Starting in the early Nineties, Marlys and I began looking for a place to build our dream home. We new it would be in the mountains somewhere and our target area at that time was Sheridan, Wyoming. We had been to the Sheridan area on a number of hang gliding trips over the years and were impressed by the Bighorn Mountains. Prices always seemed reasonable, but the mountains themselves were out of bounds because they were National Forest. Only a few "grandfathered" homestead sites were allowed. The best sites all seemed to be on the plains looking AT the mountains. Although we kept looking in the area from Buffalo, Wyoming north to the Montana border we never found the "right spot". We started to branch out in the mid-nineties into the Billings and Red Lodge areas, never considering Colorado thinking the prices were out of our range due to the influx of people, Denver, the resorts, etc.
In October of 1995, we did a Fall tour loop through Colorado, just because we had not been there in a while, other then hang gliding/paragliding, since we lived in Omaha during the early and mid-eighties. Our route to Telluride took us through Canon City and Salida in the south central part of the state, an area we had never really explored. We drove through on a Sunday morning and were seeing a part of the state that was not as commercialized as Summit and Eagle counties. The Sangres and Collegiate Ranges, the highest in the state, were dusted in white and surrounded, by what I have come to know as “parks” i.e. South Park. Even though this was post 1993 (the obsessive hang gliding/paragliding epoch) I still evaluated each locale based on flying potential, which was different then Marlys and Derek, who had a little broader perspective. We were impressed and even then started looking at realtor signs. We stopped at the park in Salida by the Hot Springs Pool. A place we would end up visiting a number of times since we bought the property. About 18 months later Marlys spotted a small classified ad in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune advertising land in the Rockies near Canon City. We looked up the advertiser, Land Properties, site on the Internet and a number of their developments looked promising. Marlys gave them a call and the possibilities were narrowed down to Autumn Creek. I had to give a presentation on the future of Internet portals (I was no Nostradamus, but at least I got the community of interest part right) at the Colorado Convention Center in April of 97. Marlys and Derek decided to come along so we could go Spring skiing at Copper. We decided to take a run down to Canon to look at Autumn Creek, but we specifically agreed to not go overboard, just look.
We hadn’t even gotten to Autumn Creek only to the gravel pit pass when Marlys and I started to exchange looks indicating that this was looking like an area that had what we wanted.
After walking a number of parcels, we handed over a check and set a closing date.
So much for not going over board.
The next day Marlys broke her wrist on the first run of the day at Copper (so much for Spring skiing) and we headed for home.
Our next visit as a family was in June. It was alternating between raining and snowing. The roads were cut, but not graveled and we drove in a rented truck camper.
Autumn Creek was very much in development, but it was great.
I still remember sitting in the camper on a rainy evening listening to the Rockies game, out of Denver, on the radio (pre-DTV) and feeling that we were Coloradans. Although we weren’t “natives”, we had chosen to be here.
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