Today, the old Bear Lake Lodge at Elk Meadow Lodge and RV Resort serves as a summer music venue for local bands. This Saturday, Aug. 22, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 Buster & The Boomers, a Grateful Dead tribute band, will close out the season. Admission is free, and guests are welcome to bring their own food, beverages, and their dancing shoes.
The property now known as Elk Meadow Lodge and RV Resort once had a considerably more colorful identity. It was Rimrock.
Envisioned as a Western entertainment venue, movie location, and frontier town, Rimrock’s developers assembled historic and replica buildings, collected Western artifacts and movie props, laid nearly a mile of narrow-gauge railroad track, and built a museum devoted to Colorado’s gold rush.
Some of Rimrock’s buildings came from East Tincup, an 1880s-style Western theme park built in Golden in 1960. The attraction survived only a few seasons before closing amid financial and management problems.
Willis Webber, who had been involved with East Tincup, turned his attention to Estes Park.
In November 1963, Webber applied to the Estes Park Regional Planning Commission to build and operate an “Old West Village” west of Estes Park. The proposal generated debate, with some residents worried the development could become “another eyesore.”
Despite the opposition, the planning commission approved the project. Getting from approval to opening day, however, would take more than three years.
A frontier town takes shape
Construction began in September 1965. A frontier bank and other Western buildings took shape, a trout pond was filled, and more than 200 people reportedly visited during a community open house.
Webber later said Rimrock’s primary purpose was to provide permanent streets and false fronts for motion pictures and television Westerns. Developers reportedly considered 17 sites in four states before selecting the 30-acre property near the Beaver Meadows entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.
The rocky landscape and views of Longs Peak were major selling points. Between movie shoots, Rimrock would entertain tourists seeking a taste of the Old West.
Ambitious plans included a fort, Native American village, settler’s cabin, mining and cattle towns, pioneer business district, school, church and courthouse. Stagecoaches, antique horse-drawn vehicles and an extensive collection of Western props would complete the scene.
One of Rimrock’s most remarkable buildings wasn’t a movie set but a historic lodge from Rocky Mountain National Park.
As part of the National Park Service’s Mission 66 initiative from 1956 to 1966, the agency acquired and removed private properties within the park in an effort to return developed areas to a more natural state. Bear Lake Lodge, a privately operated lodging concession on the eastern shore of Bear Lake during the first half of the 20th century, was among them.
The Rimrock Company purchased the lodge. Workers marked and photographed each log, dismantled the building, hauled it out of the park, and reconstructed it at Rimrock.
A ranger cabin from Bear Lake was also dismantled and rebuilt on the property, giving Rimrock more than scenery designed to look historic. Some of its buildings actually were historic.
The railroad comes to Rimrock
Two coal-burning steam locomotives arrived in Estes Park aboard a flatbed truck for restoration and use at Rimrock. One was modeled after the Denver & Rio Grande’s 1871 Montezuma and the other after an 1890s locomotive named the “Molly Brown.” The trains were expected to carry 60 to 100 passengers around the nearly mile-long track.
On May 26, 1967, a golden spike marked the completion of the Rimrock Railroad. After more than three years of construction and a reported investment of more than $300,000 in land, construction, equipment, payroll, and advertising, the Western town was ready.
Hollywood comes to Estes
Rimrock opened June 24, 1967, with a preview benefiting the Estes Park Hospital Fund. Its grand opening followed the next day.
Promoters proclaimed it the “Movie Set Capital of the Rockies” and promised to bring television’s biggest Western stars to Estes Park.
James Drury of “The Virginian” was advertised for the grand opening. Irene Ryan — Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies” — was scheduled for July 4. “Bonanza” stars Dan Blocker and Lorne Greene, along with Fess Parker and Ed Ames of “Daniel Boone,” were promoted for summer appearances.
Majestic Productions filmed “The Sinister Gold Pick” at Rimrock in the weeks before the grand opening. Director and producer Duane Hartzell brought a technical crew from Hollywood, used Rimrock’s props, costumes and vehicles, and cast Estes Park residents as characters, bit players, and extras.
There is no evidence that the film was ever completed or released, or that any other films or television shows used the location.
A bar with an even longer journey
Inside the transplanted Bear Lake Lodge is another piece of Rimrock lore — a massive bar that may have come from Denver’s Windsor Hotel at 18th and Larimer streets.
The 60-foot Windsor bar, embedded with 3,000 silver dollars, was once operated by Harry Tammen, who later became a co-owner of The Denver Post. Legend also holds that Calamity Jane fired a shot into the Windsor bar after being refused service. The famous Denver watering hole reportedly served four U.S. presidents — Grover Cleveland, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft — and countless other politicians, gamblers, and visitors.
Another account says the Rimrock bar came from a Central City tavern and dates to Colorado’s mining era.
The provenance of the surviving bar is difficult to establish. That uncertainty runs throughout Rimrock’s history, where documented fact, local lore, and decades of storytelling often blur together.
Enter Lady Rimrock
And then there is the naked woman reclining languidly above the bar. The leggy blonde with flowers tucked into her hair might seem unremarkable for a bordello-style painting — until you look closely at one foot. She appears to have six toes.
The traditional story says a bar owner commissioned an artist to paint his wife but failed to specify the pose. When he saw the finished nude, he became furious and refused to pay. The artist supposedly retaliated by adding a sixth toe.
It is a story fitting of the Old West. It also appears not to be true.
Local artist Greig Steiner restored the painting in 2013 after it was damaged during a raucous wedding brawl at the lodge. Drinks thrown during the melee splashed across the canvas and damaged the paint.
Steiner told the Estes Valley Voice the painting dates to the 1960s, not the Gold Rush era as some have speculated. He believes the original artist — most likely a Rimrock set designer — first painted the woman’s foot in one position and later repositioned it. Traces of the original foot remain visible beneath the finished painting, creating the illusion of an extra toe.
A checkered past and a short-lived future
Another Rimrock building has an uncertain provenance. The structure that later served as the property’s office was reportedly moved from Central City, where local lore holds that it once operated as a brothel during the mining era.
A caption on a photo preserved at the old Bear Lake Lodge is more circumspect, describing the building as “reputed to have been a night lounge (or brothel)” before being moved to Rimrock.
The deeper one digs into Rimrock, however, the more its history divides into three categories: what happened, what probably happened, and what people have happily repeated for the past half-century.
While Rimrock’s ambitions were enormous, its finances were less durable.
Former Rimrock Corporation President Hans Heine sued the corporation and Webber over an unpaid $5,000 promissory note. When Webber ran out of money, the property changed hands in 1968 and became the Estes Park Western Town. New owners promoted it as an affordable family tourist attraction with roping and riding demonstrations, staged gunfights, and an antique railroad.
Rimrock’s second act proved no more durable than its first. Western Town ran out of money and closed before opening the following summer.
In 1971, Denver-based Red Arrow Industries Inc. acquired the property and planned a Western-themed RV park called Red Arrow Campground, operated by Stanley Cleveland of Estes Park and Ed Loloff of Kersey. Artifacts uncovered during digging and grading prompted a name change to the Blue Arrow Campground.
The property became Elk Meadow Lodge and RV Resort in 2001 and changed hands again in 2007.
Rimrock may have bitten the dust, but Bear Lake Lodge remains, along with Lady Rimrock, who can still be seen behind the bar in all her glory.
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