Gary Newman, Peak to Peak. Peaceful Valley lies alongside the Middle St. Vrain Creek on the Peak to Peak Highway, in western Boulder County. Its geology never supported the gold rush that came to Ward, which is seven miles south of the valley. However, the mining events of the Ward area gold rush created transportation networks that put Peaceful Valley, once referred to as Wildcat Gulch, in the cross hairs of what would become a significant travel and tourism industry. I spent fifty years of vacation and work time in that valley and the nearby Indian Peaks Wilderness.  My family bought properties there in the 1950s, and I have fond memories of time spent in Peaceful Valley.

Ward’s 1860 gold rush drew hundreds of miners. Within forty years, its population exceeded two thousand and once included famous residents Horace and Baby Doe Tabor. This population explosion required a network of road building up and down steep grades at high elevations. By the 1870s, roads connected Ward with Jamestown, Raymond and Allen’s Park. One of these wagon roads descended a steep slope into Wildcat Gulch (Peaceful Valley) and was used as a mail delivery route to Allen’s Park.  In 1954, I spent my first visit to Peaceful Valley vacationing with my family in the “Rock House” at the bottom of that descending road. The house still stands along the same, now paved, road that continues downstream to Raymond.

In the 1880s, this valley was homesteaded by ranchers whose enterprises failed when they did not renew their claims. However, one homesteader, Ruben Bliss, purchased over one hundred sixty acres of valley land from the Federal Government for $16.75. He, his wife, and six children lived there for five years, satisfying homestead requirements, but in 1908, he sold all of the land. John and Mildred Roberts purchased the Bliss Homestead for $1,343.40. 

This Texas couple saw the land as an ideal location for building a summer resort. The Roberts’ dream was based on the fact that The Colorado and Northwestern Railroad had completed a narrow-gauge line to a terminus in the mining town of Ward in 1898. The train brought not only prospectors to the gold field, it also included tourists on what was called the “Switzerland Trail of America.” Stagecoaches from Ward began transporting visitors along the recently constructed wagon roads to various hotels and lodges that sprang up around the spectacular scenery in western Boulder County.  The Roberts’ dream was prophetic.  

Events in and around Estes Park proved fateful for Peaceful Valley. By 1916, the Roberts were running The Peaceful Valley Company as a summer resort with cabins for guests, barns for livestock and advertising great scenery, good fishing, relief from heat, mail delivery and phone service. But the establishment of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915, the building of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park in 1909 and the emergence of the powerful Stanley Steamer Mountain Wagon, greatly aided interest in traveling from Ward to Estes Park. The 825 Steamer Wagon outperformed internal combustion cars in all aspects of mountain travel. Stopping at The Peaceful Valley Resort while motoring from the Ward train station en route to Estes Park in one of these powerful steamers was good business for the Roberts. A round-trip train/steamer fare from Boulder to Peaceful Valley was four dollars in 1916. 

With such promising prospects for the Roberts, The Peaceful Valley Company still fell on hard times. The Four Mile Canyon Flood of July 31, 1919 wiped out bridges and tracks on the Switzerland Trail; the structures were not replaced. Cost for maintaining the buildings and for operating the summer resort, plus the loss of traffic due to the Four Mile Flood, forced the Roberts to sell plots of their property. Then falling behind on taxes and creditor debts, the Roberts lost their remaining land to foreclosure. In 1927, it was sold at public auction. The new owners from Longmont hired Ed Sanders to manage the resort as The Forest Inn Hotel in 1928. The hotel featured a general store, a gasoline pump serving improved gasoline engine cars, and rental cabins. During the 1930s, the effects of the Great Depression slowed tourism business and the property sold again in 1944, to Karl Riehle, who renamed it The Peaceful Valley Ranch Resort. This resort was known for its weekly dances with live orchestras, folk dancing and square dancing.

Austrian-born Karl Boehm arrived at The Peaceful Valley Ranch Resort in the winter of 1953.  He had served in the Army and the State Department in Germany and was a ski instructor for the 10th Mountain Division. Looking to build an alpine inn on the eastern slope of the Rockies close to Denver, Boehm saw Peaceful Valley as an ideal spot. He was surprised to discover that the resort’s owner, Karl Riehle, and he had both served in the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale. The prospect of buying an already established resort seemed too expensive and out of reach, but after working at the resort along with his wife, Mable and their two children, Boehm learned that Riehle had taken a job in Boulder and was interested in selling the ranch. Then Karl found a willing corporate partner, Floyd Parker, a square dance caller in Allen’s Park. Together they were able to purchase the property.

I knew the Boehms from that point until their deaths, Karl’s in 1993 and Mabel’s in 2018. Karl was a tall, lean man who walked with a giant stride ducking beneath low hanging doorways of the newly named Peaceful Valley Guest Lodge and Dude Ranch. His physique was of a prototypical Austrian mountaineer. He often gave rock climbing demonstrations at Elephant Rock just down the road from the lodge. I watched him balance himself on narrow beams while he constructed a roof over the lodge’s new swimming pool. 

I have encountered him in the Indian Peaks Wilderness giving ecology talks to his guests. I worked for the Boehms as a 16-year-old. I stayed in my parent’s cabin, The Dew Drop Inn, within walking distance of lodge. Kitchen work is where I spent much time with the lodge’s head chef, Mabel Boehm. She worked twelve-hour days preparing meals for 150 to 200 guests and staff for over 41 years. During the weeks of June, her guests included girls’ camping clubs such as the Bluebirds, Campfire Girls and Horizon Clubs. These two-week summer programs were a staple feature of Peaceful Valley well into the 1970’s. Mabel and Karl also served as school teachers during the fledgling years of their enterprise.  They taught in public schools in Ward and Longmont. Another Peaceful Valley staple event was horseback riding.  A daily stream of trail riders passed my family’s cabin en route to the Old Bunce School Road and into the upper reaches of the Middle St. Vrain watershed. Over their growing-up years at the Dew Drop Inn, my daughters eagerly greeted this parade of happy guests mounted on dutiful animals. Horses were stabled next to the lodge, and for many years, guests viewed them performing their tasks inside a large arena barn. Karl took pride in displaying Arabian breeds there. Square Dance Camps became a summertime feature during the months of July and August. As many as twenty-one couples booked stays in the main lodge and outlying cabins at any one time. Dressed in western style attire, they coupled their days with horseback riding and steak fries and enjoyed dancing at night.

Karl’s father, Paul F. Boehm, passed away in 1964.  I met him a year earlier while I worked at the lodge, and I watched the progress of a Boehm dream come to fruition over the following thirteen years.  This was the completion in 1976 of a memorial chapel in honor of the senior Boehm.  The chapel featured an Austrian onion style dome imported from Europe.  It is quite visible today from Highway 72 as it sits on a towering perch overlooking Peaceful Valley with full view of Sawtooth Peak and Buchanan Pass to the west.  Many solemn services have been held here over the years, and many couples found it a perfect site for reciting wedding vows, including those of my brother and his wife.

In 1988, the guest ranch changed hands again. This time, Richard and Karen Ganns developed the land into a year-round dude ranch, hosting conferences and weddings. Adding to the valley’s historical tourism attraction, the ranch became The Peaceful Valley Resort and Conference Center featuring amenities like book clubs, dinner clubs, Zumba classes, art shows and theater productions. Richard’s untimely death in a plane crash in 2004 brought new challenges to the ranch. Karen Gann and her children kept the enterprise active until new ownerships have recently taken over. For over a century, Peaceful Valley has provided services and recreation for generations of families. In May of this year it closed for redevelopment and renovation again, under new ownership and new management.  As in the past, these enterprising attempts to keep up with changing times are efforts to keep alive the long-held tradition of tourism in western Boulder County, at Peaceful Valley.

My thanks to Silvia Pettem, whose book The Peaceful Valley Story Fulfillment of a Dream provided me with historical information in this article.

(Originally published in the June 27, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)