"PANEL 1 TITLE: KREMMLING
Auspiciously located at the junction of Muddy Creek and the Blue and Colorado Rivers, present-day Kremmling never lacked for through traffic, but it did lack for gold—and, thus, for settlers. Hopeful town builders laid out a plat here as early as 1860, but the site remained vacant until 1884, when Rudolph Kremmling built a dry-goods store to serve the area’s ranchers. As the twentieth century dawned, the town still had just two hundred residents. Then the Denver Northwestern & Pacific Railroad arrived and Kremmling boomed at long last, becoming the major shipping and supply center for one of Colorado’s most prosperous cattle regions. The surrounding national forests supported a brisk logging industry from the 1940s through the 1990s; today those lands draw thousands of outdoor recreationists. But Kremmling remains a ranching town, true to its origins.
Middle Park Ranching
Middle Park had few minerals to mine, but its grasses were golden. Cattlemen began fattening their herds here in the late 1800s, and by the mid-twentieth century this region had earned nationwide fame for its prize-winning Herefords. Local rancher Fred DeBerard won so many stock-show medals that a 1951 publication named him “Stockman of the Century.” But as the area’s family ranches passed into their third and fourth generations, they came under increasing pressure from growth and development. Much of their water was diverted to Denver and other Front Range cities, and the growth of skiing and summer tourism produced a construction boom that chewed up acres of former pasture. The grass that remains, though, is as golden as ever, and the cattle continue to win prizes.
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Images on this panel:
Largest Photo: Kremmling aerial view
(Caption) Kremmling, 1907
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photo: Middle Park Fair
(Caption) The vigor of the local ranching industry brought prosperity—and the Middle Park Fair—to Kremmling. Established in 1912, the fair is still held every summer.
Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Photo: Bar Lazy J Ranch
(Caption) Two enduring aspects of Middle Park's economy—tourism and ranching—blend at the Bar Lazy J Guest Ranch near Parshall (about twelve miles east of here). Opened in 1912, it is the oldest continuously operating guest ranch in Colorado.
Courtesy Grand County Historical Association
Photo: Haying at DeBerard's Ranch
(Caption) Realizing that cattle could starve during winters because heavy snow covered the nutritious grasses, pioneer Middle Park ranchers grew supplemental hay during the region's short summers. Here hay is cut on Fred DeBerard's ranch in 1949.
Courtesy Grand County Historical Association
PANEL 2 TITLE: MIDDLE PARK MEDICINE
For early settlers in these isolated mountains, medicine was generally a do-it-yourself business. The nearest doctor often lived a day’s travel or more away, leaving patients to depend on folk treatments, Indian herbal cures, and the unsure prescriptions of part-time practitioners. A trained physician named Susan Anderson (“Doc Susie”) served mainly eastern Middle Park, but doctors were only sporadically available in the western part of the region until 1926, when Dr. Archer Sudan moved to Kremmling; Sudan spent the next twenty years practicing out of a makeshift hospital in his home. Though far more effective than the frontier healers he replaced, Sudan still had no remedy for the region’s daunting distances, substandard equipment, and isolation. Those afflictions continued to plague Middle Park until the 1973 opening of Kremmling Memorial Hospital, whose modern facilities and services at last took local medicine off the critical list.
Dr. Ernest Ceriani
“You knew if you had a crisis there was no help and no consultation.” — Dr. Ernest Ceriani
Kremmling practitioner Ernest Ceriani gave a face to rural medicine in a 1948 Life magazine article. As a photographer documented his day’s rounds, the doctor stitched up a gashed forehead, amputated a gangrenous leg, and attended the death of an elderly man. He also attempted to squeeze in some fishing in Gore Canyon, but on this afternoon, as on most, duty (in the form of an injured cowpuncher) intervened. Having grown up on a Wyoming ranch, Ceriani preferred a rural practice despite its demands. He worked with no help and little rest, calling on patients as far as eighty miles away, driving through blizzards when necessary. But in this isolated region, his presence alone could give comfort. A model of care and dedication, Dr. Ceriani retired in 1986 after forty years of service.
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Images on this panel:
Largest Photo: Dr. Ceriani walking
(Caption) More than half a century after Life magazine profiled Dr. Ernest Ceriani, the images from that article still resonate in the collective memory of the American public as the face of rural medicine.
Courtesy W. Eugene Smith/TimePix
Photo: Doc Susie
(Caption) In 1951, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Dr. Susan Anderson had delivered over half of Fraser’s 350 residents. Here, “Doc Susie” (seated at left) and a friend pose for the camera in Fraser in 1917.
Courtesy Grand County Historical Association
Photo: Dr. Sudan
(Caption) Dr. Archer Sudan came to this area in 1926 for a fishing vacation. When a local resident overheard he was a doctor, she ushered him off to a family medical emergency. The emergency cut short his vacation but began a twenty-year career serving the citizens of Kremmling and Middle Park.
Courtesy Mrs. Jean Sudan
PANEL 3 TITLE: WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
“I often wonder how long all the game is going to last,” wrote market hunter Frank Mayer in 1878. “You can’t have wild animals and civilization side by side.”
Permanent settlement had only recently come to this area, ushered in by gold and silver strikes of the Breckenridge and Leadville mining districts in the early 1860s, and by the renewed spirit of exploration and settlement following the Civil War. Wildlife was still abundant. Mayer, who made his living supplying the boomtowns with meat, found such easy pickings that he grew weary of the killing, skinning, and cleaning. Over time such unregulated activity, coupled with the growing loss of habitat, decimated animal populations. By the early 1900s species such as elk, antelope, deer, and bighorn sheep had almost vanished from the region.
They returned in the twentieth century, thanks largely to both private and public efforts. Through the establishment of restricted hunting seasons, the stocking of streams and lakes, the protection and restoration of habitat, and the occasional reintroduction of wildlife, many of the species that Frank Mayer found here in 1878 are strong and healthy once again. It would please him, no doubt, to see that civilization and animals can live side by side. But there is an ongoing tension in the relationship: It will take careful planning, conservation, and management to keep wildlife wild and ensure the continued health of our animal populations.
PANEL 4 TITLE: KREMMLING COUNTRY
Regional map containing the following text about sites of historical interest:
The Ute and Arapaho Indians visited Hot Sulphur Springs for its medicinal qualities. The area later developed into a favorite summer spot for tourists. The Grand County Museum, located in town, features permanent and rotating exhibits on life in the nineteenth century west.
As the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide separates the waters flowing to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
The colorful history of a mining boomtown is on exhibit at the Hahn’s Peak Village and Schoolhouse.
For centuries, more than one hundred mineral hot springs attracted Utes and Arapahos. The town of Steamboat Springs is named for a particularly noisy spring that sounded to early settlers like a Mississippi River steamboat. Today, visitors can soak in the pools at the Steamboat Springs Health and Recreation Center or take a walking tour of the natural mineral hot springs that dot the town.
The coal mining heritage of the Yampa valley is displayed for visitors at the Mount Harris Pulloff, east of Hayden on U.S. 40. More than one-third of Colorado’s power is generated from coal-fueled plants in Moffat and Routt Counties.
Colorado River Headwaters Scenic and Historic Byway follows the Colorado River from its source in the Rocky Mountains, beginning at Grand Lake, Colorado's largest natural lake, through the spectacular Upper Gore Canyon.
Cutting through the second oldest national forest in the United States, the Flat Top Trail Scenic and Historic Byway winds through productive timber and ranch lands. The route offers some of the state's most dramatic vistas.
After a 1919 visit to Trapper’s Lake, Forest Service official Arthur Carhart argued that the area’s intrinsic value outweighed the financial value of its resources. His vision gave birth to the American Wilderness System—areas without roads, buildings, or economic development. Trapper’s Lake became the nation’s first wilderness preserve, the first of more than five hundred areas set aside over the next eighty years.
Evidence of prehistoric peoples along the Colorado River was discovered during construction of the Windy Gap. Interpretive signs at the dam provide information on these archeological sites.
Created in 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park preserves the ecology, wildlife, and scenery of the Rocky Mountains. Trail Ridge Road, finished in 1932, is the highest continuously paved mountain road in North America, peaking at 12,183 feet.
Cozens Ranch between Winter Park and Fraser was built by William Zanes Cozens in 1874. The ranch served as a stage stop and post office on the Georgetown-Hot Sulphur Springs route. Today the museum interprets the history of the Fraser Valley and Middle Park." (from (
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