Edie DeWeese of Allenspark is its local historian

Listen to story on EVV Podcast here:

The early history of Allenspark, Colo., has been preserved largely thanks to one woman: Edie DeWeese.

She was born into a pioneer Allenspark family who came to the area in 1904.

DeWeese, 74, says you could accuse her of embracing “impostor syndrome” since she is not a technically trained historian.

“But if you stay somewhere long enough you are the only one who remembers anything,” she says. “And I love the people.”

Her story begins with her great-grandparents.

“My great-grandparents, Frank V. Gay and Mary, came to Lyons and Allenspark and filed a mining claim,” she said. They were from Kansas and started coming to the mountains every year to escape seasonal hay fever.

The mining claim was unsuccessful but they liked the area and bought the northwest central plat in the village of Allenspark.

Frank’s daughter, Edith, married Andy Hansen and they had three children. Andy built the cabin two doors south of the Allenspark Community Church, which still stands today.

“My mother was the second of those three children, Mary Gay Hansen,” DeWeese said. Mary Hansen married Jack DeWeese. They had two daughters, Edie and Monica.

“I came to Allenspark for the first time in 1953 for a visit with my Hansen grandparents and I loved it,” she added.

Mary and Jack DeWeese decided to move year-round to Allenspark in January of 1956. The family lived in the unwinterized cabin that now has the address of 26 Washington St.

“It was colder than cold,” DeWeese remembered. She walked a block to school in Allenspark past piles of snow that towered over her. There were seven kids total in the school, which now is a private home.

But the family found that life in an unwinterized cabin was too hard, so they moved to Lyons and then to Boulder where her father had a jewelry store.

“We would still come up to the cabin a lot, on weekends,” she said.

DeWeese went to high school in Boulder and then attended CU Boulder for two years before marrying John Bell in 1970. The couple divorced in 1975. Those were her self-described hippie years.

In those days, hippies were not popular in Allenspark.

While both DeWeese’s mother and grandmother were members of The Hilltop Guild, a lady’s club, DeWeese was not made to feel welcome.

“The way I remember The Hilltop Guild situation in the early 70s is that the Guild ladies didn’t want any ‘hippies’ to join. My mother and grandmother had both been in the Guild since the beginning and many members knew me, so they might have given me a pass. Even so, I couldn’t take advantage of my ‘birthright’ status when other young women were being excluded.

“Since then, the Guild ladies have graciously invited me to join many times, and, while I’ve declined, I have volunteered in other ways to support them,” she said.

As an adult, DeWeese lived in another family cabin half-block from the original homestead. This cabin at 169 Second Ave. was built out of wood from the 1890s Allenspark school.

She made that her home from 1972 to 2005 during which time she drove to Boulder for her job at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“I was a technical editor. But I began as a clerk and over the course of 31 years I moved up to head of publications.”

That was where she learned to write and turn documents into publications.

On the job, she said, you don’t wait for the muse, you just write.

Her day job helped with her volunteer job at The Wind. The first edition was published in 1974.

“We had two electric typewriters and would put out The Wind in anyone’s kitchen we could find. I did typing, copy-editing, paste-up, everything.”

During those years, DeWeese also was an Allenspark firefighter who expected to be named chief in 1992. She had the training, and she had the support from rank and file, but was not ratified by the board. It was a low point.

“It was very sad and depressing,” she said.

As time went by she realized that her cosmic guardian angel had done her a big favor. She moved from Allenspark to Boulder.

“I went back to work full time and put more effort into writing, graphic design, posters and producing technical books. And as I finished my career there, I moved on to Allenspark history. By then we had the internet.”

DeWeese retired in 2007 and began volunteering at the Carnegie History Library in Boulder. The library had an Allenspark collection, Mabel Durning was responsible for much of it, and more than 10,000 photos, plus documents, but it had never been properly organized.

“I’m still volunteering there because I know how to do everything,” she said. One of her many projects is collecting history on the Gay/Hansen/DeWeese families.

“Now I’m working on my magnum opus. I am collecting all the historical articles from The Wind in one book with an index. That’s 600 copies of The Wind, 12 copies a year for 50 years.”

DeWeese, who doesn’t get discouraged easily, admits that she has undertaken an enormous task.

“I have no idea when I may finish. Don’t ask! I am scanning, formatting, indexing, all in my tiny den.

“I’m also putting together 200 Allenspark family trees. It makes me tired telling you all these things.”

But DeWeese has such an impressive track record, it’s hard to think that she would fail to accomplish almost anything.

She already is the author or editor of nine books about Allenspark from the award-winning “Digging Allenspark: The Quest for the First Cabin” to “Weaving Mountain Memories” by Lorna Knowlton.

And beyond her writing and publishing career, she was honored as an outstanding member of the community with the 2019 Dan Crane Award presented by The Old Gallery.

Those she works with appreciate her efforts – then and now.

“Edie has been invaluable to me over the years because of her dedication to The Wind and her knowledge of the history of this area,” said Gene Mackey, Wind editor.

“Her work on preserving the history of Allenspark and the surrounding area will be appreciated for many years to come. I am proud to have her as a friend and The Wind is very lucky to have her as a board member, recurring contributor, and advisor for 50 years,” he added.