During Lent, many people make a commitment to prepare for Easter with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. For Catholics in the Estes Valley, there is a new option to attend Sunday Mass at 10 a.m. at St. Catherine of Siena Chapel in Allenspark.
In October, the 152-acre property – Camp St. Malo, which includes St. Catherine’s and the Annunciation Heights camp – was designated an archdiocesan shrine by Samuel Aquila, who has served as Archbishop of Denver since 2012.*
For years, St. Catherine’s was pastorally associated with Our Lady of the Mountains parish in Estes Park. Although not a parish, since its designation as a shrine, St. Catherine’s can now offer regular Sunday mass, keep sacramental records of baptisms, confirmations, and marriages, and issue its own sacramental certificates.
According to the Code of Canon Law 1230, a shrine is a church or other sacred place that is approved by the local bishop and visited by the faithful as pilgrims for prayer, worship, devotion, evangelization, and reconciliation.
Aquila’s decree recognized the Camp St. Malo property as a place that “has long been a place of prayer and communion with God amid the beauty of creation” — a destination where “droves of visitors flock, year-round, both faithful and secular.”
Camp St. Malo and Annunciation Heights have long operated as one ministry, sharing staff, leadership, volunteers, and pastoral care. Aquilia’s decree formally united the two ministries under the banner of To the Heights Catholic Camps and Retreat Centers.
“The formation of To the Heights allowed us to bring Camp St. Malo Shrine and Annunciation Heights together as one entity to reflect how we operate and manage the properties,” said Nathan Glassman, executive director of the ministry.
History of the property
Millions of people flock from across the country and around the world to the Estes Valley every year to experience the visual and spiritual beauty of the high country.
For many of those visitors, a stop at the picturesque church perched on the rock along the Peak to Peak Byway between Estes Park and Allenspark is on their itinerary. Some come to pray. Others just want to stand in the quiet beauty of the building and breathe in the spirit of peace that emanates from the stone walls. Many want to take a photograph as a memento.
In 1912, William McPhee, who was a partner in the McPhee and McGinnity Lumber Company and a member of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral parish in Denver, bought the 160-acre property for $11,000 from Julius Schwartz, who had homesteaded the land in the Tahosa Valley. Schwartz had called the property “Schwartzwald,” which means “black forest” in German.
McPhee gave the property to the archdiocese in what was considered a “gentleman’s agreement,” and it was used as a summer camp. After McPhee’s death in 1930, Edith and Oscar Malo, a wealthy couple living in Denver, bought the property from McPhee’s estate and formally gave it to the archdiocese. Oscar Malo was an executive with the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company, the J. K. Mullen Investment Company, and the Sargeant-Malo Brokerage Company.
The stone church was named for St. Catherine of Siena in honor of Edith Malo’s mother’s patron saint. Constructed between 1934 and 1936 of native moss rock and timbers, the chapel was designed by Denver architect Jules Jacques Benois Benedict.
The stained-glass window of St. Catherine holding a crucifix was created by Franz Mayer and Sons Glass Works in Munich, Germany, and installed in 1937.
Originally just for boys, the camp was opened to girls in 1973, but after a 1983 fire, the youth camp closed for three years. Following a $4.5 million renovation, the property reopened in 1987 as Camp Saint Malo Retreat and Conference Center.
During World Youth Day Denver in 1993, then-Pope St. John Paul II spent a day of rest and prayer on the property. Nine years after his death in 2005, John Paul II was canonized on April 27, 2014. Places visited, lived in, or established by saints often become pilgrimage sites for reflection, prayer, and veneration by the faithful.
Over the years, the property has experienced many challenges. In November 2011, the 49-room conference center was damaged by fire, and two years later, a major flood further damaged the ground.
After renovations, the property, which sits at the base of Mount Meeker, reopened in 2017 as an evangelization and visitor center. Also in 2017, the archdiocese purchased the former 42-acre Covenant Heights Conference Center two miles north along Highway 7. and renamed it Annunciation Heights. In 2022, the Tahosa Coffee House opened inside St. William’s Lodge, a stone building constructed 101 years earlier. The coffee house is a quiet setting for conversation where visitors can unplug from technology because it intentionally does not offer Wi-Fi.
Visitors can walk along a meditative Stations of the Cross path that leads to a towering statue of Jesus carved in Ortisei, Italy at the Giacomo Mussner Studios from Carrara marble. The statue bears the inscription “Via Veritas Et Vita” from the Gospel of John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” The statue was installed in 1947 as a memorial to World War II veterans.
Although separated by two miles, the two properties are united as one ministry. Camp St. Malo is serviced by a staff of 17 and a missionary program of more than a dozen young adults who commit to a 15-month apostolate in the Altum Institute, a service and formation program. Missionaries live on-site and staff the camp’s various programs, including the JPII Outdoor Lab programs and the summer youth and family camps, and provide grounds and maintenance support, covering kitchen and cleaning duties.
Shrines
In the U.S., there are 72 national shrines and hundreds of local diocesan shrines. Some of the most well-known shrines include the Shrine of St. Junipero Serra in Carmel, Calif., the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Maryland, and the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colo.
(*On Feb. 7, 2026, Pope Leo XIV announced that James Golka, bishop of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, would succeed Aquila, who, at 75, had reached the age of retirement. Golka will be installed on March 25, a date on the liturgical calendar celebrated by Catholics as the Feast of the Annunciation.)
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