99 Years Ago
On this day in 1927, the structures of the Castle Rock Resort burned. The resort opened, with minimal facilities, in 1908. It reached its highest point in 1913, when owner Charles Quaintance built a railway to bring visitors to the mountain top. He had a dance hall with fine hardwood floors and spectacular views of the mountains and plains, as well as a separate viewing tower to provide even better views.
The resort did well for the first year or two and sputtered along for a few more years. Quaintance later leased the buildings to another business, which operated as the Lava Lane dance hall. The Denver region Ku Klux Klan held meetings there. Overall, the place became a seedy and undesirable neighbor for the Golden community.
On Sunday morning, August 7, 1927, the alarm was raised that the vacant resort buildings were on fire. Golden greeted the news with a collective shrug. There was no water source available at the site, so the Fire Department made no attempt to get to the mountaintop. As Bill Coors recalled in 1982, "I could hear the jubilant shouts coming from the town as that resented structure on Castle Rock burned to the ground."
The fire was spectacular as the flames and black smoke from the burning buildings were visible for miles.
Colorado Transcript – August 11, 1927
The fire was believed to be arson–whether the arson was started by locals who didn’t like having the Klan and other undesirables up there we will never know. The official account that appeared in the Transcript said that they found four “youths” in the vicinity, and the sheriff had them in custody. You might expect that this would be a big event, and the local paper would follow the status of that case, but after one brief article in the Transcript the following Thursday, it was never mentioned again.
