Name the Trail! The History Behind Boulder's Trails

by Ann Cooper

Who were Gregory and Mallory? What caused Bald Mountain’s baldness? Where is Ute Trail and did Utes travel it? How did Switzerland Trail get its name? Why does Teller have a lake and Lagerman a reservoir? How did Enchanted Mesa become enchanting?
In the rush to hike these familiar trails, there’s little time to evaluate their names, let alone delve into stories behind them. Yet their names reflect the county’s natural and cultural history, personalities, even politics, and add another layer of appreciation to a day’s outing.
Who comes up with trail names anyway? “The interpretive staff,” says Pascale Fried, interpretive specialist with Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department. “We look at a property’s natural and cultural features, and then choose a name that doesn’t duplicate another trail in the area.” This explains such trails as Bitterbrush at Hall Ranch, named after the area’s abundant antelope bitterbrush bushes, or Legion Park, once known as Goodview Hill, created by American Legion Post #10 as a memorial to World War I soldiers. Incidentally, the park’s cannons were last fired at the 1933 dedication.
Fried says park staff often choose names to highlight natural features people wouldn’t otherwise notice. For example, a new trail opening at Heil Ranch will be named Lichen Trail.
Occasionally, trails are named by county residents. During a contest, elementary school students suggested the name Pella Crossing for the new park near Hygiene. Pella was one of four plains settlements in 1860. The crossing was where Overland Trail crossed the St. Vrain River en route from Denver to Laramie, Wyoming. The river was wider and deeper then, and horses sometimes had to swim the crossing. Another example is county-acquired land at Caribou Ranch, where the seller reserved the right to name new trails as part of the contract.
Some trails are named for geological or geographical landmarks. Bald Mountain is one of 13 “bald” hillsides in the county. Why? Coarse, shallow soil and strong winds make it hard for trees to root at the summit (although a lovely ponderosa grows there, proving the name a misnomer). Baseline Trail in Chautauqua Park runs parallel to Baseline Road, the 40th parallel that divided Kansas Territory from Nebraska Territory long before Colorado acquired statehood.
A few trails commemorate local Native Americans. Little Raven Trail off Brainard Lake Drive, honors Little Raven (1810-89), chief of the Southern Arapaho, who led his exiled nomadic tribe to Oklahoma after the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 forced him to relinquish Colorado homelands. The Ute Trail is harder to pin down. Ute trails, mountains and passes crisscross the state, and Ute territory originally included vast acres of mostly mountain land extending from southern Wyoming to New Mexico and west of Denver to Salt Lake. The Utes were nomadic hunters who followed game trails and camped in various valleys throughout this region. Documented hunting blinds and game-drive walls at Arapaho Pass were used by Arapahos and Utes, and Utes probably traveled in the vicinity of what’s now called Ute Trail on Flagstaff Mountain.

TRAPPING GAME AND NAMES
Other trails commemorate local trappers. Ceran St. Vrain Trail above Jamestown honors Ceran St. Vrain (1802-70), a fur trader and partner in Bent, St. Vrain and Company. A go-getter, St. Vrain wrote to his family in 1825: “I equipt sum men to goe trapping, thinking that it will be the most profitable for me...the men I have equipt is all the best of hunters, if they make a good hunt, I will doe verey good business.” Whether he himself trapped beaver along the St. Vrain River is speculative. Little Thompson Overlook Trail at Rabbit Mountain was probably named for English fur trapper David Thompson (1770-1857), a Northwest fur company employee who explored the Rockies.
Some trails owe their names to mining history. Gregory Canyon was named after John Gregory, a prospector described as “a shaggy, semiliterate Georgian” who discovered the incredibly rich Gregory lode near Black Hawk. Not fancying the grueling work of retrieving the gold, he reportedly paid two miners $1.50 a day each to haul out nearly $1,000 in gold a week. Gregory Canyon provided wagon access to Black Hawk.
Now a pleasant hike-bike-ski trail, Switzerland Trail in Fourmile Canyon started as a mining railway. The first train of the Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific narrow gauge railroad, nicknamed Switzerland Trail, left Boulder on April 6, 1883, for Penn Gulch (later named Sunset) in Fourmile Canyon. With no place to turn around, trains had to back down on the return trip. Wagons completed the journey to Ward. The Switzerland Trail line eventually extended to mining camps in Salina, Wall Street, Sunset, Gold Hill and Ward. “One need not go to Switzerland for sublime mountain scenery,” touted the railroad ads. Tourists flocked to take trains (often filled with kegs of beer packed in snow) for moonlight excursions, snowball outings, wildflower expeditions and aspen viewing. Outings often included stops at Mont Alto (between Sunset and Gold Hill stations) for everything from baseball games and concerts to lectures and dances at the Mont Alto Lodge. Today the chimney is all that remains of the once-favored rail destination.
In addition to mining, Boulder Valley prospered under the plow. Andrew Doudy settled at the mouth of South Boulder Creek and built a gristmill, sawmill and small house. After the mills washed away in the 1864 floods, Doudy sold the house and land to Debaker, who added to the modest home and lived there until 1901. Many stone walls near the present-day Homestead Trail were built by down-on-their-luck miners to clear the fields and make them usable. Later, Debaker’s daughter and her husband, John Dunn, lived in the house. Doudy is remembered by Doudy Draw Trail. The square stone house along South Boulder Creek bears the cumbersome name of the three homesteaders—Doudy, Debaker and Dunn.
James Walker of Walker Ranch built his highly successful cattle operation by bringing in hardy Scottish cattle that could survive in the Rocky Mountain foothills. His neighbor, Andrew R. Meyers, settled the gulch north of Walker Ranch in 1890 and logged the area with portable sawmills. He later sold his land to Walker, but the ambling trail that wanders past hay barn ruins still bears the name Meyers Homestead Trail.

NAME–DROPPING
Boulder’s agriculture depended on water, and irrigation schemes were essential. In 1869 eight families who immigrated from Smöland, Sweden, established a 1,000-acre settlement east of Left Hand Canyon that included an irrigation reservoir and a 160-acre prastgard, or pastor’s garden, to grow crops that were the pastor’s salary. The first pastor was Reverend Frederick Lagerman. The irrigation reservoir was informally known as Swede Lake, but it’s official name, Lagerman Reservoir, persists today.
Other watery places contain a pleasant undertow of history, too. Contrary to many people’s suppositions, Walden Ponds has nothing to do with Henry David Thoreau, Massachusetts, or “the naked simplicity of life.” The ponds are named for Walden “Wally” Toevs, a Boulder County commissioner in the early 1970s who promoted reclamation of the gravel pits to create a wildlife habitat.
Politicians also got their due when it came to naming names. Sen. Henry Teller owned an extensive spread east of Boulder, where today’s Teller Lakes Trail offers magnificent mountain views and a walk into rural memories. Teller spent 30 years in the U.S. Senate and became secretary of the interior in 1882.
Boulder acquired many amenities over the years, including a sanitarium in 1896, after which a mountain and, later, Mount Sanitas Trail were named. Built and run by Seventh Day Adventists, the sanitarium accommodated a hundred guests, offered massage and hydrotherapy treatment, and weaned patients off a “conservative” diet of meat, white bread and coffee or tea to a “radical” vegetarian and toxin-free diet—apparently anticipating Boulder’s life-style by decades.
Boulder developed a conservation ethic early in its history and several trail names commemorate generous land donors. Bluebell-Baird honors Dr. and Mrs. William J. Baird, who donated 160 acres in Gregory Canyon for parkland in 1908. The C. G. Buckingham family donated mining claims around Boulder Falls and 30 acres near Eldora to create Buckingham Campground, also called Fourth of July Campground for the mine and a silver lode discovered on July 4 by A. C. Alford in the 1870s. Rotted cabin foundations, a boiler and cable spool are all that remain; the shaft has long since caved in.
E. M. Greenman Trail honors Ernest Greenman, who came to Boulder in 1896 as a surveyor on the Sunset to Glacier Lake railroad. He helped found the Rocky Mountain Climbers Club and planted the few remaining apple trees in Boulder Mountain Parks. Mallory Cave was rediscovered by a young student, E. C. Mallory, while exploring canyons in the summer of 1932. Saw-cut tree stumps outside the cave proved Mallory wasn’t the first to venture there. More recently, Fourmile Canyon Creek Trail was renamed Anne U. White Trail for Anne Underwood White, a writer, geographer, staunch advocate of open space and trail corridors, and a member of the Boulder Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee. White died in 1989.
What of future trails? Fried and her colleagues currently are mulling trail names for the Carolyn Holmberg Preserve at Rock Creek Farm. One possibility is to honor women such as Rocky Mountain historian and explorer Isabella Bird, or Mary Miller, wife of Lafayette Miller and co-founder of Lafayette.
A dab of history, a pinch of nature, a smidgen of education, a sprinkle of personalities, a dose of pragmatism and sometimes a spoonful of fiction go into trail names. Rabbit Mountain, for example, doesn’t have many rabbits, but from the east it resembles a crouched rabbit with its ears down. It also was known as Rattlesnake Mountain. One story suggests area founders thought rattlesnake was a PR problem and chose a more benign name to lure settlers.
On older maps, Enchanted Mesa is called Horse Mesa. An unsubstantiated tale says the name was changed to create a more appealing image when one group proposed to develop the mesa and another to save it. It was known as Enchanted Mesa in 1962, when voters approved the purchase of 155 acres at a cost of $105,000 to halt construction of a luxury hotel there. Perhaps its enchantment rests in its very presence—gloriously wild and yet so close to a burgeoning metropolis.
The next time you head for to hike, spare a thought for the trail’s name. It’s most certainly a part of our heritage.

See related acticle Trying Times for Trails

See also bouldermag.com's Hiking Guide for a description of local and mountain trails, including trail access, and Boulder Events for Boulder County Parks and Open Space Talks and Hikes, Boulder Mountain Parks and Open Space Talks and Hikes and other events.