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

by Edwards, Daniel

  During the latter half of 1954, Dees put Estemere on the market again, noting that it was located near the site of the future Air Force Academy and that the six-acre property “could be divided into choice building lots.”[142] Apparently there again were no acceptable offers, and Helen Dees continued living alone in the house. No one recalls any public events or tours that were held at Estemere during the Dees’ years.

  Two court cases were filed against Helen in March 1954 to collect debts of $216.43 and $119.01. Dees did not respond or appear in Court, and on 15 May she was found in default. The El Paso County constable reported on 16 September that Helen had no personal property in El Paso County on which to levy the amount due. County officials today say that the constable’s finding may not have been correct, but that efforts to seize property to pay for such small debts would never have been made. So Helen continued to live at Estemere undisturbed. During the summers, Helen was visited by her two daughters, Avonne Gifford of Florence, Colorado, and Billie Harbaugh of Lawton, Oklahoma, and their children.

  Helen’s financial situation must have remained precarious, for in December 1954, she borrowed $3,200 from Don and Marie Berman of Colorado Springs. Estemere again was put up as collateral. Interest payments were due semiannually, and the payment of the loan was due on or before 05 January 1956.[143] At the same time, Dees extended the payment of $2,500 still due on her 1952 loan to January 1956.[144] Finally, after holding on to the Estemere property for nearly seven years, Helen sold it to Leonard M. Bentley on 18 September 1956.

  Clippings from the Gazette Telegraph, one dated 1952.

  Leonard M. Bentley: State Politician (1956-1957)

  Leonard Bentley served as a Republican state senator from Cañon City in the early 1950s, and he was active in the real estate business in Fremont County. Somewhere along the line, he met Helen Dees, and romance blossomed (perhaps within the walls of Estemere) despite the fact that Bentley was a married man with two sons. Bentley was up for reelection when he purchased Estemere, and although the 1956 Eisenhower landslide swept many local Colorado Republicans into office, Bentley was defeated that November. No one knows just when Helen left Estemere, whether late in 1956 or early in 1957, but when she did, it was on the arm of Leonard. A Bentley relative recalls that the couple “disappeared” for some time, only to turn up later in Rogers, Arkansas, and by 1960, the two had settled down in Amarillo, Texas.

  Bentley has the distinction of having the shortest tenure of any owner of Estemere. He had the property for only seven months, before selling it for an undisclosed sum to Ada S. Knapp of Colorado Springs on 20 April 1957.

  The Gotwals at Estemere (1957)

  Robert and Lillian Mae Gotwals and their four children came to Palmer Lake from Colorado Springs in the summer of 1957 and rented rooms at Estemere from Walter Clausing. The family stayed on the Estemere property for about two months before moving to a house in Glen Park. A son, Dave Gotwals, was a young teenager that year and recalled that the Estemere was in a “run-down” condition.[145] It is likely that since the last of the McPherson college classes in 1930, little money had been spent to keep Estemere in tip-top shape, except for an occasional painting and the repairs that William Blietz could make himself.

  Soon after the Gotwals arrived, they moved into the main house where the game room [the Billiard Room sans billiard table] with its red carpet served as the boys’ bedroom. Their parents stayed in the old butler’s quarters off the Kitchen, but Mrs. Gotwals cooked in the caretaker’s cottage. Mr. Gotwals told his boys not to sit on the few pieces of Victorian furniture still remaining in the house, but they did use one of the “Italian fireplaces.” Two other renters came to live on the ground level of the mansion that summer. No one was living on the upper floors. A plumber, Ed Turner, moved into one of the buildings behind Estemere. He and the Gotwals attempted to get the fountains working, and while they succeeded with one, the pipes leaked so badly the fountain was not used again. Gotwals said there were ruins of several gazebos on the grounds.

  Dan Edwards (l) and Dave Gotwals at Estemere 19 June 2010.

  Dave returned to Estemere for the first time in 43 years.

  Dave remembered a huge icebox in the basement of Estemere. It had cedar-lined walls, and was perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet (6.1 m by 6.1 m), with its own lights and a compressor mounted on the wall, so that the icebox could run on electricity. Nearby were shelves where blocks of ice had been stored in the Thompson and Smith days; and there were old tables where sides of beef had been cut up before being put in the icebox. A large coal furnace about eight feet (2.6 m) wide, with pipes running to the floors above, was also in the basement. The house had been equipped with a down-draft cooling system that consisted of aluminum vents on the roof, through which air would pass to pans filled with water and placed on each level of the house.

  The old Carriage House was used then as a storehouse, and in it Dave recalled seeing old slot machines and ticker-tape machines. There were books stored in the Carriage House, and boxes of old papers containing stock certificates and business records were stashed in the attic. Could those boxes have contained records of some of Eben Smith’s business operations or of his work on the Estemere property? Could there even have been a box or two with papers dating back to the days of W. Finley Thompson? What a shame the Palmer Lake Historical Society, which had just been organized, did not realize the opportunity it had to carry out some practical, on-the-spot historical research at Estemere, for who knows what irreplaceable treasures in those boxes subsequently and unceremoniously met their final resting place at the Palmer Lake Dump.

  Ada S. Knapp: Retired Chicago School Teacher (1957-1958)

  For Estemere’s story, the key fact about Ada Knapp is this: she was a sister of Leon Snyder (see below). A widow, Ada had left Chicago for Colorado Springs about 1955 and moved into her bachelor brother’s house near the Broadmoor Hotel. For some reason, Leon Snyder did not want to purchase Estemere in his own name, so he had his sister buy it. Ada, the third woman to own Estemere, may not have visited the property more than once or twice. She engaged the local Palmer Lake realtor, Walter Clausing, to find someone to rent the house. On 03 June 1958 she sold Estemere to her brother Leon Snyder, having owned it for less than 14 months.

  Leon Snyder: Attorney and Historical Preservationist (1958-1964)

  It appears that Leon Snyder was the first person to contemplate developing the Estemere property into a commercial venture beyond simply renting out its rooms or other facilities for short-term use. Snyder was a prominent and wealthy Colorado Springs attorney, who at one time had owned a ranch northwest of Colorado Springs where he had raised dairy cattle. Perhaps of more relevance to his purchase of Estemere, Snyder, who for years went fishing in South Park, was an organizer, director, and secretary of the South Park Historical Foundation which was established in 1957. This Foundation was a civic non-profit project that oversaw the creation of South Park City at Fairplay, Colorado. South Park City was an attempt to preserve old buildings and artifacts from Park County from vandalism and decay by moving those structures to a site on the outskirts of Fairplay. The “city” took shape as a model of an old Colorado mining town and opened to the public in 1959. Knowing of the Colorado Centennial “Rush to the Rockies” celebration upcoming in 1959, did Snyder have a similar idea of assembling or recreating nineteenth century structures on his Palmer Lake property and opening a small museum or “pioneer town” there, much closer to his home in Colorado Springs, and with Estemere as the main exhibit and center of attraction?

  Just after Snyder bought Estemere, two buses carrying a tour group from the University of Denver stopped by Estemere in August 1958. The group was on a tour of historic Colorado places. A newspaper article of that time noted that Estemere stood

  empty and forlorn in the midst of neglected and weed-tangled grounds and silent fountains adorned with smiling cherubs. However inside the house the tour members found traces of the elegance that once belonged to Estemer
e in the lovely mahogany stair rail, the faded red imported brocaded wall paper and original red carpet in the drawing room, the stained-glass windows, depicting Grecian robed nymphs and brilliant birds, of the music and game rooms and the beautiful imported fireplace tiles…. Estemere seems to be waiting within her shabby walls for history to repeat itself.[146]

  At the very least, Snyder did contemplate developing the land adjacent to Estemere. The only evidence for this comes from the minutes of a Palmer Lake Town Council meeting of 02 December 1959:

  Mr. Messenger, a representative of El Paso Homebuilders of Colorado Springs, presented a plat of Estemere Estates showing deed road [sic]. He wanted information as to what the Town of Palmer Lake would do toward establishing water lines. The subdivision would require a 4” main. El Paso County Homebuilders are prepared to furnish pipe, fittings, and fire hydrants if the Town would install them. It would require approximately a 620’ ditch. The Trustees agreed to this.[147]

  Why Snyder did not move forward with his plans for “Estemere Estates”—building single family homes on the property’s six acres—is not known. But a few months later, there was a man living at Estemere who claimed to be its new owner.

  Gene Evans and Estemere, Inc. (1960-1962)

  Did Gene Evans of Denver ever really own Estemere? Press articles said he did, and he and his wife, Grace, lived in the house for more than two years, but no deed or other record has been found to verify his purchase. Was he a promoter, a man who signed a contract to buy Estemere and told everyone he had a “deal,” only to see the deal unravel at the last minute, perhaps because his loan was not approved? Or had he worked out some other arrangement—such as “rent to buy,”—that allowed him to live on the property subject to the fulfillment of certain future conditions that could result in a transfer of ownership? Evans certainly represented himself as the owner of Estemere, as a May 1960 headline announced “Gene Evans Family Buys Palmer Lake Mansion.”[148] The article said that Gene and Grace Evans had bought Estemere from Leon Snyder, through Palmer Lake’s realtor, Walter F. Clausing.

  Gene Evans was a Denver songwriter, a landscape architect, and proprietor of Idea Mart, a firm “specializing in aiding creators of ideas in industrial and commercial fields in giving substance to their ideas.” Marian McDonough of Palmer Lake wrote that the Evans were the new owners of Estemere and had settled into the mansion. Evans told her he was

  planning on a possible swimming pool and tennis courts and using the stable and carriage house for a work shop. Later the stable may be the setting for entertainments of a Chautauqua nature…. [T]he gardener’s cottage…is being put into shape with paint, hammer and saw.[149]

  Grace Evans, noting that she had begun to repair old wicker and walnut furniture in Estemere, and planned to repair the broken stained glass windows, took Marian McDonough on a tour of the house. Grace said she wanted to turn the old music room into a library and keep her parakeet, canary, and houseplants in the old observatory, the top room of the house. [The interior of the Tower was unfinished at that time.]

  The Evans couple had seven grown children and 12 grandchildren, so they contemplated Estemere’s rooms soon filled with visiting relatives. It certainly appeared that Evans had purchased the house, because in early October of 1960 he filed articles of incorporation for “Estemere, Inc.”[150] He, Grace, and Grace’s father, Sterling L. Dryden, all of Palmer Lake, were the three directors. The purpose of the enterprise was

  to invest, use, buy, sell or trade, business, stocks, bonds, etc; to promote ideas, business, products, merchandise etc; to operate, finance, establish, sell or trade business’ [sic], corporations, farm’s [sic], ranches, livestock, etc; to lease land, trucks, cars, equipment, machinery, farm equipment, farms, livestock; to service and operate, repair, and exchange any and all of the above properties.

  To purchase, build…or otherwise acquire…manage, sell…invest, trade, and deal in and with, goods, wares, livestock, animals, machinery, farming equipment,…trucks, merchandise, and real and personal property, of every class and description.[151]

  From this broad and legally repetitive description (much of which has been omitted here) of the company’s proposed scope of activities, it is hard to fathom just what business Estemere, Inc. was going to engage in, but there was nothing specifically mentioned that related directly to the mansion. Was Evans setting up “Estemere, Inc.” as a retirement enterprise for his 80-year-old father-in-law, or a side-business for himself, where one or the other could be a jack-of-all-trades “consultant”? The company was authorized to issue up to 49,900 shares at $1.00 par value, and the registered office of the corporation was P.O. Box 305 in Palmer Lake.

  What neighbors remembered most about Grace and Gene Evans’ time at Estemere was the pair of peacocks they had on the property. The female soon died, but Barney, the male, used to go up and down the street looking for food. He would get up on neighbors’ roofs and emit his shrill cries. A large dog finally decided to put an end to Barney’s antics.

  Whatever business plans the Evans had in mind for Estemere, Inc. must have been changed by the sudden death of Sterling Dryden on 30 August 1962. It was reported that Dryden, who had recently retired from the Colorado School of Mines, died of natural causes at his home in Palmer Lake.[152] [No one had died previously at Estemere, as far as we know, except possibly Edward Kipps in 1889.] Shortly afterwards, the Evans apparently left Palmer Lake.

  On 06 October 1962, the Pueblo Auction House conducted a public sale of antiques, furnishings and miscellaneous items in Estemere, because, the notice said, the premises had to be vacated at once. Whatever remaining furnishings there still were in Estemere dating from the Thompson and Eben Smith eras were likely sold and carried away that day (except for the buffet). What a pity.

  Notice of auction at Estemere for 06 October 1962.

  September 1962 announcement of Sterling Dryden’s death.

  Repairing Estemere

  Deane Delgado (1962-1964)

  Deane Delgado worked for museums in Santa Fe before he became curator at Fairplay’s South Park City Museum in 1960 where he met Leon Snyder. In the fall of 1962, Snyder said he wanted to restore Estemere and hired Delgado to undertake the necessary work. Deane, his wife, Niki, and young son, Marc, moved into the cottage on the grounds until a new double gas furnace in the main house was installed. [It is likely that the two furnaces installed during Delgado’s time were destroyed by the flood of 1965, as two Coleman natural gas furnaces were used to heat the house from at least mid-1965 until 1998.] Then the family moved into the bedrooms on the second floor. Later the Delgados had a daughter, Aisha, who was born in Colorado Springs, but Estemere was her first home. Aisha married Tomas Perkins. No one else lived on the property during the 18 months or so that the Delgado family was in residence.

  Although Snyder never discussed his plans for Estemere with him, Delgado saw that the mansion was in bad shape and assumed that Snyder had bought it as a real estate investment and wanted to fix it up so he could sell it. Deane was surprised to see that such an impressive structure was virtually devoid of furniture.

  Deane Delgado enjoyed living at Palmer Lake and working on Estemere. His only complaint was that the well-to-do Snyder was tight with his money—Snyder paid him only a meager wage by which it was difficult to support his family. Fortunately, Deane managed to get Leon to allow him to paint the mural on the Billiard Room ceiling. [He also painted several murals on a wall of the Roman Villa Restaurant of Palmer Lake.] With much of his assigned work done, Deane Delgado and his family left Estemere in July of 1964.

  Doris Sharkey Almost Buys Estemere (1964)

  Doris Sharkey first came to Palmer Lake about 1935 when she attended a youth camp at Pine Crest. Her mother, Nellie Dickey, subsequently bought a summer cottage in Glen Park in 1946, and in later years, Doris and her family used to spend time in the summers at Mrs. Dickey’s house. In the summer of 1964, Doris was interested in buying her own summer home at Palmer Lake. S
he had been in contact with the realtor, Walter F. Clausing, when she happened to drive by Estemere and saw that it was for sale. Clausing showed her the mansion and said the property was available for $30,000. Doris believed that Estemere needed a lot of work, but she loved the spacious grounds. The yard was overgrown; the house seemed bare: there was very little furniture and no chandeliers. Doris remembers the large “restaurant-type stove” along the north wall of the Kitchen [now in the two-car garage], the wallpaper in the dining room, the billiard table [it’s back!], and the large dining room table. Clearly, it would take many summers and a lot of money to make the house comfortable for her, but Doris was prepared to do so, because she had fallen in love with the place. She also thought she really did not want to maintain the other buildings on the property. She would tear down the Carriage House, the cottage, and other structures on the grounds and instead build a new four-car garage.

  Doris was ready to buy Estemere as a summer house for her sons and husband, who was often stationed overseas as an Air Force officer. But she happened to mention her plans to a family member, who immediately said she wanted to buy the property with Doris and live at Estemere with some of her family. After all, the house was large enough to accommodate them as well. Doris thought about this, but decided she would only want her immediate family members staying at Estemere with her. Rather than offend her relative, she dropped the idea of buying Estemere, and asked Walter Clausing to show her other properties in the area, one of which she ended up buying.