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Postcard photo of Crest House on Mount Evans, 1941.

Crest House, completed in the fall of 1941 at a cost of $50,000, sits atop Mount Evans at an altitude of  14,260 feet.  This photo postcard was postmarked on August 3, 1941, and appears to capture construction work in its final stages. 

From the spot where Crest House sits, one can take in a 360-degree view which, with good visibility, encompasses Denver and the eastern plains, the front range, Pike Peaks, Longs Peak, the Sangre de Cristo range, the Mount of the Holy Cross, Kenosha Pass and Trail Ridge Road.  “Crest House” was the name submitted by Mayme D. Taylor of Denver, who was declared the winner of a 1941 contest to name the structure.  She received a $25.00 prize for doing so.    

Snow keeps the Mount Evans Highway and Scenic Byway (Colorado Highway 5) closed most of the year, but thousands of motorists drive to the peak in the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day, weather permitting.    That there are cold, snowy days there in summer is evidenced by the written message on the back of another Crest House photo postcard in my collection.   “Nelson,” the sender of the card, writes to Elizabeth Brown in Virginia: “We were in a real blizzard up here.  The snow froze on my windshield.  Slept under two blankets.  My hands are so cold can hardly write.”  The Summit Mt. Evans postmark date on his postcard is August 24, 1947. 

The architect who designed Crest House was Edwin A. Francis of Denver, whose design of the structure has been called “futuristic” and “organic.”   Francis incorporated engineering features into the structure which would allow the structure to withstand the extreme high altitude weather conditions at the peak.  The two-floored steel and glass viewing structure you see at the left end of the building was referred to as the “star platform,” and when seen from above, would have revealed a partial star shape.  Round light fixtures reportedly represented the moon.  The rock facing of Crest House came from the light-gray and pink granite rocks which festoon the peak, and the arches were intended  to visually blend the structure  into the mountain summit. The front of Crest House faces west-northwest.   Thus, the “star platform” overlooked Denver and the plains to the east and the front range to the north. 

Financing for the construction of Crest House was provided by Thayer Tutt, who owned the Broadmoor Hotel, and Quigg Newton, future mayor of Denver. 

Crest House was first envisioned by the person who built it, a prolific builder and contractor named Justus “Gus” Roehling.  During his sixty-year career, Roehling built scores of homes, many in Kittredge and Evergreen, Colorado.  (Kittredge lies about 9 miles west of the Red Rocks Amphitheater, and Evergreen sits about 2.5 miles west and south of Kittredge.)  He also built several churches, including the original Christ the King Church in Evergreen, built in 1935 (razed in 1971 when a new church was built), and Our Lady of the Mountains church in Estes Park, which opened in 1949.   

Roehling was born in Oelshausen, Germany, in 1895 and emigrated to the United States on the ship Amerika in 1914, landing in Boston.   He came to Colorado in 1919 with the hope of curing his tuberculosis, a disease which had claimed the lives of both his parents.  After a short stint in Denver as a carpenter, he moved to Evergreen, probably to seek the higher altitude thought to be conducive to slowing  the disease. 

Around 1923, Roehling made the acquaintance of Charles Kittredge, a developer and investor.  Kittredge and his wife, Anna, were platting out land along Bear Creek for a trout-fishing resort on the site of what had been a cattle ranch.    At this point in time, Charles had already developed Denver’s Montclair and Park Hill neighborhoods.    Roehling’s carpentry skills, which included an apprenticeship as a wagon-maker in Germany, must have impressed  Kittredge, for he put Roehling to work building what would become the town of Kittredge. Roehling started off by building a model show home for prospective customers and went on to build many Craftsman style bungalows in Kittredge.  He also built a home for himself there.

Roehling’s inspiration for what would become Crest House came while visiting Mount Evans in the late 1920’s with his girlfriend (and soon to be wife), Edith Pierce. He was so taken by their experience on the mountain that a dream germinated within him of building a “castle in the sky” there.  He even wrote a poem about it, titled “My Castle in the Sky:”

On a beautiful summer day

I drove to my shining mountains,

My best girl beside me.

We drove over rocky, winding roads,

Through rain, mist, and fog.

As we came to the very top

The sun came out in all its glory.

Then we walked hand in hand

And came to a rocky promontory

A place for my dream castle in the sky.

(Justus and Edith, a Nebraskan, were married in Arvada in 1928.  They had at least one child, a son.)

Roehling and his crew had to have been hearty souls to meet the challenges of terrain, weather and altitude thrown at them by Mount Evans.  During construction, Roehling and his crew lived in tents.  With the exception of rocks, all supplies and materials had to be brought up the mountain.  And the cold, damp conditions made for a much longer curing time for concrete.    Construction began in the spring of 1940, and Roehling and his crew managed to work until fall of that year before leaving the site, to return in the spring of the following year.         

Roehling would have certainly welcomed the use of natural, or field, stone, for the Crest House facade.  It was a common element for the homes and other buildings he built in Kittredge and Evergreen. His work reflected an “old world” approach, which relied not only on the use of natural stone, but incorporated other elements that could be described as European in nature, such as dormers, heavy wooden doors, high, sharply peaked roofs, and highly detailed window and door designs.  The home Roehling built for himself in Kittredge reflects some aspects of this approach, as can be seen in his use of stone, the concave curve of the roof and sharp gables.  To view a 2012 image of his home, go to www.google.com/maps  and enter the Kittredge address 26257 Columbine. I believe the image shows the back of the house, so it is a limited portrait of his work.

The completed Crest House contained a snack bar and souvenir shop, comprising what was said at the time to be the highest-altitude business in the United States.  The snack bar was known for its fried doughnuts, coffee and hot chocolate.  There were living quarters for the employees, usually students, who worked there in the open summer months.   Two Denver students interviewed in 1949 by the Denver Post about their summer employment there reported sleeping in bunk beds and taking oven-hot rocks to bed with them to keep them warm at night.   On at least one occasion they discovered the long johns they had hung out to dry had been iced up by a  snowstorm.    Working at the top of a mountain is a bad place to be in a lightning storm.  This was evident in the case of William Gross, a plumber from Golden, who was doing plumbing work at the Crest House.  While working there one day, a bolt of lightning hit the building and traveled down a sewer pipe, knocking him unconscious.  He didn’t regain consciousness until after he’d been transported to Idaho Springs for emergency treatment. 

Everything changed for the Crest House on September 1, 1979, when a propane leak caused a fire that gutted the structure.  Following a $450,000 insurance settlement in 1984, the U.S. Forest Service decided to refashion the remains into a shelter and viewing platform, with space provided for interpretive information about the surrounding area.  Here’s the link to a photo on Flickr showing what Crest House looked like back in 2011:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/6196419749 .  When you’re at the Flickr site, if you click on the “<” at the left of the screen or the “>” at the right of the screen, you’ll see some other views of the place. 

There is also a Library of Congress website containing 16 black-and-white photos which, with two exceptions, show the Crest House ruins in their post-fire state, but clearly prior to their refurbishment by the Forest Service:  https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.co0198.photos/?sp=1 .  The exceptions are photos #15 and #16, which show the Crest House in its prime.  Photo #16 looks back at the parking area and shows more of the two-story “star platform” than is visible in the postcard photo. 

Justus Roehling died in Evergreen on August 15, 1984, at the age of 89.  Edith died in 1962 at the age of 59 or 60.  Their remains are interred at the Bear Creek Cemetery in Evergreen.

REFERENCES:

  • Colorado State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1868-1990 at www.ancestry.com
  • The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction), July 15, 1941, and July 25, 1986, at www.newspapers.com  

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