of the mothers worked or were invalids. As one little girl remarked as she was put on the train, “I just can’t be gone two weeks for there’s no one to look after Tommy and Mary.” Another one had been a charity patient in the hospital since February on account of very severe burns. When the councilors sympathized with her and tried to encourage her by saying, “Your burns are nearly healed,” she replied, “Well, while I have the burns I don’t get so many beatings.”

  Some of the children need this freedom from cares far too heavy for their frail shoulders; others need physical care; many are under-weight and thin to the point of emaciation. The councilors find all types and all degrees of mentality, some bright and highly intelligent, some with real talent, others so retarded and undeveloped that a group of four is too large for them to cope with in the various activities.[81]

  Often, the girls arrived in camp with nearly empty suitcases. Those who needed new shoes, a coat, or other clothes received them. They were given nightgowns, and all girls took home with them a new pair of shoes and the frocks they had sewn from cut-out dresses.

  Living at Estemere for two weeks was like living in another world for many of the children. Not only were they staying in a big house in the mountains, they were being taught responsibility and how to participate cooperatively in small groups. They also could drink as much milk as they wanted at meals, and for some, taking regular baths and using toothpaste were novel experiences. It was announced with pride that there was an average weight gain of more than four pounds per girl during the time they were at camp. The 20 campers at Estemere were divided into squads of four or five girls, and each squad was assigned a counselor who was responsible for the girls’ behavior, cooperation, and general wellbeing. The girls’ enthusiasm for the camps was expressed in the letters they sent to their sponsors and mothers. One girl described her schedule as follows:

  .

  We haven’t a single speck of time to be idle because they plan so many lovely things for us to do…. As soon as we get dressed we go outside and play until flag raising. Then we go in to breakfast. After breakfast we do our work…. I am in group “a” and we clear tables today. Then when our work is done we sing songs. After that we take our sunbaths. Today we took it for 8 minutes on each side. After sunbaths we sew on our dresses. I have mine all done except for the hem…. [T]hen we go wading…and get ready for dinner. After dinner we rest for two hours. Then we go hiking or else sew…. After supper we have little plays in Pioneer Hall. Then we sing “taps” and go to bed. The bugle blows at 8 o’clock, and there is no more talking. Don’t you think everyone ought to be happy at camp?[82]

  The Staff

  The woman in charge of organizing the summer camps was Kittie Lee (Mrs. Walter E.) Clarke of Denver. Carolyn Thomas from Denver was in charge of the camps in 1931, while the counselor-in-chief at Estemere in 1932 was Marian Jones of Minneapolis. Members of the staff were all Gamma Phi sisters: college students, teachers, and other adults from all over the country applied to be camp counselors as well as cooks. The head councilor received a modest stipend; the other young women were volunteers. In 1932, there was a request that one or two alumnae or Gamma Phi mothers attend the camp as chaperons to “lend dignity and refinement essential to the ideals of our project.”

  The Gamma Phi Beta Camp at Estemere.

  Support by Gamma Phi Chapters

  Gamma Phi chapters from around the country supported the camps by raising money through rummage sales and by making and sending aprons, garments, towels, and wash cloths for the campers to use. Each chapter was asked to send one hand-made quilt and blanket for the two camps and to remit a “camp tax” of $1.00 per capita. As one member wrote:

  If you are opposed to organized charity, on the grounds that people must not be taught to expect to be taken care of, remember that these children are maintaining their own share in helping with camp work. If, as a sorority standing for high ideals, we can afford to build luxurious chapter houses, surely we have a little money for altruistic work.[83]

  Movies were taken at the camps and sent around the country to chapters who requested them, in order to build interest and support and show those who gave money or materials what their donations had made possible.[84]

  The Camps

  There were three two-week sessions of the Gamma Phi camp at Estemere, each one attended by 20 girls. The camps were held from 01 July to 18 August in 1931 and from 06 July to 17 August in 1932.[85] A typical day at Estemere began at 6:30 with the ringing of a bell. (Later, a bugle woke up the girls.) The girls raised the flag, did exercises, set the table, and had breakfast, after which the house was cleaned. The campers then did sewing, went hiking, or wrote letters. After lunch was rest hour, followed by games, perhaps a treasure hunt, and wading in Estemere’s fountains. Supper was followed by singing, dramatics, a bonfire and marshmallow roasts, story-telling, vespers, and “taps.” Bed-time was 9:00. One group of girls got so enthusiastic about producing plays that they put on a short one every night in Pioneer Hall.

  One of the counselors wrote about Estemere:

  This is the most perfect location; the yard is so well adapted to the needs of the children. There are two small pools, one for the children to wade in, and the other we keep for ourselves… We don’t allow the children out of the yard unless we are with them, for three acres offers ample opportunity for them to wear themselves out. The yard is inclosed by a high fence… The house too is very adequate for our needs. It is an old place, but very big and rambling, and offers grand large rooms for the children to play in when the weather is bad.[86]

  The Denver Public Library helped support the camps by lending books that the girls could read while at Estemere. On Sundays, the campers put on the new dresses they had made and attended the Little Log Church and sang songs in Sunday School.

  The Gamma Phis moved their summer camp to Buffalo Creek, Colorado, in 1933, although there is one reference to the sorority renting the Glen Park house of E. P. Gallup in late June 1934 for s
ix weeks to accommodate three groups of 20 girls for two weeks each.[87]

  Gamma Phi Beta camp girls at Denver’s Union Station boarding a train for Palmer Lake.

  The Graham Family at Estemere (1933-1934)

  During the summer of 1931, Dr. Robert H. Graham, a physician, and his family of Wichita Falls, Texas, came to the Palmer Lake area. In the family were his wife Lelia, and three daughters Lillie, Lucile, and Roberta.[88] The Graham family spent their first summer at a place called Glen Rose in Stone Canyon about five miles north of Palmer Lake. The next summer, 1932, the family rented a cabin in Glen Park, behind Florence Stote’s cottage.

  In 1933, Graham rented Estemere for the summer with the help of Ray Niswanger. Roberta Graham was 15 that summer and “hung out” with a group of young people in the town, including Gordon Gallup, Bobo Meade, Regina Maleham, Edward and John Ingham, Charlene and Beverly Clark, Junior and Billy Edwards, and John Thornton (a nephew of Charlie Orr). Roberta remembers the youth had dances at Estemere that summer. She and Regina Maleham

  would sleep out on the portico off the second floor, in the front of the house, and study the stars…. I remember how pretty the hollyhocks were along the stone wall in the front of Estemere, the gazebo out front, and having picnics on the front lawn. The billiard room had dark blue paper with stars on it…. There was an observatory there also, and nearly every day, I would check out the panoramic view…. There were lots of fireplaces in the house, and there were stained glass windows. There were dark drapes and wicker furniture, chandeliers and other light fixtures…. I used to play in the carriage house in the back—and there was another building, used as a church.[89]