LGBTQ+ residents find community and acceptance in Estes Park

On a snowy February night, about 20 people gathered at The Stanley Hotel for a monthly night of cocktails and camaraderie. They call themselves the GLEE Club – gays, lesbians, and everyone else. In May, the group will mark their third anniversary.

In a destination town for retirees like Estes Park, it might be easy to think that old prejudices might move in, too. But, for many of the town’s out LGBTQ+ community members, they’ve received a reprieve in Estes from places they’ve moved from. 

The GLEE Club meets at the 217 Wine Bar located inside The Stanley Hotel on the third Thursday of every month. It was founded by Cindy Yeast after moving to Estes Park in 2018 from Denver.

Yeast, a retired flight attendant, had some reservations when she arrived. She’d heard some LGBTQ+ business owners had struggled in the town. But when she arrived, Yeast joined the newcomers club. She quickly grew close to a group of women with whom she would go out and socialize.

“It just wasn’t an issue, and I found everybody here in Estes to be warm and friendly,” Yeast said.

By 2021, she had met a few gay people in town here and there. Then, two or three gay men joined one of her groups of friends. It gave her an idea.

“It would be great to, you know, have a gathering of LGBTQ+ people, and the reason would be that we’ve had so many shared experiences,” Yeast said.

Not all of those experiences in life had been pleasant, but she knew it would be fun to have a group of gay friends. Yeast says she uses gay conversationally sometimes to refer to the entire LGBTQ+ community.

So she started searching the internet for a way to start. She found an article about LGBTQ+ business owners in town. She called all the businesses and introduced herself. 

“I always joke with people. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m gay. Are you gay?’” Yeast said.

It took a while. That yielded mixed results, but she kept at it and started off a chain reaction of asking people they knew in the LGBTQ+ community. By May 2022, she had connected with enough people to hold a first meeting.

One of the women in the group was bartending at the American Legion and said they could get their own room there. Their meeting location rotated for a while. One night they met at the Wine Bar at the historic Stanley Hotel. When hotel management heard about their event, they offered the group a permanent home.

Twelve people showed up to that first meeting. Now, in the summer, their monthly cocktail hour may see as many as 40 people, including the occasional tourist.

“When you look at how many people that first started, and they are still coming and there’s been numbers that have added, there was a need there obviously for people to connect with each other,” Yeast said. 

Ann Lantz moved to Estes Park with her wife, Agnes, in July 2020 to become the pastor of the Estes Park Methodist Church. She’s been an ordained minister of the Methodist church for 38 years and, for most of that time, had to hide her identity. 

But while she was living in Colorado Springs, church policy changed that. Estes was her first opportunity to be herself with her congregation from the get-go. 

“Here in Estes, we’ve been able to be fully out. And that’s wonderful,” Lantz said. “The church here has been so great to us. They love us, and we love them.”

Lantz and the church are not subtle in their support of the LGBTQ+ community. A pride flag flies right in the middle of the churchy balcony.

“We do that so that LGBTQ folks who drive by know that this is a safe place for them,” Lantz said.

Three years ago they also helped start Pride in the Park, the Estes Park Pride festival held every June. The church runs a Saturday family activity, while other weekend activities include drag shows and a pub crawl. Similar to the GLEE Club, Lantz sees the event as a way to foster community, have fun, and open the eyes to some.

“A lot of us are older, just like the population of Estes Park. And so we’re not seen as much, maybe as if we were younger, but there’s definitely a large community,” Lantz said

While Yeast and Lantz feel comfortable being their true self in Estes, they both highlighted an increasing reality across the country. Yeast believes transgender people have become targets of fear and hatred as their identity has become a political issue. It reminds her of how Gay men and Lesbians were treated for decades of her life. 

“This leads back to LGBTQ+ people’s need to form a community and have a place we can go where we know we are safe, accepted, and loved,” Yeast said. “Right now, this is critically important for transgender people, and we welcome them.

The GLEE club and Pride in the Park aren’t the only opportunities for the LGBTQ+ community to gather. These are several upcoming events in Estes Park.

• LGBTQ Cocktail Hour at The Stanley Hotel, April 17, 5:30 p.m., every third Thursday of the month
• Pride in the Park, June 20-22, location TBA
• Avant Garde Beers for Queers, April 17, 6 p.m., every first and third Thursday of the month
• Raven’s Roast, Queer Community Night – Coloring and Coffee with Queers, monthly, check out their Facebook page for the next meeting.