Two years after her father died, long-time Nederland resident and teacher Lee Tillotson started opening boxes that were left to her. Inside, Lee found treasures that she yearned to share: journals, photos, and letters from her great-aunt Eleanor Parkaer during the summer 90 years ago when she worked as a dining room girl in Rocky Mountain National Park. Publishing a book came to mind, but as much as she loved researching her great-aunt’s history, she needed help if she was going to turn all that material into a book.

She roped her friend, former neighbor, and author Kay Turnbaugh into her project, and the two of them recently published Rocky Mountain National Park Dining Room Girl: The Summer of 1926 at the Horseshoe Inn.

The Horseshoe Inn no longer exists, and neither do almost all the lodges and inns Lee’s great-aunt Eleanor Parker visited during her summer in the Park. Eleanor’s daily letters home describe a Park that has almost been forgotten: moonlight horseback rides, dancing in the casinos at the other lodges (casinos had nothing to do with gambling back then), hiking to familiar sights and landmarks in the Park, and working at one of the Park’s famous lodges.

Although other books have been published about the long-gone lodges, Eleanor had a unique perspective on the lives of the people who operated the lodges and their guests who came from around the world.

Lee and Kay mined Eleanor’s letters and photographs, adding their own research and the perspective of time to create this unique history of Rocky Mountain National Park, which is celebrating 100 years this September. They traced her trip on the train west from Fayette, Iowa, where she had just graduated from college, to work at the Horseshoe Inn. This was the heyday of the romantic and majestic Horseshoe Inn, a rustic but genteel lodge situated in a grand meadow framed by towering peaks. Five years later, in 1931, the Horseshoe Inn was the first of the park‚Äôs lodges to disappear in the effort to bring the park back to its natural state.

Eleanor wrote home almost every day, and her mother carefully transcribed her daughters letters into a school composition book that was passed down through her family to finally land in Lee’s lap. These letters and the journal are the basis of this lively account of the young adventurer.

It was a very rainy summer, and the Horseshoe Inn suffered a loss of business, which meant that Eleanor had time off to explore, and she did her best to pack it all in during her short summer in the Park. While researching the book, Lee discovered that Eleanor, her favorite great-aunt, visited relatives at their Eldora cabin during that summer, and Lee is now connecting with those relatives and having fun matching family pictures to locations in and around Eldora. The Klemme Open Space on Tennessee Mountain was made possible by these relatives.

It took Lee almost a year to transcribe her great-aunt’s and great-grandmother’s journals and letters. “I hope future generations continue to learn how to read cursive writing, as historical documents are in cursive. And I hope the book will inspire others to pass on family journals, letters, and photos,” Lee says. “Exploring family and local history is like a fun treasure hunt. We all have something interesting to find.”

History also is a passion for Kay. After she retired from publishing The Mountain-Ear newspaper for 27 years, she has written several books, including Around Nederland, a history of the Nederland area in photos, and The Last of the Wild West Cowgirls, an award-winning biography of Nederland’s infamous Goldie Griffith Cameron, who not only owned restaurants in Nederland, but also rode bucking broncos for Buffalo Bill, acted in the early cowboy movies, and was one of the country’s first female professional athletes. For Kay, helping her hiking buddy Lee with research and and writing about her adventurous great-aunt was right up her trail.

Kay also wrote The Mountain Pine Beetle--Tiny but Mighty, a kid’s book about the “adventurous” pine beetle, and helped author and Nederland resident Alan Apt with the second edition of Afoot & Afield: Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain National Park, 184 Spectacular Outings in the Colorado Rockies.

Kay and Lee have lived in Nederland for 45 years, some of those as neighbors.

Lee is an avid outdoorswoman, a trait she must have inherited from her great-aunt Eleanor. In 1980 Lee was the leader of a Student Conservation Association group that repaired the trail Eleanor rode to Fern Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park in 1926. She taught physical education at Nederland High School in the 1970s and then at Nederland Elementary school, retiring in 2003. She is a Nordic ski instructor at Eldora and teaches local history in her women’s program classes.

Together, the authors have published an historical snowshoe guide at Eldora Ski Area and lead tours once a year for Boulder History Museum.  Self guided tours of the Eldora historical snowshoe trail are also available with an Eldora Nordic Center trail pass.

Rocky Mountain National Park Dining Room Girl: The Summer of 1926 at the Horseshoe Inn is available in Nederland at Nature’s Own, Ace Hardware, and the Nederland Library.

There will be a book signing and presentation at the Estes Park Museum on Thursday, September 24 at 1:30 and at the Nederland Community Library on Thursday, Oct. 15, time to be announced.