Growing up in Red Feather Lakes
By Dave White
Activites I remember
I remember Red Feather Lakes back in the 1970s. My family has owned property in Red Feather Lakes since the late 60s. I was just a kid when we found Red Feather and my parents bought a cabin here. It was small, just two rooms — the kitchen and living room / bedroom at night. We had a couch kind of like a futon that my sisters slept on. My parents slept on a couch that had a hide-a-bed in it. And I, being the youngest, I sleep on a cot. We lived in Aurora, Colorado, and came up on the weekends. My dad and I loved to fish.
Back in those days the initiation dues to be allowed to fish in Red Feather Lakes was approximately $150.00 and then after that, it was $25.00 each for adults and $2.00 for each child per year. We had buttons to wear showing you were a member. You also had to own property in Red Feather Lakes in order to join the association and fish in the private lakes. When you fished in the private lakes it was rare to not catch a fish. The private lakes had a very healthy fish population as back in those days the Red Feather Storage and Irrigation Company used to get small fingerling trout in the spring and they had rearing ponds to put those fingerlings in. Every spring they would fill up Papoose Lake and another rearing pond. It was just west of the intersection of Hiawatha Highway and Creedmore Lakes Road back in the woods and you couldn’t see it from the road. Anyway they would put small trout, just three or four inches, in those ponds and it was one guy’s job to come around three times a day and feed the fish. Later on in the 80s they added the automatic feeders. He would drive up, get out and grab a bucket with fish food pellets in it and walk all the way around Papoose Lake and throw the fish pellets into the water the small trout would bubble up like the water was boiling to eat the pellets. This went on all summer long and by the fall the fish had doubled in size. We kids used to float rafts on Papoose Lake and push ourselves around with tree poles. We would have water fights and just have fun swimming in the lake. Then in the fall they would drain the ponds and catch the fish in traps and transport them to the other private lakes which were Hiawatha, Erie, Nokomis, Shagwa, Ramona, Snake and Letitia. Apache lake wasn’t there back in those days. It was added later on. They would fill the lakes and those fish would be in the lakes all winter long. This was all done by volunteers, approximately 10 to 15 men would show up to help with the draining, catching, transferring of the fish from the rearing ponds to the other lakes. A third rearing pond was made sometime in the late 70s. I don’t remember the exact year. That pond was at Hiawatha Lake. It is called Sam Rogers pond. It was named for the guy who worked for Barker Construction and he was the one who dug out the pond with his front-end loader. Sam named his front-end loader “Trigger”. The little pond you see on Hiawatha Highway with the little bridge going over the opening to Hiawatha Lake was a rearing pond when it was made. They would raise the fish in there all summer, feeding them, and then in the fall they would open the little gate and the fish were allowed to swim out into the bigger Hiawatha Lake.
After the men were done transporting the fish to the other lakes and they left, we kids took over lol… . We would go out into Papoose Lake in all the mud where there were small pools of water with fish still in them. Us being kids, we didn’t want those fish to die, so we would go out there with buckets of water, trudging and sinking in the mud, getting stuck lol and catch the small fish. We’d put them into buckets and then we would walk to Hiawatha or Shagwa Lakes because they were close by, and we would dump the buckets of fish into the lakes then run back to Papoose Lake to get more. We got tired and decided to catch more fish the next day… When we woke up the next day and went out to catch the fish we were shocked. All the fish were gone from the small pools of water. There were strange animal racks all over the muddy pond. It turns out that overnight raccoons had come in and eaten all the fish left in the pools of water.
The Stores in the Village
The Trading Post and the Hilltop used to have fishing contests every week. Note — you had to enter your fish at one or the other, you couldn’t enter the same fish at both stores. When you caught a big fish you would go to those stores with your fish they would measure and weigh your fish. Then they would take your picture with that fancy polaroid camera that slid your picture out of the camera. They would write the date, your name, length of your fish, and weight of your fish on the photo. At the end of the week they would give a prize for the longest fish and the heaviest fish. Every week during the summer they would do that. By the end of the summer, they had a huge wall of pictures showing all the big fish that were caught in the private lakes that year. It was awesome to see.
This was a memory I have about what it was like in Red Feather Lakes when I was a young boy.
The “party lines”
When we lived in Aurora, Colorado, we had a private line, but in Red Feather Lakes you had to have a party line. No, it wasn’t about drinking or having parties out in the woods. That’s a whole other story. The party line refers to the telephone back in the 70s. If you wanted a phone line you had to share. I’m not sure if you could get a private line or if you had to get a party line, but my family had a party line. This meant you shared the phone line with, I believe it was six other people. So what that meant was we all had separate phone numbers and if someone called you, it only rang your phone. But, we shared the same line and if you were on the phone, anyone else who was on your party line could hear your conversation. The businesses in Red Feather had their own private lines.
Now on our party line we had a person who my parents called “The Gabber.” You didn’t know who was on your party line, but the gabber was on our party line and she was always on the phone. It didn’t matter if it was morning, midday or evening — the gabber was always on the line. Sometimes my parents would need to make a phone call and every time they picked up the phone, the gabber was on the line talking about something to someone. Sometimes you just needed to say, “Hey I really need to make a phone call, could you please get off the line?” The gabber would usually say “oh all right” and tell the person she would call them back later.
Now in my defense keep in mind that I was young and I had a lapse in judgement. But I did get in trouble. One day I wanted to call my friend and I picked up the phone, and you guessed it, the gabber was on the line. Now normally I would hang up the phone and I would wait, but just as I picked up the phone the gabber was telling someone about her BUNION. She was going on and on about this bunion and how it hurt and the doctor wasn’t helping at all. Now being young I had no idea what a bunion was, or what it looked like, but the gabber was making it sound like something horrible. I was listening and thinking to myself — what’s a bunion and how come it hurts so much? At first I thought it was some kind of bun but why would it hurt? Well I was listening to the gabber tell all about this bunion and all the sudden I said, “What’s a bunion? What does it look like? Is it gross looking?” There was dead silence on the phone, then someone busted out laughing and the gabber said, ”Who is this”? “You better get off this phone.” “I’m gonna tell your mother.” I quickly hung up and my parents were outside. I thought the gabber was going to tell my mom, so I told my mom about the bunion. Well, I got in trouble and was grounded and not allowed to use the phone for two weeks because I listened to a phone call and I wasn’t supposed to (even though my parents were laughing as they told me I was grounded). A few years later the phone company got rid of party lines and we got a regular phone line. Thank goodness no more gabber hogging the phone.
What kids did for fun in the 70s
My parents owned a cabin in Red Feather Lakes since the late 60s. We moved to Red Feather Lakes to live year-round in 1976.
To have fun we fished in the lakes, We made rafts our of logs and rafted on Papoose Lake. It wasn’t a deep lake so we pushed ourselves around with long poles, We would have water fights on the rafts, splashing each other as we went around the lake. We had two rafts. We also waded and swam in the lakes back then.
We spent hours catching frogs, crawdads and snakes (garter snakes that is). We would get jars or buckets to put the crawdads and frogs in. Heather was a young girl who lived close to me she loved snakes and you could always count on Heather to have a little garter snake in her shirt. She would catch the snake and then she would carry it around in her shirt lol. We would wade in the water and look around until we found one, and then we would try to catch them. Frogs and snakes we caught with our hands, but for the crawdads we used little nets. I can’t remember how many times we fell in the lake and got soaking wet while catching them, but when I got home mom would make me change out of my muddy wet clothes.
We also climbed a lot of rock piles back then. I have climbed on most of the rock piles between Shagwa Lake and Nakomis Lake. On Hiawatha Lake on the back side of the lake by the dam, there are three piles of rocks you can see from Hiawatha Highway. We called those rocks the “three sisters” back in the 70s. There is also the big pile of rocks where Gnome Road is now, and I have climbed that pile of rocks hundreds of times. When you get up to the top of that pile, you can see the village as well Ramona, Hiawatha and Shagwa Lakes. There is also “The Rock’ over by the meadow just west of where Morning Star Church is today, more about that rock later. We also built lots of little forts in the woods, usually around rock piles. We would gather dead branches and lean them against the rocks to make forts.
Mini-bikes were big back in the 70s My dad had two mini-bikes for us kids to ride around on. We had a lot of fun on those mini-bikes riding around Papoose Lake.
We also played bingo on Saturday nights. Bingo back in the 70s was different than today. Back then we had hardboard cards with little red clear sliding windows. When they called a number, if you had that number, you slid the little red window over that number. You also had to get to bingo early to pick the better cards, lol. They would put all the hardboard cards out and you would go through them to pick the cards you wanted for that night. Then you played the same cards all night long. When you got a bingo and won, you didn’t get a cash prize, you got to pick a prize from the shelves behind the bingo caller. They only paid cash for the blackout game which was the last game of the night. The rest of the time you picked a prize from the shelves full of prizes. They had all kinds of prizes — fishing poles, nets, tackle boxes, sets of lures, sets of flies, dinner plate sets, pitchers and glasses sets, towel sets, blankets, bed sheet sets, sleeping bags, tents etc etc. There were always lots of things to choose from. Sometimes I would get fishing stuff and sometimes I would get something for my mom or the cabin.
Now if you were a teenager, you got too cool for the bingo game. So while your parents went to bingo, you would go next door to the youth center. The youth center was right next to the community building. It’s still there, but the only time I see them use it now is for craft fairs. Back then the youth center was where all the kids from the area could get together and have fun. It was open on Friday and Saturday nights. It was run by parents who volunteered to watch things while the kids were there. They had a little snack bar and sold candy bars, chips, popcorn, soda pop, pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers. They had a little pizza oven and sold Tombstone pizzas. In the youth center we had a foosball table, ping pong table, pool table and board games and books. There were some chairs and tables in there too where we could eat a pizza or we could play board games with other kids. It was a way for us kids to get together with our friends because if you didn’t drive a car — and most of us were too far away from each other to try to walk to each other’s houses — so we would meet at the youth center. I was told they had to shut it down because Larimer County Heath Department would not let them sell the pizzas and hot dogs anymore, but I am not sure if that is the whole story or not.
When kids were older there was “The Rock.” That was the place older kids would go to party. They would build a fire at the base of the rock and they would party. If you are at County Road 74E and Pipsissewa Lane and you turn onto Pipsissewa Lane, there is a big lone rock on the edge of the meadow. That was called “The Rock” back in the 70s.
Now if you were a good worker, you could make lots of money back in the 70s. I started out helping my dad collect firewood. Then people would ask me if I would help them with different things. I worked for Dr. Hoyt. He had a home with a rock pile next to the house, so he had me come over and we built a bunch of terraced flower beds all over the rock pile, and I would plant flowers every spring for him and then water them all summer. I also planted 40 or 50 trees for a man named Barney. He had me dig holes with a post hole digger and then I put good dirt in the hole and planted a pine tree seedling that he got from the forest service. I went back all summer to water those trees. That was a lot of work.
I worked for the High Country Restaurant (recently known as “The Basil at 181”) back in the 70s. I was the dishwasher and table busser for three years while I went to high school. I also cleaned the Gopher Bar (now known as Lone Pine Realty) back in the 70s. The Gopher Bar was a 3.2 beer bar, owned by Jimmy and Johnny Krakel. I would clean up on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I would sweep and mop the floors and wipe down the tables and clean the bathrooms. The best part was I got to keep any money I found on the floor while cleaning up, lol. And I also found a few dollars worth of change on the floor, lol.
There also was an outdoor in-ground pool at Crystal Lakes next to Base Camp. My best friend and his brothers and sister used to swim there in the summer. I also heard there was a middle-of-the-night skinny dipping party there by some of the 20 to 30 year olds at the time. I wasn’t there but I heard about it a few days after it happened. I was told they closed the pool down and filled it in with dirt because the liability insurance was too high and they had to get rid of it.
These are some of the things I remember about living in Red Feather Lakes in the 70s.