Holzwarth Historic Site

John Holzwarth was a German immigrant who kept a saloon in Denver until Colorado went dry in 1916. In 1917 he and his wife, Sophia, filed on 160 acres under the Homestead Act on the west bank of the young Colorado River in the Kawuneeche Valley, below the Never Summer Mountains, and built a cabin. They meant to raise cattle. A wagon accident in 1919 left him walking with a brace and a cane, and the guests who were already finding their way over the new Fall River Road decided the rest.

From 1919 the Holzwarth Trout Lodge put up fishermen and hunters in a cluster of log cabins, and Sophia fed them German cooking from the kitchen of the first homestead cabin, still called the Mama Cabin. Their son Johnnie built the business out across the river into the larger Never Summer Ranch, eventually more than 800 acres, with a lodge, dining hall and barn, and ran it until 1973.

In 1974 the family sold to The Nature Conservancy, which passed the land to Rocky Mountain National Park the next year. The park took down the Never Summer Ranch buildings and kept the original trout-lodge cabins, the taxidermy shop and the icehouse, which stand as they did in the 1920s at the end of a level half-mile walk from the road. On the way in is the cabin of Joseph Fleshuts, who claimed land here in 1902 and was gone by 1911. Moose browse the willows along the river most days.