Shelter Magazine summer 2014

shelter home & living in the

western san juans

Mad Dog Ranch high Desert Retreat

Mesker Treasure Trove

TRIASSIC REMAKES RECYCLING Penthouse Surprise

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summer 2014

Published by The Watch

Naturally insightful...

John John BBurchmore urchmore W H E N T H E M O U N TA I N S A R E Y O U R D E S T I N Y

John Burchmore ASPENTELLURIDE.COM

(970) 708-0667 JOHN@ASPENTELLURIDE.COM

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SPECIE MESA RANCH

Acres with Lake Frontage, running water and huge views! Rare offering of a sizeable parcel with mature aspens, meadows and a lake. Year round creek borders the property to the east. This fine site is bordered by large ranches and offers supreme privacy and natural beauty.

Offered for $599,000 TellurideFineProperties.com

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S A N J UA N R A N C H

his spectacular 150 acre ranch sits on top of San Juan Ranch overlooking the Sneffel’s Range across to the Cimarrons. The home is clean and roughed in with the exterior at approximately 75% complete and the interior is at approximately 35% complete with the walls framed. Many details to share. Please inquire about access and information.

Currently offered at $1,975,000

For the

ongoing collection of life.

RIVERFRONT PROPERT Y

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are offering of almost a half acre on the San Miguel River. The property is located just off Fall Creek Road on the south side of the river with easy access from Hwy 62 and little influence. Bright sunny lot as it is in the gap from Fall Creek which opens up to the south for great solar exposure. Views of the red rock cliffs and the sounds river.

Offered at $249,000

Telluride

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SKI ACCESS L O T

ot 359–115 Snowfield Drive. This ski access lot in Mountain Village has all of the attributes of the finest home sites, views, ski access, privacy and more. The Seller has done much preparation to build and will negotiate distibution of soils reports, topos, tree survey and more available to prospective buyer. The house plans are complete and ready for approvals.

Offered for $695,000

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VILLAS AT TRIS TANT

he Villas at Tristant have been attractive alternatives to single family homes since the development was constructed in 2009. This unit has the finest ski access adjacent to the trail and ski bridge. It also offers unobstructed views of the San Sophias. The four bedroom floor plan has been the most sought after of the various layouts of these fine properties.

Now listed for $1,650,000

T

SUNSHINE LODGE

his is the finest fractional property on the market today. A large log and stone single family home on the ski area offering 1/10th ownership shares. This particular listing has the 25th and 50th weeks fixed annually and also rotational selection of other weeks and space available usage as well.

Offered at $215,000

Y

ou Can Do It ...

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1 • Lot 13, West Hastings Mesa End-of-the-road 50 acres, located on a ridgeline with 300º views, backs to meadows & an aspen forest. $625,000

3 • 207 East Gregory Avenue, Telluride Overlooking Bear Creek, the town & ski area, this 5,000 sqft aspened lot affords 1 or 2 homesites. $1,250,000

5 • 22031 Highway 145, Fall Creek The San Miguel River flows steps from this well-kept 3-bed home with manicured lawns and gardens. $599,000

2 • 105 Wapiti, Ski Ranches This 3-bed home plus 3-bed income unit is set on 2.2 acres of aspen with a peaceful trout pond. $895,000

4 • Lot 201A Benchmark Drive, Mountain Village This sunny, almost half-acre parcel with views of the San Sophias & ski area has easy access to skiing. $895,000

6 • Camel’s Garden 301, Telluride A rare opportunity to own right at the gondola, this 2-bed has tasteful finishes and beautiful east views. $949,000

Polly Leach-Lychee, Broker/Owner | plychee@tellurideproperties.com | 970.369.5333, Direct 237 South Oak Street | Telluride, Colorado 81435 I tellurideproperties.com

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ree Yourself!

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1 • 325 North Spruce Street, Telluride A convenient sunnyside location with sweeping views characterize this 4-bed plus 1-bed lockoff home. $2,000,000

3 • 300 Old Butterfly Road, Matterhorn On a 35-acre knoll with 270º views & high-end finishes, this 6,000 sqft retreat provides limitless recreation. $2,995,000

2 • Dalwhinnie, Ridgway A stately 7,730 sqft home spread among 60+ acres along the Uncompahgre River. Stable & water rights. call for price

4 • 329 North Fir Street, Telluride A 6-bed, Victorian home of the highest craftsmanship on a corner lot. Close to Main Street. $3,200,000

Polly Leach-Lychee, Broker/Owner | plychee@tellurideproperties.com | 970.369.5333, Direct 237 South Oak Street | Telluride, Colorado 81435 I tellurideproperties.com

Helpful Resources for Those Looking for Information About Energy Efficient Green Homes

www.Ecobroker.com The premier green destination for real estate professionals, their associates, and their clients.

www.ColoradoGreenBuildingGuild.org The website for a nonprofit trade organization representing a wide range of green building leaders.

www.EcoactionPartners.org Telluride’s homegrown nonprofit, funded by the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village and San Miguel County, whose mission “is to inspire, initiate and support collaborative community actions that enhance resilient economic, environmental and social systems.

www.EnergyStar.gov A U.S. EPA program that helps businesses and individuals save money and protect our climate through superior energy efficiency.

www.BuildingGreen.com An online ecostore.

This information is brought to you by George Harvey of The Harvey Team.

George is a certified EcoBroker, which means he has completed EcoBroker course work in energy efficiency, green building, and smart growth. “ Put Our Real Estate Networks to Work for You”

THE

George R. Harvey, Jr. Owner / Broker

TEAM

970-729-0111

www.TheHarveyTeam.net George@TheHarveyTeam.net

Features

Products

contents

Love Objects

By Marta Tarbell

A Telluride Couple’s High Desert Retreat

By Jessica Newens

Over a five-year period starting in 1995, Telluride architect Cal Wilbourne and interior designer Martha Gearty built a desert home completely on their own, using little more than their own manpower and two boat winches.

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From a legendary Marshall sound system that delivers the latest music-listening technology to a modern update on your grandmother’s cabbage shredder to upcycled bistro chairs, these “Love Objects” rule.

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GREEN HOUSE Back to the Drawing Board

By Marta Tarbell

A Treasure Trove of Rock History

By Marta Tarbell

Joe Cocker’s Mad Dog Ranch – and the English country house at the center of its 243 acres in the North Fork Valley – is for sale.

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Moab’s Triassic Industries was founded 11 years ago by Scott Anderson, a 40-something climber, arborist, conservationist, woodworker and designer. His beautiful, one-of-a-kind, mostly utilitarian products saved 750,000 pounds of tree trimmings from the landfill last year.

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Room With a View

By Leslie Vreeland

This surprising penthouse on Montrose’s Main Street is a warm, compelling space with soaring windows that bring the outside in and supply the action.

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ARTIST/ARTISAN Steeled for Success

By Samantha Wright

Jeff Skoloda is a master at taking rigid lengths of steel and “cold-bending” them into organic curvilinear creations that seethe with creative energy.

OURAY A MECCA FOR LOVERS OF MESKERS

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By Samantha Tisdel Wright

The Mesker mass-produced, prefabricated iron storefronts made on either side of the Mississipi had special appeal in the 1880s in towns like Ouray “that were literally growing overnight.”

42 A 19th Century Cabin Comes to Life on Wilson Mesa

By Marta Tarbell

The single-story cabin at 9,000 ft. on Wilson Mesa looks like an essential part of the landscape. Its oldgrowth white oak wood has a history all its own.

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Food EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

By Seth Cagin

Seth Cagin’s homemade pasta is the perfect foil for a simple, locally-sourced dinner of creamed spinach and King Bolete mushrooms.

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Sefra Maples

interior design + consulting

luxury interior design

970.708.7855 seframaplesdesign.com

editor’s letter

live in a construction zone in east Telluride, which is good for the people who are working again, but sends me to the office earlier than usual on work days.

One of the three new houses replacing the home of my longtime neighbors – our children grew up together – has taken more than a month to be dismantled and moved to a new location on the west end of town.

It’s been sobering to watch a home with a history – history in Telluride is relative, since I watched this particular house being built in the early 1990s – get chopped in half and moved in pieces elsewhere, but I look forward to seeing it in its new incarnation.

Building something new out of something old is a theme running through this edition of Shelter. On Wilson Mesa, master woodworker/ homebuilder Kenny Mihelich created a cabin to last through the ages from carefully recycled white oak logs. The logs traveled from Ohio (a dismantled dogtrot farmhouse, built in 1860) to an antique lumber supplier in Bozeman, Mont., and finally to San Miguel County, for a carefully built cabin that looks like it’s been there since its logs were still trees in the Southeastern U.S. old-growth forest they once came from (page 51).

In Moab, Scott Anderson’s Triassic Industries is changing the way his fans view recycling. Concerned by the cost of sending tree-trimming waste to landfill, industrial climber-turned-arborist Anderson started carving one-of-a-kind cooking spoons – “for beer money” – that sold so well at Moab’s Farmers Market he starting selling them on his website. He now runs the biggest manufacturing firm in Moab, last year saving an estimated 750,000 pounds of tree waste from landfill (page 57), and making a range of beautiful products using wood, stone and recycled materials that embrace the Wabi-sabi aesthetic, with its central tenet of the acceptance of transience and imperfection.

Who knew that Ouray is the best town west of the Mississippi for studying Mesker storefronts, the decorative, galvanized sheet metal building facades manufactured in the 1880s? “Your order would come in by train, get hauled up the hill from the depot to your premises in a wagon, and a few days later, your plain brick or wooden box of a building would be transformed,” writes Ouray native Samantha Tisdel Wright, “into an enviably elegant edifice, at roughly one fifth the cost of a masonry facade.” (Page 42).

Even this issue’s “Love Objects” (page 12) has old-new items that range from Studio Frank’s “upcycled” 1930s-style French bistro chair to the Customs House’s Wabi-sabi-influenced dishware to Azadi Rugs’ striking new Euro Collection of rugs based on designs inspired by brilliantly engineered Moorish buildings and interiors dating back to the 700s.

And finally, dinner last night – on old recipe made to perfection, using locally-gathered King Boletes, locally-grown spinach, butter, cream and fresh pasta – made memorable, thanks to my husband’s new pasta maker (page 72).

The old is made new. It’s the cycle of life – and of the objects, structures and sustenance we all need for comfort, as we move through it.

Marta Tarbell

shelter Publisher Seth Cagin Editor Marta Tarbell Copy Editors Leslie Vreeland, Jessica Newens Creative Director Barbara Kondracki GRAPHIC Designer Nate Moore Photo Editor Brett Schreckengost Contributors Seth Cagin, Jessica Newens, Marta Tarbell, Leslie Vreeland, Samantha Tisdel Wright Advertising Director Heather Zeilman Advertising Sales Anna Korn, Tammy Kulpa Circulation Scott Nuechterlein

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On the Cover

Pam and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dog Ranch, outside Crawford.

(Photo by Brett Schreckengost) Shelter is published twice a year by Watch Newspapers, a publication of The Slope, LLC, P.O. Box 2042, Telluride, Colorado 81435.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

To advertise in Shelter, call 970.728.4496.

For editorial inquiries, please email editor@watchnewspapers.com.

Offices 125 W. Pacific Ave., Suite B2, Telluride, Colorado 171 N. Cora St., Ridgway, Colorado 14 S. Uncompahgre Ave., Montrose, Colorado

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contributors

Leslie Vreeland traveled to Montrose this issue. “I didn’t expect to find a loft there,” she said. “Looking at Main Street from above gave the city a different feel.” Vreeland has lived in Ridgway nearly three years. “You’d think I’d be completely familiar with this region by now,” she said, “but that’s different from truly knowing a place. I live in a perpetual state of wonder: no longer surprised at being surprised.”

Jessica Newens loves to write when she’s not being a mom or commuting back and forth between her home in Norwood and her art school job in Telluride. Cal Wilbourne’s and Martha Gearty’s house near Redvale has always caught her eye.

When she finally got a glimpse inside, she was impressed by the home’s simple yet clever design, particularly its second floor living space – completely open on all sides with views stretching 50 miles in every direction.

Samantha Tisdel Wright writes and raises two redheaded children with her husband in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, dividing her time between Silverton and Ouray.

Like metal artist Jeff Skoloda, she marvels at the swift passage of time when one is caught in the tumble of family, livelihood, craft and art. Learning about Ouray’s treasure trove of historic buildings with galvanized Mesker iron fronts was like digging up a chest of pirate’s booty that you never realized was in your own backyard.

Photographer Brett Schreckengost’s work for Shelter has taken him into countless living spaces, where he is always on the lookout for inspiring ideas to take home.

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Seth Cagin grew up cooking dinner for his younger brother and sister; his cooking has now expanded from being a chore into a joyful experience.

He looks forward to another bountiful mushroom harvest this summer in the western San Juans.

products

love objects CIRCLES AND SQUARES The square, rectangle and horseshoe scallop play a key role in Moorish design. Azadi Rug’s new Euro Collection is an homage to the Moors, whose geometric architectural and interior marvels flourished on Europe’s Iberian Peninsula (and nearby islands in the Mediterranean) in the 700s, and can still be seen there today. Azadi Rugs, 217 W. Main St., Telluride

THE NEW OLD

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Exquisite form meets down-to-earth function in this tribute to the French bistro chairs of the 1930s. Made from refurbished materials, it’s perfect indoors and out. The design team at Studio Frank says, “We love having these chairs around for extra seating at a barbecue, or as a stunning accent on an outdoor patio.” Studio Frank, 495 So. Townsend Ave., Telluride

JUST PICKLED Watch food writer Gus Jarvis swears by this Weston Products Cabbage Shredder and Board, when it comes to prepping cabbage for the sauerkraut now bubbling its way to the finish in his fermentation crock. It shreds any leafy vegetables into thin strips with three super-sharp stainless steel blades, and disassembles for easy clean-up. Order it at Timberline Ace Hardware, 200 E. Colorado

BABY BOBCATS “In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” says artist Jim Eppler, quoting the writer Henry Beston. Eppler grew up observing animals. He excels at catching the birds and animals of the Southwest in motion, with beautiful details and patina. Lustre Gallery, 171. S. Pine St., Telluride

IN A WORD “Cycle.” “Breathe.” “Pedal.” “Trek.” California artist Rae Dunn has infused her clay products with the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi, an ancient aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism, for nearly two decades. Sometimes described as beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete,” Wabi-sabi leads to imperfect glazes that, coupled with crisp typography and prints, creates a sense of balance between natural and contemporary. Find her mugs at Customs House, 135 W. Pacific Ave., Telluride

GOING NATURE ONE BETTER Furniture-maker Adam Duncan uses traditional joinery methods instead of nails, because nails will eventually pop out. In this cedar coffee table, Duncan joined two pieces of cedar, cut lengthwise from one tree, with exotic wenge wood reinforcements. He used the South African wood in the shape of bows on the tabletop, and squares at its seams. A+Y Gallery, 513 E. Main St., Montrose

ROCK ON More than half a century ago, Marshall Amplification’s Jim Marshall began building amps in the back of his West London music shop for clients like Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, The Who, Led Zeppelin, AD/DC…. Still the gold standard in rock ‘n’ roll today, Marshall’s Stanmore speaker now wirelessly powers music on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with its trademark Big Sound stage performance, classic design (including analog interaction knobs for custom control).

Connect wirelessly via Bluetooth or use the RCA input for a record player or simply connect an iOS device to the 3.5 mm auxiliary port using the included coil cord. It’s even compatible with Apple TV and other devices that have an optical output.

The HUB, 220 W. Main Street, Telluride

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145 RUSSELL DRIVE

SUNNYSIDE RESERVE

RICO RIVER FRONTAGE

With 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and 2 powder rooms, this custom, fully furnished Mountain Village Golf Course home represents the very best of what the region has to offer in terms of views, location, finish and quality. Offered at $4,295,000

Sunnyside Reserve is a private estate located adjacent to the border of Sunnyside Ranch. Parcel A features a spectacular 6,120 sq ft custom home set on 7.04 acres with five bedrooms and a separate caretaker apartment. Offered at $3,990,000

VILLAS AT TRISTANT 217

FALL CREEK COMPOUND

SUNNYSIDE RANCH

Spacious and fully-furnished four-bedroom residence with vaulted ceiling, open floor plan and fantastic views, in a very desirable location just a short walk from the Mountain Village core with prime ski-in, skiout access. Offered at $1,500,000

Situated on nearly 4 private acres, this property features a 3-bedroom main home with separate guest cabin, and a 3-car garage with adjacent 1,200 square foot workshop, making it perfectly suited for the local artisan. Offered at $780,000

Rare opportunity! 70 acres overlooking the Valley Floor with 360-degree views of Telluride’s signature peaks. These two 35acre lots are ideally located just ten minutes from Telluride and the Mountain Village on paved roads. Offered at $5,500,000

Located along the San Juan Skyway in the heart of the Southern Rockies, this rare 22+-acre river-front property lies along both sides of the Dolores River just 25 minutes south of the world class ski resort of Telluride, Colorado. Offered at $895,000

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A Telluride Couple’s

High Desert Retreat

By Jessica Newens | photos by brett schreckengost

Over a five-year period starting in 1995, Telluride architect Cal Wilbourne and interior designer Martha Gearty built a desert home completely on their own, using little more than their own manpower and two boat winches.

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Sitting tall amongst the juniper and piñon trees, the home’s 360-degree views stretch 50 miles in every direction.

erched high amongst the sagebrush, junipers and piñons that color the rural Western Colorado landscape surrounding Redvale is a unique metal-andglass structure that serves as a second home to one longtime Telluride couple.

Completely off the grid and with 360-degree views toward the La Sal Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, and the Wilsons and Sneffels ranges, this high desert retreat receives near constant use by its owners, architect Cal Wilbourne and his wife, interior-designer Martha Gearty, who would perhaps make it their full time residence if they weren’t such avid skiers.

Over a five-year period starting in 1995, Wilbourne and Gearty built the house completely on their own, using little more than their own manpower and two boat winches.

“We did everything but the sheetrock,” says Wilbourne. “I refuse to do sheetrock.”

It was after a river trip on the Dolores River that the couple first thought about purchasing land in the area. The pristine red-rock beauty of the Dolores was still fresh in their thoughts as they drove home through Big Gypsum Valley, admiring the sunset and views into Disappointment Valley. >>>

feature

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“That was literally the first time I was out that far West,” recalls Gearty, who had moved to Telluride just a few years before. “We looked at the property for the fun of it,” after seeing an advertisement in a Norwood realty office. “We wanted a place where we could see the sunset, but also afford.”

Although they snatched up the 40 acres almost impulsively, the property’s isolation would complicate their building process.

There are no nearby power lines, so solar power was the only option. They learned from neighbors that wells in the area were not good, so hauling and storing water would be required. And Montrose County would neither allow compost toilets nor a grey-water system on the property, necessitating the installation of a septic system and leach field.

“It was a big decision,” says Wilbourne, but they went for it nonetheless.

Using an old Airstream trailer as interim living quarters, the couple got to work installing the infrastructure for the property, including a 2,100 gallon underground cistern, a shed to house equipment and batteries and a large solar panel.

“This is when solar power was still in its infancy,” says Wilbourne. “I did all the wiring – lightning rods and everything.

We had horrendous thunderstorms back when we were building,” and even lost some electrical equipment after a direct strike to the shed.

When it came time to start building the house, it was clear that the couple should capitalize on the views. So Wilbourne designed a tall structure on a modest footprint – 1,250 square feet of living space on three stories, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a laundry room on the ground floor; an open living room, kitchen and covered deck on the second floor; and a master bedroom, half bath and open deck on the top floor.

Six eight-by-eight Douglas fir columns set on concrete piers form the structure’s first and second floors. Above that, beams set atop the columns create the foundation for the third floor. “The configuration allows the second floor to be completely open on all sides, where there are essentially walls of glass from floor to ceiling,” says Wilbourne.

In place of windows, Wilbourne used Low-E sliding glass doors – a more economical way to incorporate as much glass as possible and establish unobstructed views of Lone Cone and the San Juan Mountains to the south and east, and Mt. Peale and the Uncompahgre Plateau to

Clockwise from left: A birdseye view of the kitchen and living room; Martha Gearty sits on the second floor landing; a retrofitted stock tank-turned-hot tub offers soaking with a view; an eight-panel tracking solar array powers the home’s TV, computers and stereo system; native piñon, juniper and sagebrush landscaping.

the north and west. “We wanted as much view and openness as possible,” says Gearty. “We see 50 miles in all directions.

On a really clear day, in the morning, you can actually see the Cimarrons.”

What’s especially impressive about Wilbourne’s and Gearty’s home is that they built it with almost no help from other people, and few outside resources. “The fun part was how we took boat winches and moved them up the house as we built it. We used them to move materials and raise up the walls and trusses,” explains Wilbourne. “Nobody fell,” he adds.

“That was the good thing.”

The house was designed so the couple could easily shut off the power and walk away until their next visit. “Basically, we built in a lot of redundancy” into the home’s systems, says Wilbourne. Propane heaters in several rooms have their own pilot lights and thermostats, acting as a safety measure during the cold winter months.

A gas-powered Thelin stove in the living room has a manual ignition. And the refrigerator is propane, as is the converted stock tank-turned-hot tub on the deck.

To cool the house during the hot summer months, Wilbourne developed a convection system to keep air moving up through the house like a chimney. Upper windows contain removable screened louvers that, when left open, draw air up through the house and to the outside. “It’s a way of cooling the house without fans,” says Wilbourne. “It works perfectly.”

Other details of the house reveal thriftiness and a clean and simple sensibility.

The flooring is cork; the vertical grain fir cabinets in the kitchen and master bedroom are a design leftover from one of Gearty’s kitchen design projects, built using leftover wood; and the two recycled plywood decks are lined with pig fencing from a farm and supply store. Wilbourne made the recycled Douglas fir kitchen counter top, and also designed the staircase, which is made from angle iron, pipe railing and wire mesh fabricated by Telluride Gravel. The siding on the house is corrugated metal, requiring no maintenance and excellent weather protection.

“We’re very happy we made the building out of metal,” says Wilbourne.

Scattered throughout the home are antiques from Gearty’s ancestors; plus a 1950s-era oak parquet dining set that once belonged to her parents. One of the downstairs bedroom walls displays a collection of large radio-controlled planes assembled by Wilbourne – a hobby left over from his childhood. >>>

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Thunderstorms, Drought and Bounty

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Between 1995 and 2000, working every weekend between ski seasons, the couple toiled through rainstorms, wind and hot sun to finish the house. As they observed thunderstorms, they grew to understand their patterns. “The storm always had to come through one little notch in the southwest horizon” to become a threat, explains Wilbourne. When that occurred, they knew they needed to quickly cover things up and head inside.

Around the time the couple finished the house in 2000, a serious drought set in. Gone were the rains that had once led them to consider constructing a rain catchment system. In 2002, the Burn Canyon Fire became a serious threat to their home. “It ran six miles in one hour, directly at us,” remembers Wilbourne. They watched the fire as it grew, witnessing trees explode and huge plumes of smoke until they were told to evacuate. The two recall how odd it felt to drive east toward their condo in Telluride amidst the chaos of horse trailers and pickup trucks heading west to Naturita, where an evacuation center was set up.

In more recent years, “the summers haven’t been quite so hot,” says Wilbourne. “It’s been very tolerable.”

In the beginning, they tried to grow native grasses, but found too much water was required for the plants to take root.

Over time, they re-vegetated areas damaged during construction with small native trees, bushes and flowering plants.

During the growing season, with a 400-gallon water tank on his truck, Wilbourne makes three or four trips to a local water filling station each month to top off his cistern. The couple’s water demand increased six years ago, when he decided to attempt a garden. Wilbourne now maintains a large vegetable garden in several raised beds, which, even during the couple’s absence, maintains itself quite successfully, thanks to shade cloth, drip tape and timers.

Reflecting on their past 22 years cultivating this desert home away from home, Wilbourne recalls a bad dream he once had. “I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare that we had built the house on the wrong lot,” he says. Startled, all he could think at the time was, “Oh, I can’t possibly do it all over again!”

“It was tough,” says Wilbourne of their long and ambitious undertaking. “But it was a really great experience.”

Clockwise from top left: Wilbourne’s handbuilt, radio-controlled planes; half-height storage cabinets in the master bedroom preserve the view; the cozy living room; a 50s-era parquet dining table allows full-view dining; the second-floor living space is completely open, thanks to sliding glass doors; the driveway and a view of Lone Cone; Desert four o’clocks add color.

garden

Gardening

In the High Destert

By Jessica Newens

oth weather- and water-wise, Cal Wilbourne’s and Martha Gearty’s Redvale retreat, elevation 5,900 ft., has its challenges.

But eight years after moving into the house the couple built in Redvale, Wilbourne found that “for some reason, I decided I wanted to try a garden.”

Wilbourne, originally from York, Pa., grew up gardening. “I’d help my grandmother in her garden. That got me started,” he says. “I used to dig the ground and plant with her.

Then, when my family moved near an uncle, I helped garden an acre of land.”

But while gardening back East, where water is plentiful, and coaxing a seed to grow can seem almost effortless (thanks to high humidity and warm nighttime temperatures), high-desert gardening is a whole different ball game.

“It’s tough to grow here,” admits Wilbourne.

He has, nonetheless, developed effective ways to conquer the critters, the wind and the searing sun, and he uses water wisely.

To deter the rabbits, he installed fencing (“our deer leave” for higher ground in the summer, he explains, so rabbits are the main intruders). He built several raised beds and filled them with topsoil, amending the dirt with lots of compost and mulch acquired from a composting facility in Grand Junction.

“It’s been a process. Over the years I’ve added more and more compost, and the soil has gotten a lot better,” he says. Key to its improvement: “I’ve gotten the pH – the alkalinity-down.” he explains.

In his first year of high-desert gardening, Wilbourne bought transplants. “That was probably one of my best years for tomatoes,” he says. “Now I start seeds inside, using selfwatering trays.”

After several years of trial and error, Wilbourne now successfully grows a large variety of vegetables: squash (butternut, acorn, yellow, zucchini); eggplant, string beans, serrano and jalapeno peppers, carrots, radishes, beets, rutabaga, onions, tomatillos, cucumbers, mixed lettuces, kale, chard, aru-

Even in his absence, Cal Wilbourne’s desert garden thrives thanks to raised beds, rabbit fencing, drip tape, timers and shade cloth.

(Photo by Brett Schreckengost)

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gula and spinach.

“I grow New Zealand spinach. It loves the heat; it’s almost like a weed,” he says.

And while Wilbourne has had no luck with cherry tomatoes, he does grow Early Girl, Roma, Brandywine and a variety of heirlooms. He also plants lots of herbs, especially basil.

Wilbourne typically plants his starts outside during the third week in May, covering his crops with hoops and white cover cloth to help keep them warm, moist and protected from the spring winds. He also uses drip tape on timers for regular watering and suspends shade cloth several feet above each bed to help protect plants from the searing desert sun. Wilbourne’s garden is impressively selfsustaining, given the couple’s frequent and extended trips back to Telluride.

Two years in, Wilbourne had such an abundant harvest, he started canning. Although he was apprehensive, he figured if his grandmother, mother and aunt were canners, he ought to give it a try.

“When you get into this canning business, you get really scared,” says Wilbourne, noting the precise temperatures and cooking times required for safe canning, and the stern warnings against experimentation.

Once he mastered the process, Wilbourne became a devoted fan of all types of food preservation – water-bath canning, steampressure canning, and freezing in particular.

Always testing new recipes, his repertoire includes jalapeno jelly, salsas (fire-roasted salsa is a favorite), soup and jam made from zucchini, green tomato jelly, pickles, tapenade and pesto. He also makes Palisade peach butter, and makes a point of freezing ears of Olathe Sweet Corn, as well as a number of vegetables from his garden.

“It’s tough being a gardener,” says Wilbourne. “It’s not an easy chore.”

But he’s clearly smitten with it, from the meditative joy of caring for plants to the thrill of filling his pantry with delicious, homegrown foods that he and Gearty can share, year-round.

Inviting

A home that welcomes you, an extended invitation encouraging you beyond its entryway into unique rooms, passageways and outdoor spaces.

It draws you in, insisting on relaxation and repose while gently suggesting you be inspired.

Search for your own “inviting� at telluridesothebysrealty.com 970.728.1404

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MUST-SEE PROPERTIES IN THE TOWN OF TELLURIDE

300 ELKS PARK

Penthouse, 300 W. Colorado Perched over the charming, historic Town of Telluride, this peerless 4-bedroom penthouse boasts sweeping 360-degree views of arguably the world’s most magnificent box canyon. Conceived by Alan Wanzenberg Architect and Design, New York, and built by Fortenberry and Ricks Construction, Telluride, this 6,000-plus square foot property encompasses the building’s entire top floor.

The quality, design, and location are second to none — humbled only, if at all, by the majesty of the mountain peaks that fill its vistas. There’s simply no other place like it. MLS No. 29257. Call for price.

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868 BUTCHER CREEK Butcher Creek Subdivision

With 4 full bedrooms, including an expansive master bedroom comprising the entire top level, this home offers a surprising amount of living space in the Town of Telluride. A well-designed and comfortable living room and dining area, plus a gourmet kitchen, provide for easy entertaining.

Abundant sun, expansive Valley Floor and ski area views, and several decks on the north and south sides make this one of the best values in the under $2 million market in the Town of Telluride.

Partially furnished. MLS No. 31461.

$1,900,000

Decades of Professional Experience.

For more information, please contact

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mike@telluridemvp.com

MIKE WENTWORTH www.telluridemvp.com

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BOX 2587 / TELLURIDE, CO 81435 / PHONE: 970.728.3137 / CELL: 970.209.0515 / FAX: 970.728.0373

Nevasca Realty, Inc. | 300 West Colorado Ave. | Telluride, CO 81435 | telluridebroker@gmail.com | nevasca.com | (970)728-4454

Pandora Ave, Telluride

114 Arizona Dr, Mtn. Village

There are not many homes which offer direct spectacular 6976 square foot lot with perfect Bear Creek views and good Ingram waterfall views. Zoning for up to 2 units. Homes have been built to the East and West of property. This is a rare find in a very nice neighborhood.

Call Erik Fallenius

With five bedrooms and 4 baths, this 3253 square foot golf course property is a well valued Mountain Village home. Situated on a .72 acre lot, with superb views of several 13,000 foot peaks rising above the Telluride valley, the home has quick access into Telluride and the core of Mountain Village. A very livable floor plan, a lovely yard area, and lots of sunshine.

Call Erik Fallenius

$2,200,000

$1,450,000

410 Depot Ave, Telluride

433 W Galena Ave, Telluride

410 Depot is one of the very few fortunate properties in Telluride that are located along the San Miguel river within just a few steps of the Gondola. At 4125 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 5 baths, this attractive three story residence is a superb family home.

Call Erik Fallenius

This solid family home in the heart of historic Telluride, is located within walking distance of both schools, downtown, and about five blocks from the Gondola. A brick built home with 5 bedrooms, five and a half baths, includes a garage, elevator, a wine room, plaster walls, mahogany floors, and a hot tub on the patio bordering a small pleasant private park.

Call Erik Fallenius

$4,750,000

$2,300,000

Erik Fallenius Owner/Managing Broker 970.728.4454

Castlewood, Mountain Village

Fashioned after the great American Lodges of the early 1900’s, Castlewood is like no other, grand in every way. Perfectly located with stunning views and ideal ski access. With 9 bedrooms and 10 baths, the estate is 3 separate, yet interconnected wings, perfect for multi-generational families, and large groups who want to gather together, yet also require privacy. A theatre, hot tub grotto, 2000 bottle wine cellar, game room, provide much for everyone. Castlewood is unique in the world.

Call Erik Fallenius.

Irreplaceable at $8,499,000

Ptarmigan Ranch, Wilson Mesa An equestrian paradise in a rich landscape, 72 acres of fabulous alpine meadow and forest trails, rare high country irrigated pasture and timberland. Adjacent to national forest yet located a mere 20 minutes from Telluride at the base of Wilson Peak, this fully improved and subdivided ranch tract has solid driveways, extensive stone work and landscaping, with utilities installed to two incredible home sites.

Call Erik Fallenius.

35.18 acres - $795,000 / 37.44 acres - $795,000

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A Treasure Trove of

Rock History ‘HE’S JUST A REAL COUNTRY BOY,’ SAYS JOE COCKER’S WIFE, PAM

B y Ma r t a Ta r b e l l | p h o t o s b y B r e t t Sc h r e ck e n g o s t

Mad Dog Ranch – and the English country house at the center of its 243 acres – is for sale.

Tucked into the North Fork Valley, just two hours from the cos-

mopolitan towns of Aspen and Telluride, outside the tiny town of Crawford, it’s the longtime residence of rock ‘n’ roll legend Joe Cocker and his wife, Pam. >>>

The couple, deeply entrenched in the community where they’ve lived for two decades, plan to build a smaller home nearby once their current home sells (the asking price is $7.85 million, turnkey; $7 million, unfurnished).

30 “It takes a lot of maintenance to keep up,” says Pam Cocker, of the nearly 16,000 sq. ft. house at the heart of the sprawling property they found in 1991 and bought a year later, planning to build what they thought would be a second home.

Visitors to the main house first pass the gatehouse, one of several outbuildings (which include a horse barn, equipment shed and two greenhouses, where Joe grows tomatoes, as did his father, in Sheffield, England).

A pack of dogs gathers at the driveway entrance, and housekeeper Jane Seitz distributes biscuits from a garbage-can container to quiet them.

“Yeah, well, it’s called Mad Dog Ranch,” she says drily, letting Joe and Pam’s labradoodle, Fernie, into the house through the well-used mudroom.

Longtime family friend Bob Pennetta says it was only after Joe lamented – “Isn’t there a place that I could go, where nobody would bother me, and be a regular guy?” >>>

Joe and Pam Cocker, in the entryway to their home (clockwise from top, left); Fernie, their labradoodle, outside the turreted entryway; the living room, with matching pink sofas, a baby grand, and a great view of the West Elks.

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A curving staircase leads upstairs to five bedrooms from the marble-floored entryway.

– that he steered the couple to Crawford in 1991. On an early visit, Pennetta recalls, Cocker bought “a late 70s Bronco and cut the seats out” in back, installing a cage for his dogs in their stead.

“Pam wouldn’t let him bring it up to the house,” Pennetta, a regular at Cocker’s weekly snooker games, says of the oddlooking vehicle.

‘With a Little Help From My Friends’

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On the ground floor, at the seven-bedroom, ten-bath home’s westernmost end, plaques and photos on the game-room walls reveal Cocker’s snooker games to be something of a local legend. “The Rules of the Game of Snooker,” framed on the wall next to the ornate green-felted billiards table, holds a place of honor at the center of a needlepoint wall hanging of heraldic symbols and coats of arms. A backlit display case offers a further glimpse into the life of this Yorkshire boy whose first gig came in his early teens singing with his older brother’s skittle band. As the gritty-voiced gas-pipefitter-turned-bluesman/cover artist, who turned 70 in May, told the London Daily Mail last year, “Making pop records gets harder at my age. I was never much of a songwriter, so I rely on other people. A lot of the tracks I get sent are too teen-oriented. The sexual lyrics are too much for me, because I need to make my songs believable.” Bobbleheads of the four Beatles are on the top shelf; Cocker, a favored interpreter of their music, released “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” before their softer version, making it his own. Cocker’s radically rearranged rendition of “With a Little Help From My Friends” hit number one in 1968 in the United Kingdom, eventually landing him in the Grammy Hall of Fame. He sang it again in 1969; it was perhaps the most memorable of the five songs he performed at Woodstock.

Busts of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Schubert are displayed below, alongside an

array of mementos, from toy soldiers to daggers to miniature sailing ships. A Swarovski crystal rose is in front of the Order of the British Empire Cocker received in 2007 on the Queen’s Birthday, for his “services to music.” The bar at the opposite end of the room displays commemorative bottles (a “Welcome to the Millennium” cabernet the couple sent to friends at the turn of the century, a “Blues Passions de Cognac Specially Bottled for Joe Cocker” from his 2005 performance at the Afro-American blues festival held annually in

Bobblehead Beatles have a place of honor in the game-room display cabinet.hides a 42-inch flat-screen TV.

the Cognac region of France) as well as collectible skull-shaped tequila and vodka bottles, and a skull-stamped martini shaker and glasses (Cocker has been sober for 13 years).

A pair of reading glasses rests in an ashtray.

Next up, heading south from the billiards room, is the library/music/television room, where Pam, a devotee of movies and longform television dramas (both Joe and Pam were astonished by an eye-popping episode from Game of Thrones), spends a lot of time.

It’s here that the curious visitor will probably linger longest, its tall bookshelves home to an inconceivable range of printed information, from Stieg Larson’s “Millennium Series” to the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette (edited by her descendants) to Dennis Hopper Photos 61-67. A commemorative Woodstock

book-and-memento set is on the coffee table.

But the true showpieces in this room are the quartet of sculptures by outsider artist William Potts, the grandson of a former slave and son of a janitor who, using found and scrap materials including lumber and paint, has been carving full-time since his 1978 retirement from the U.S. Army. The Cockers picked up their first Potts piece – “I Got a Woman,” with its not-quite-life-sized Ray Charles – at an Aspen gallery, acquiring two more sculptures (James Brown and Stevie Wonder) before commissioning the Denverbased artist to create a sculpture of Cocker.

Cocker likes to spend time in the morning room, at the southern end of this seven-bedroom, ten-bath house, where toys for the dogs spill out from a basket next to the fireplace (“I wish they’d pick up after themselves,” Seitz mock-grumbles).

“He’s an incredible history buff ” with an especially deep knowledge of World War I and II history, says Pennetta. The living and dining rooms are relatively formal, bracketed by tall, north-facing windows looking out past the house-length deck to the West Elk mountains. A baronial dining room table that seats 20 is flanked by floral paintings and a china cabinet on one wall, an Oriental-style screen depicting a herd of horses by Robert Crowder on the other. Bright pink sofas dominate the living room, Larousse Gastronomique and an art book simply titled Paris on the coffee table between them.

‘A Real Country Boy’ The turreted entryway with a fleur-delis-patterned marble floor divides the two wings on the ground floor, and leads to the grand staircase heading up to the second floor. It’s home to three guest rooms (floral-, organic- and Oriental-themed), a room each for Simon and Eva, Pam Cocker’s 13and 15-year-old grandchildren (who “spend the whole summer with us,” Pam says), the Cockers’ bedroom suite and Pam’s office.

Back on the ground floor, in the home’s >>>

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The billiards table in the game room (above), where Joe hosts weekly snooker games; the baronial dining room seats 20 (below).

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well-used mudroom (just off the kitchen), steps lead downstairs into the basement, its walls lined with pictures of Cocker over the years and too many gold and platinum albums to count. There’s a desk each for Pam and her assistant, who run the Cocker Kids’ Foundation from here. “Any child, age birth to 21, can apply if they need funding to help them realize some kind of dream,” Pam says of the nonprofit community foundation that’s given more than $1 million to children in the North Fork Valley for everything from glasses and braces to band uniforms to scholarships for summer camp.

“If every cat that was in that position became that involved just in their own community,” Pennetta says, standing in front of a photograph of Great Britain’s Prince Charles bestowing the OPE on Cocker, “it would change the whole world.”

It’s a full life, and the couple relish their privacy – and relative anonymity (Pennetta tells a story about being chastised by his daughter for not greeting Joe, wearing sweatpants and rubber Wellies, at the local City Market. “I didn’t recognize him,” he says, with a wide grin).

“Joe and I really love cold weather and snow,” Pam says, and after living in the twobedroom gatehouse that first year on the ranch, Pam says, “We just loved it, and we decided to make it our permanent residence.”

To that end, they sold their house in Santa Barbara, Calif., and in 1994 moved into the big house.

“He’s just a real country boy,” she says of her husband of nearly three decades, who turned 70 in May. “He loves to be able to walk out the door and take a threemile hike and not see anyone.

“We both feel really most at home out in the country, with our dogs.”

When Mad Dog Ranch sells, she says, they’ll build a smaller house nearby. “We’re not in any hurry, really,” says Pam. “We kind of expect to have a couple more years in this house, but whatever happens, happens.”

It’s an English country house, with beautiful English gardens; Joe grows tomatoes, as well, in a greenhouse on the property.

# HOMES SOLD TELLURIDE MTN. VILLAGE $5.5 MILLION OR ABOVE SINCE 2008

P E R F O R M A N C E . S E R V I C E . R E S U LT S.

LEE ROUFA, LEADING SALES IN MOUNTAIN VILLAGE SINCE 2008

Lee has outsold any broker in the Telluride Mtn. Village luxury home market.

Of the 14 homes sold; Lee has sold 4 of them. *realtor B has sold the same house twice.

2014 RECORD SALE A

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60 acre mountaintop parcel Generations of Experie

Why adjacent to ski resort. 10.8 million

H

– highest price/acre ever sold HISTORY

A C Q U I S I T I O N S • S A L E S • E S TAT E M A N A G E M E N T • VAC AT I O N R E N TA L S In 1980, Ed, Lee and the family moved to Telluride, our home and refuge.

PROFICIENCY is a result of good design. At our father-son powerhouse, boutique firm it comes down to servicing one client at a time.

L E E R O U FA

E D R O U FA

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IN

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Room with a View A

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ca p ac i o u s

On a recent Thursday afternoon, the Montrose street fair known as Main in Motion was getting ready to open. A local band did their best Metallica imitation as a warmup; the lead singer adjusted his Ray-Bans.

Though Main Street is closed to everything but foot traffic and vendors during street fairs these summer months, there is an unlikely place right in the midst of it where you can take in all the bustle from a level above.

That place is The Loft.

The first surprise is that it exists at all.

Through a discreet doorway tucked next to DeVinny Jewelers on 3rd Street, and up a flight of stairs, here is an aerie directly over-

l o f t

By Leslie Vreeland

a b o v e

looking Main Street, with 12-ft. ceilings and a series of eight pillar-like windows facing out at the goings-on. The first thing you see when you enter the loft – in addition to that row of tall windows – is the kitchen. This one, with its fire-engine red stove, exposed brick wall and warm wood table, encourages conviviality. You immediately think: this is a place I would like to cook in. Until you spot the leather barstools lined up against the granite counter and your mind completes the thought: “Or have a drink while someone else cooks.”

It is a warm, compelling space. The soaring windows bring the outside in and supply the action. On this particular afternoon,

Ma i n

St .

the windows were open, and the sounds of Main Street wafted up (they could have been closed, and the scene would have played out in peaceful pantomime). “There’s good parade-watching at Christmas,” said The Loft’s owner, Jennifer Prock, nodding toward the window. Or, for that matter, on the Fourth of July. There is also good street sightseeing on summer Thursdays, like tonight. Or all year long, during the First Friday art stroll.

A year and a half ago, Prock and her husband, who own the Kinikin Elk Ranch 10 miles southeast of town, were looking for an investment property. They were about to purchase a small house when her mother, a

Warm colors, burnished surfaces and exposed brick, below, give The Loft’s spacious, high-ceilinged kitchen a cozy feel. (Photo by Eric Ming)

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M o n t r o s e Montrose real-estate agent, insisted Jennifer first take a look at this apartment, which was up for auction. She did, and two days later, she won it.

If the first surprise is that a loft exists above Main Street at all, the second shocker is how big the place is: the kitchen flows into a huge living room, with spacious, leather, slouch-and-settle-in seating, a prominent flat-screen TV on an exposed-brick wall, and at the end, a massive oak billiards table.

The light, and the layout, draw you in.

There are four bedrooms here, three with their own baths; the master bedroom features a jacuzzi that seats six beneath a sizable skylight. The apartment sleeps eight

l e t s

th e

o u t d o o r s

comfortably, though 10 could overnight here if they used the living room couches (and frankly, if they brought their sleeping bags, 15 or so could stay over without bumping into each other).

It is a sprawling 3,000-sq.-ft. space, and the biggest surprise lies at the end of a long hall: a home theater, with seating for 10, replete with a huge screen. “This is the only room we really changed,” Prock said. It had been “kind of a sunken room,” rather like a spare living room; she raised the top floor, and put in four stair-stepped-platforms – theater rows – leading down to the screen.

Stacks of several dozen DVDs lay on the counter above the control- equipment. It

i n

was easy to imagine the possibilities: a group of adults repairs here after dinner for a film.

Or, a group of adults sends the children here to watch a movie or cartoons in their very own theater while the grownups linger in the living room and kitchen. A room with two bunk beds is across the hall from the cinema. “Kids love it,” Prock said.

Visitor comments on the property-booking site VRBO, where Prock advertises The Loft, remark that the photos don’t do this place justice, and they are right. The feeling of openness – the soaring windows overlooking Main Street from the living room and kitchen, the high ceilings, and the fact that the place just rambles on and on – is >>>

Judicious use of lighting, above the billiards table (below, left, photo by Brett Schreckengost) and in the theater room (photo by Eric Ming).

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the chief source of its appeal. It seems an ideal hub for families to come and go from during the holidays or summer travels to the Black Canyon, or Ridgway State Park, or Ouray. It would be a perfect spot for hunters to retreat to after a day up on the Uncompahgre, or for fishermen or skiers, who could easily spread out wet gear to dry, as well as for visitors who prefer familial, atmospheric quarters to a characterless motel room on their way to and from Telluride. Also appealing are the rates, which vary, depending on the number of people (“I’m pretty flexible,” Prock said). In high season, for groups of seven or more, the tariff is $350 a night (it was $250 this

spring); for two people, the cost is $150.

Quite reasonable when you consider you can also save on restaurant costs by cooking your own meal in a lovely kitchen. On the other hand, why would you? For breakfast, Great Harvest bakery is maybe three feet away from the front door, and Daily Bread Bakery is also close by. Indeed, downtown’s dining, art galleries and shopping emporia are just steps away. “My father jokes that all we need is a bridge to take us straight over to Colorado Boy” without having to dodge traffic, Prock said, pointing out the window. The restaurant, renowned for its craft beers and artisan pizzas, lies directly across Main Street.

A look up at The Loft’s tall windows from the street below, and at one of the apartment’s several skylights (above).

A much-larger skylight, framed in wood, is directly above the hot tub. (Photos by Brett Schreckengost)

L O T S O F P E O P L E C A N D E S I G N Y O U R H O M E, LINDAL DELIVERS IT TOO!

CLASSIC

If You Go

The Loft is available to rent for parties and events as well as overnight. Prock works with a pair of local chefs to provide catering. She also rents a lodge in the middle of her ranch that accommodates 20, and The Outpost, a four-bedroom, fivebath lodge with a three-bedroom log cabin next door, located 20 minutes outside Norwood. What you are getting with all these properties is not only a place to spend the night, but local knowledge, because Jennifer Prock grew up here. If you’re wondering about where to go or what to do, ask.

For more information, visit stayandplaymontrose.com.

Dwell and Dwell Homes are registered trademarks of Dwell Media, LLC, Licensed use.

TD3-2990 Turkel Design

MODERN

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O u r a y i s a M e cca f o r H i s t o r i c M e s k e r St o r e f r o n t s B y Sa m a n t h a T i s d e l W r i g h t

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ay you were setting up shop in Ouray in the late 1880s. The silver mines in the nearby Red Mountain District were booming, and so was the town. From the cribs and dance halls on Second Avenue to the saloons, hotels, banks and dry goods stores along Main Street, commercial buildings were going up like crazy.

For a profit-minded businessman, the name of the game was to stand out from the crowd. But for those who couldn’t pay for fancy masonry or cast iron embellishments, there was an alternative: to pick up a catalogue and order a decorative, galvanized sheet metal facade from the Mesker Brothers Iron Works or George L. Mesker & Co., competing designers/manufacturers who got into the business of massproduced, prefabricated storefront components in the 1880s.

The appeal of Mesker fronts was that “they could be put up very quickly, and they were rather inexpensive,” said the nation’s leading Mesker expert, Darius Bryjka. The Meskers had special appeal “in towns [like Ouray] that were literally growing overnight.”

An order would come in by train, get hauled up the hill from the depot to its new home by wagon – and in just a few days, a plain brick or wood box of a building would be transformed into an enviably elegant edifice, at roughly one-fifth the cost of a masonry facade.

Purchasers could pick and choose from a range of cast iron and pressed metal massproduced components (including pilasters, sills, scrolls, brackets, dentils, cornices, and pediments stamped into a variety of architectural motifs) or spring for a lavish top-tobottom facade.

Mesker iron fronts were produced by the thousands at two massive manufacturing plants, run by brothers from the same family in St. Louis, Mo. and Evanston, Ill., between 1880 and 1910. Although many Mesker buildings have disappeared, some 3,500 still grace small-town main streets

across the U.S. In Colorado, there are 112 documented Meskers in 40 towns. But among Mesker enthusiasts, Ouray is a hands-down favorite, with 14 surviving examples (more than any other town in the state) – including the Wright Opera House, which has one of the earliest and best Mesker facades in the country.

In short, “West of the Mississippi, Ouray is the town to study Meskers,” Bryjka said.

A TALE OF TWO COMPANIES Why does Ouray have so many Meskers? It was mostly a matter of timing. Ouray’s boomtown years coincided with the Second Industrial Revolution and its burst of railroads, large-scale iron and steel production and widespread use of manufacturing machinery.

Along with this revolution came the new sheet metal technology. The Mesker family was at its forefront, pioneering a way to use it for mass-produced architectural ornamentation for commercial buildings, marketed through catalogues and shipped via the railroad.

The Meskers’ roots were in Cincinnati.

Family patriarch John B. Mesker, a German immigrant and Civil War veteran, was trained as a tinsmith. Through J. B. Mesker & Son, he produced stoves, copper and tin sheet-ironware, and eventually began galvanizing iron for buildings. “The business provided fertile training ground for John’s sons,” wrote Bryjka in an article about the family published by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in April 2006. Three of his sons – George, Frank and Bernard (Ben for short) – got into the family business, and in 1879 launched their own company, George L. Mesker & Co., in Evanston, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.

But soon Ben and Frank set out on their own, creating a competing company called Mesker Brothers Iron Works downriver in St. Louis. Both companies offered a combination of cast iron and galvanized sheet metal components stamped into a variety >>>

The recently renovated Scott-Humphries Building at 513 Main Street in Ouray (now home to the Buen Tiempo restaurant) has one of Ouray’s best Mesker storefronts. (Photo by Brett Shreckengost)

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of architectural elements dominated by the Classical Revival style.

To distinguish between the products of the two companies, look for the embossed cast iron column nameplates bearing the company name and foundry location (frequently placed at the base of an ornamental column on the front of the building), and for dominant design motifs (mostly on the end brackets of the top and lintel cornices).

George L. Mesker favored a “morning glory” motif, while Mesker Brothers Iron Works, influenced by the French heritage of St. Louis, embraced the “fleur-de-lis.”

The companies also produced a variety of other products, including tin ceilings, iron railings, stairs, roof cresting, ventilation grates, iron awnings, skylights, freight elevators and even prison cells.

SILVER KINGS AND RAILROAD GIANTS While the two firms ramped up production of their elegant storefronts, Ouray was in the midst of its mining heyday (peaking between 1883 and the silver crash of 1893).

Through that ten-year period, fueled by the long-awaited arrival of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in 1886, the town evolved from a haphazard mining camp into an established town and regional powerhouse, replete with beautifully crafted buildings such as the Beaumont Hotel and the Miner’s Hospital, both completed in 1887, and the Ouray County Courthouse – a publicly funded project helmed by stonemason and bricklayer Francis Carney in 1888. That same year, Ed Wright – a Canadian-born prospector who became a “gentleman of means” after striking it rich with his brother, George, in the Mt. Sneffels Mining District in the 1870s – commissioned Carney to build a massive, two-story opera house on the 400 block of Main Street in Ouray.

The brick behemoth, originally called Wright’s Hall but now more commonly

known as the Wright Opera House, boasts Ouray’s first (and by far most ornate) Mesker facade, dripping with cornices, columns, ornamental sheet metal panels and other decorative elements that encrust the entire front of the building from tip to toe.

Ornamentation details include rare arches above the upper story windows – of which there are only a half-dozen examples among the 3,500 identified Meskers nationwide.

The Wright’s facade was transported by train from the St. Louis factory to the San Juan Mountains less than a year after Mesker Brothers Iron Works filed its first patent on its products (an embossed Mesker Bros. nameplate and patent date can still be found at the base of one of the Wright’s ornamental columns today). As the story goes, Ed Wright had the opera house built at the urging of his wife, Letitia, who wanted to improve the cultural environment of Ouray for their young daughter, Irene. (In 1888, Ouray, like any mining boomtown, had plenty to offer among the less-than-virtuous attractions, down Second Street in its redlight district).

The building went up fast. Construction began in the summer of 1888, and the Wright Opera House opened on Dec. 4 with a grand benefit concert and ball to raise money for uniforms for the Ouray Magnolia Band.

Despite the Wright family’s apparent wealth and upstanding reputation, the building was not particularly well financed. Several clues – from sloppy brickwork to the lack of a central heating system and an unfinished ceiling to the celebrated Mesker facade making the big brick box appear more ostentatious than it really was – suggest it was built on the cheap, unlike Ouray’s other grand buildings of the day.

“My guess is that they ran out of money,” said Dee Williams, board president of the nonprofit organization Friends of the >>>

Experts believe that Ouray owes its Mesker concentration to the Wright Opera House, which boasts the town’s first (and by far most ornate) Mesker facade. (Photo by Brett Shreckengost)

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7 WAYS TO TELL IF YOU’VE ‘GOT MESKER’

1.

Cast iron column nameplate Bearing the company name and foundry location, these embossed nameplates are the easiest way to spot a “Mesker.”

2.

Cast iron column ornament Cast iron and steel columns offer another opportunity to identify a Mesker. While Mesker Brothers utilized only a handful of designs, George L. Mesker & Co. offered a wide array of column capitals.

3. Cornice Ornament

The end brackets of the top and lintel cornices often featured dominant design motifs such as the “fleur-de-lis” used

by Mesker Brothers and the “morning glory” by George Mesker.

4. Upper Story Columns

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A very distinctive engaged column and base design was used between each of the upper story windows, particlarly by the Mesker Brothers. The double-rosette base design is the most common and is a sure sign of a Mesker facade.

5.

Ornamental Sheet metal Panels Panels depicting the same motif usually spanned the entire width of the facade.

In some cases, courses of panels were carried to the top of the parapet, replacing the cornice altogether.

6. Window Hoods

Mesker facades were not limited to those clad entirely in sheet metal. Most of the companies’ contracts were for “brick fronts,” in which an upper story of masonry was adorned with a galvanized sheet metal cornice and structural iron window caps (now known as hoods).

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

7. Cornice Pediment

The pediment is a crowning element of the cornice, typically centered on the vertical axis of the facade.

Pediments were either triangular, rectangular or oval and often contained the original owner’s name, date of construction or both.

Identification guide courtesy of Darius Bryjka and Illinois Historic Preservation Agency

1.

Wright Opera House, which recently raised funds to purchase the building and restore it as a center for the performing arts.

When Ed Wright died several years after the building’s completion, his wife was in debt, and had to sell the building to her brother-in-law to keep it from auction.

Nevertheless, the building and its facade made a big impression on the community – so much so, Bryjka speculates, that Ouray owes its concentration of Meskers to the Wright Opera House.

“I really think it began with Wright’s Hall – it was the earliest Mesker in the town, and one of the earliest in the country,” Bryjka said. “Because the company’s name is proudly displayed on the column bases, everyone would have enquired where it came from. Having surely impressed many building owners, it can be partly credited for the large number of succeeding Mesker facades in town.”

Among those who hopped on the Mesker bandwagon in the wake of the Wright Opera House’s construction were Albert Jeffers and Henry Witterding, who in 1890 erected a two-story building at 633 Main Street that boasts another of Ouray’s premier examples of Mesker, complete with galvanized iron double-bay windows on the second floor.

“The Jeffers Building is probably one of the most unusual Meskers around,” Ouray Mesker enthusiast Tom Hillhouse said. “It’s a combination of a bunch of kits, as opposed to one particular kit.”

The Scott-Humphries Building (c. 1889), next to the Beaumont Hotel at 513 Main Street, boasts another of Ouray’s best Mesker fronts. Now home to the Buen Tiempo restaurant, and meticulously restored by Dan and Mary King (who also poured millions into renovating the Beaumont), the building boasts many ornamental elements on the ground level, and a complete second-floor sheet metal facade.

Bryjka, whose historic preservation and design consultancy firm is headquartered in Springfield, Ill., traveled hundreds of

miles to Ouray in August 2008 at the request of Hillhouse and the Ouray County Historical Society to lead a seminar on Ouray’s Meskers.

“It was an unusual request – I don’t get requests from too many other places,” Bryjka said. The Wright Opera House, now on the U.S. Register of Historic Places, was of course already on his radar.

“But I didn’t have any idea as to the other buildings. I came, and it was truly amazing, the quality and number of buildings that survive.”

Over the years, Ouray seemed to have had just the right mix of economic conditions to keep the Meskers around. After the initial flourishing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the town was never quite prosperous enough to see its historic buildings either torn down or fixed up, in the name of progress.

Then, as Ouray’s economy tilted more and more toward tourism in the latter half of the 20th century, “there was the ability, desire and necessity to keep the buildings up,” Bryjka said. “It all goes hand in hand.”

Finally, in recent decades, there has been a growing appreciation in Ouray for the value of its historic assets, culminating in the creation of the Ouray County Historical Society and the Ouray National Historic District.

THE COLOR OF MESKER Take a stroll around Ouray, and it’s easy to see from the embossed nameplates at the base of the ornamental columns that most of the Meskers here came from Mesker Brothers Iron Works of St. Louis, Missouri.

The one exception is the Powell Grocery Store, at 512 Main Street, built in 1895, which operated as a grocery store for over 40 years before housing various other enterprises, from the Zanett Brothers Hardware store to Buddy Davis Scenic Tours (Ouray’s first jeep company). This brick building, which now houses a clothing and gift store called the Rockin’ P Ranch, show>>>

A historic Mesker and Brother mail order catalog offered everything from galvanized house fronts to jail cells.

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cases Ouray’s only example of a George L. Mesker facade.

“It has a beautiful, wild color scheme,” Bryjka said. “It’s a complete feast for the eyes.”

Down the street a few blocks, the circa-1906 Faussone & Pricco building at 736 Main Street (now home to Salon Envy) has “a very sophisticated and muted color scheme of just tans,” Bryjka said. “At a quick glance, it could pass for stone decoration.”

Either approach to the color scheme is historically accurate. The Mesker brothers often spoke of how a facade could be sprinkled with sand and painted in tans or grays to mimic the local stone.

“But that is also the time period, in the 1880s, when wildly colorful schemes were apparent,” Bryjka said. “All other variables being equal, I don’t necessarily believe that one approach is more historically appropriate than the other, so long as the resulting appearance is tasteful and satisfies the design intent.”

More important than a Mesker’s color scheme is that the building owners cared enough to keep it looking nice. “What I felt I had discovered in Ouray was a town that really takes care of its buildings, and is appreciative of its heritage and architecture,” Bryjka said.

Benji Kuehling owns two historic buildings with Mesker fronts on Main Street; when he bought the Jeffers building in 1965, its front was painted white. But Kuehling, inspired by his wife, Liz, who “likes things kept looking nice,” repainted it in a more colorful “Painted Lady” style, and recently commissioned stained glass windows for the ground floor, where he runs the Columbine Rock Shop, to add to its unique historic beauty.

Maintaining the Mesker front is costly.

Three years ago, Kuehling paid a professional painter $6,500 to repaint it. But it’s worth it, he said, because “I love the building.”

Just up the sidewalk from the Jeffers Building is a finely preserved example of a Mesker pediment (c. 1900) on what is now

Duckett’s market, a building that has been in the same family for generations.

Once you get a knack for spotting Mesker embellishments, you’ll realize just how much of the stuff Ouray has. It’s on buildings up and down Main Street that may not even look particularly historic, including those that house the Outlaw, O’Brien’s Pub and Mouse’s Chocolates.

‘GOT MESKER?’ The American city with the highest concentration of Meskers is North Vernon, Ind., with 29 of the sheet metal facades.

Henderson, Ky. (just across the Ohio River from Evansville, where George L. Mesker first set up shop) is a close runner-up, with 26, and several other Indiana towns have Meskers numbering in the 20s. “Illinois, Indiana and Missouri were the top purchasing states because they were in such close proximity to the manufacturing ironworks,” Bryjka said.

Colorado is one of a handful of states in the country with over 100 documented examples of Mesker, and southwestern Colorado is particularly Mesker-rich. Bryjka’s research shows that Delta and Montrose each have nine Meskers, Durango and Salida eight apiece, Silverton seven, Rico two and Ridgway and Telluride each have one.

The galvanized iron upper story of Alamosa’s Masonic Hall (1887), by Mesker Brothers Iron Works, predates even the Wright Opera House facade, and is one of the oldest surviving examples in the country.

More Meskers are being discovered all the time, thanks to a nationwide search Bryjka initiated called “Got Mesker?” The project started in 2004 when he worked for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and has now spread across the country.

As spotters travel around and report new sightings, Bryjka catalogs them and updates his various databases, all of which are available online on his blog and website, meskerbrothers.wordpress.com.

One unique find was a “twin” to the Wright Opera House – the Grainfield

Opera House (1887) in Grainfield, Kan. “There is not a week that goes by where there aren’t new buildings being added” to the Mesker list, Bryjka marveled. “Just this morning, someone emailed me about one in Utah.” Shortly before that, a rare pairing of two side-by-side George L. Mesker and Mesker Brothers Iron Works facades were documented in Kentucky.

In early June, the number of identified Mesker storefronts across the country reached 3,500.

Bryjka is the first to admit that once you have seen that many Meskers, they start to look the same. “But the fact that they’ve kept being found, that’s what’s amazing,” he said. “Their ubiquity is what makes them fascinating. They are important be-

cause they are everywhere.”

Although the response to the Got Mesker? initiative has been phenomenal, a lot of work remains to be done “to make sure appreciation of Meskers is well understood,” Bryjka said.

Often, with the decline of America’s main streets, the problem is not so much a lack of appreciation as a lack of money.

Some communities simply don’t have the means to take care of their Meskers. “It’s not a bias – they stand side by side with other buildings that are neglected, and there is no way to provide a viable use and care for the buildings,” Bryjka said.

“We are just lucky that Ouray has the means and foresight and discipline to take care of its buildings.”

OURAY’S SURVIVING MESKERS

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EAST SIDE OF MAIN ST., SOUTH TO NORTH Original

Today

Address

1888-90 Scott-Humphries Building 1900 Hammond & Waring Grocers 1902 Orendorf Building 1890 Jeffers Building

Buen Tiempo Duckett’s Market RB Horsetraders Columbine Rock Shop

513 Main St. 621 Main St. 629 Main St. 635 Main St.

WEST SIDE OF MAIN ST., SOUTH TO NORTH Original

Today

Address

1888 Wright’s Hall 1895 Powell Grocery, 512 Main St. 1888-90 Carney Hardware 1901 Townsend/Witherspoon Building 1898 Prevost Saloon 1900 Derry Building 1908-10 Canavan Taylor/ Bonatti Building 1906 Sanitary Market 1906 Faussone & Pricco/ Cascade Grocery 1898 Columbus Building

Wright Opera House Rockin’ P Ranch Swiss Store Mouse’s Chocolates Citizens State Bank Gator Emporium Outlaw Restaurant O’Brien’s Pub Salon Envy Silver Nugget Restaurant

462 Main St. 512 Main St. 514 Main St. 520 Main St. 600 Main St. 608 Main St. 610 Main St. 726 Main St. 736 Main St. 740 Main St.

Mesker fronts can be seen on 14 historic buildings around Ouray. Most of them were manufactured by Mesker Brothers Iron Works in St. Louis. The Powell Grocery at 512 Main Street (below, now home to a gift and clothing store called Rockin P Ranch) is the only example of a George L. Mesker front in Ouray. (Photos by Brett Schreckengost)

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b y m a r t a t a r b e l l | p h o t o s b y b r e t t s c h r e ck e n g o s t

he single-story cabin at 9,000 ft. on Wilson Mesa looks like an essential part of the landscape. It dates back to the mid-19th century, when the white oak logs that comprise most of this 2,800 sq. ft. structure were initially harvested from an old-growth forest in the eastern United States.

Two stands of this dense, strong and durable wood – it’s been used to build everything from ships to wagon wheels, and was a favored medium for makers of Mission Style furniture – were used to build the cabin’s first incarnation, as an Ohio “dogtrot” (also known as a breezeway, dog-run or possum-trot) farmhouse, built in 1860.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, most farmhouses in the southeastern U.S. were dogtrots, comprised of two rectangular cabins, one used for cooking, dining and entertaining, and the other mostly for sleeping. The two cabins were connected by a breezeway, roughly 10-14 ft. wide; the name dogtrot comes from the fact that the breezeway was where the family dogs slept by day (and family members by night), in the summer heat.

Roughly 150 years after the white oak was cut and stacked to build the original two-story farmhouse (most dogtrots were one-story high), it was carefully dismantled and packaged for sale, its pieces labeled and a map drawn for putting them back together.

Wilson Mesa homeowner Carolyn Doerle-Schumacher found the white oak at a reclaimed lumber supplier’s yard in Boze-

A 19th-Century Cabin

Comes to Life

on Wilson Mesa

man, Mont., while visiting the Pearson Design Group, headquartered there. Pearson Project Architect Josh Barr worked closely with Telluride/Ridgway builder Kenny Mihelich to build the Wilson Mesa cabin.

Doerle-Schumacher “saw the material and fell in love with it,” Barr recalls, “and said, ‘I’m buying that right now.’”

The inspiration for the cabin, with its perfectly framed view of 14,000 ft. Wilson Peak from the living room window, Barr says, was “settlers trying to make their place in this world, reminiscent of the older homesteads and of people who occupied them over the years,” with a nod to the mining era.

The reclaimed lumber, some pieces as long as 30 ft., arrived at its new homesite on two huge flatbed tractor-trailer trucks, says builder Mihelich, who worked closely with Barr on plans to create the 2,800 sq. ft. cabin from the reclaimed white oak.

Old met new, from the project’s start to finish.

“We had a modern building,” recalls Barr, “with standard 2 x 6 ft. framing,” and a truckload of ancient wood to cover it, inside and out.

It was Mihelich’s job to ensure that “all the siding, inside and out, mimicked log construction,” so the home would have a 19th century combination of function and aesthetics, and be totally up to 21st century code.

To that end, Mihelich started by maximizing the wood supply, Barr recalls, “splitting the logs,” putting their exterior skins on the outside of the building, and their interior skins on the inside and creating the look of a true log structure. The core of the logs was resawn and used on the inside, mostly on the walls and floors. Some of the “skins” of the logs were saved for doors.

When the old-growth white oak ran low, Mihelich turned to American Antique Lumber’s Sandy East, in Colona, for the barnwood used in the cozy bunkroom, where the owner’s many grandchildren stay, and a wall-mounted flatscreen television looks right at home alongside the display of vintage leather chaps and spurs.

Mihelich, who has logged four decades as a cabinetmaker, carpenter, framer and builder in the Telluride region, “got the bug” for woodworking back in the 1970s, in a Telluride downvalley cabinet shop where he worked between gigs as bass player for the bluegrass band, Possum. >>>

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In 1979, “I ended up buying the shop,” he recalls, with his buddy Kate Lundahl (who died in 2009), the duo operating it until 1986, when it folded. Lundahl went to work for Thurston Kitchens and Mihelich went on to “lots of remodels” and then into his own homebuilding business.

Mihelich’s love of wood is evident throughout the almost medieval-looking cabin, as he points out adze marks in the door frame, “where the hatchet went sideways,” marveling again at the centuries-old craftsmanship. “All these things were squared up by hand,” he says. His affection for the wood led him to get every last piece of useable material from the old-growth wood, using a dentist’s drill for the most delicate operations, working especially hard to save the dovetailing on the exterior logs. His trick?

Take a chainsaw, and “you do a plunge cut ­­– it comes right in, at the very end.

“It’s got to be pretty right-on to cut off and keep the dovetail on the slab, and let go of the rest of the material,” at the same time leaving “a chunk of meat still on the log so you can rebuild the corner.”

As a result, the elegant, 150-year-old dovetail craftsmanship is preserved on the building’s exterior corners.

Careful millwork saved the skin of the furniture-grade white oak, which Mihelich put to good use as well, on inside walls and doorways. He points with particular pride to the wood’s use in an intricate design on the master-bedroom door from Spydor Wood Products’ John Herndon, former guitar player for Possum.

Old items put to new uses is a theme throughout the cabin, and most of the overhead light

fixtures are repurposed farm implements – hay hooks, wagon wheels, milkcan tops, and turkey and chicken feeders.

In the sleeping loft bunkroom, old chaps and spurs hang on the reclaimed barnwood walls, “but we stripped and milled it,” Mihelich says, working closely with Telluride Custom Millworks’ Chad Ballie. In the kitchen, fallow deer antlers are cabinet handles and the zinc counter has a patina “with a leather richness,” Mihelich says, running his hand over it. He remembers voicing concern when the zinc darkened up after a few uses, but the homeowner cut him off.

“That’s what I like,” she told him.

An elegant roughness prevails throughout the three bedroom (with a sleeping loft), three-and-a-half bath home, most notably in its two fireplaces, in the living room and master bedroom. The stonework looks drystacked at first glance, but actually features “mortar-raked joints,” Mihelich says, placed so deep “you really don’t see the mortar.”

All the rocks used inside and outside (mostly moss rock and Telluride Gold) came from the property; the Game of Thrones-worthy fireplace doors come from Ridgway metalworker Scott Rikkers.

The home was finished in September 2013, but Mihelich is still on the job – most recently replacing “a beautiful barnwood floor” in the master bathroom that was ruined by a leak.

“Every time I work on this house,” says Mihelich, “I’m just amazed. It’s so cozy; it’s very real. It’s not ostentatious.

“It’s such an amazing feeling. It’s magic.”

A marmot peers into the living room window (clockwise from top, center); a cheery guest bedroom, its wood painted white; milkcans converted to light fixtures hang above the utilitarian kitchen’s sink (not pictured) and zinc counter; the master bedroom, complete with its own fireplace; a firepit, with stools, overlooks Wilson Peak; window seats (with storage) are built in under the windows in the hallway; metalwork by Ridgway artisan Scott Rikkers on the “speakeasy” front door made by master woodworker John Herndon, using skins from the old-growth white oak logs inside and outside the home; and an old-fashioned towel warmer. On previous page, rustic elegance prevails.

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Back to the Drawing Board Triassic Pioneers a Whole New Concept in ‘Recycling’ B y Ma r t a Ta r b e l l P h o t o s B y B r e t t Sc h r e ck e n g o s t

I became a fan of Triassic Industries when a houseguest brought a gift – a slightly off-kilter, foot-long wood cooking spoon that makes me think of Popeye’s Olive Oyl, her head curved to one side, her spine a tad misaligned.

The next year, the same friend arrived with a rectangular butcher block cutting board, one of its four edges rounded to send scraps straight to the garbage (or compost pail) with the flick of a knife.

When a two-toned hardwood spatula and diorite mortar-and-pestle arrived, my four-piece Triassic collection had a place of honor on the kitchen >>>

Wood is dried in the sun at the Triassic Industries facility, just south of Moab (left to right), and processed into furniture and other home-oriented products; Justin Wiggins measuring carefully, before he cuts.

58 counter, the better to admire each item’s sui generis form.

This wasn’t a conscious decision; I just couldn’t bring myself to put the beautiful objects away.

I soon was visiting triassicstone.com on a regular basis, although in those early years, the website featured mostly pictures of wood and stone earrings and a few simple cooking implements interspersed with pictures and accounts of climbing trips and adventures in the tree-services trade.

Triassic’s website today is a slick designshop display, with everything from slideshows of installations (for example, a black-granite two-person outdoor sink) to lively discussions about one particular sycamore slab’s escalating sprawl of spalting, a form of wood discoloration caused by fungi found mostly in dead trees, but also in trees experiencing stress.

Triassic’s Facebook page features games like “Guess That Tree!” and “Name These Woods!” and occasional preaching about why “each of our wood pieces is unique, and crafted from waste wood

generated by our tree service.”

There are plugs for community projects like Wabi-sabi thrift- and recycled-material stores in downtown Moab, where Triassic is based, and the Youth Garden Project (“cultivating healthy children, families and communities through educational projects and the profound act of connecting people with food from seed to table”).

In Triassic’s Moab retail store, there’s a constantly shifting array of products, from stone jewelry, fountains and planters to bird and wasp nests to cooking utensils to cutting boards (including some with Hebrew characters on the side that sell faster than challah during Hanukah). There’s even a long sushi cutting board reincarnated as a swing that hangs from the ceiling with recycled climbing rope and carabiners.

ROOTED IN ACTIVISM Triassic Industries was founded 11 years ago by Scott Anderson, a 40-something climber, arborist, conservationist, wood-

worker and designer with a long history of activism with organizations like Rainforest Action Network and Hoods in the Woods.

Anderson grew up in Illinois, making regular rock-hunting expeditions with his grandparents, and in North Carolina, where he worked in his attorney-turnedmanufacturer father’s fiberglass factory. In college, he studied geology and anthropology and became a serious rock climber.

The climbing expertise translated readily to the equally high-wire tree-services business, where Anderson’s affinity for wood grew as he learned to trim, transplant, adopt and, worst-case scenario, dispose of trees. Triassic added entrepreneurship to Anderson’s resume, which began with a stint in the Peace Corps, followed by work as a Wilderness First Responder, adjudicated youth counselor and industrial climber.

Anderson deployed his climbing skills in a 2002 Greenpeace incident that went viral after he was arrested in the Port of Miami for clandestinely boarding a merchant vessel, its cargo including ill-gotten Brazilian mahogany

being smuggled into the U.S. Anderson and a co-conspirator were planning to fly a protest banner over the ship, but were intercepted before they could complete the mission.

A few months after Anderson’s arrest and successful defense by a phalanx of American Civil Liberties Union attorneys, “The U.S. banned all mahogany trade,” Anderson now recalls proudly. Anderson takes something of a Buddhist perspective on wood in today’s marketplace, endorsing the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, an aesthetic worldview focusing on the acceptance of transience and imperfection, in which a flaw contains the kernel of beauty.

“Customers are trained to want all this perfect stuff,” Anderson says, leading furniture-makers to want only “perfect wood pieces that are top-grade” and stonemasons to aim for “the perfect polished marble countertop” and losing stone’s essential “rockness” in the process.

He suggests the key to Triassic’s aesthetic is simply “seeing the value in something other people throw away.”

‘YOU TAKE YOUR RAW MATERIALS?’ In Triassic’s early days, Anderson began recycling waste-wood headed for landfill into wood spoons and earrings, selling them at the Moab Farmers Market “for beer money.”

As a counselor with the Wilderness Therapy Institute, he’d used fallen wood “to make spoons with the kids” that became their sole eating utensils for the duration of the expedition.

Customer enthusiasm for his “recycled wood” spoons led to Anderson’s Eureka Moment – in a city where “13 percent of our landfill was tree waste,” he recalls.

Instead of waste, he realized, he had the raw materials for a great business model, whereby “you can do the right thing and you can make money at it and you can change the world” in the process.

His Moab bankers agreed on the potential profitability front, but approved his loan only after investigating a “fraud alert” on his application, Anderson says, placed

59 there “because the profit margin was too high for the tree-service industry,” which, because liability insurance is so expensive, hovers at 1-to-2 percent.

“You mean people pay you to take their wood, and you use it to make stuff – and then you sell it?” Anderson says one banker asked him, incredulously. “You take your raw materials? It’s like being an undertaker!”

Anderson sums up his business model more elegantly. “We take a tree from removal to processing,” he says.

FROM DOGBANE TO WONDERSTONE What can be done with wood waste is on display in the Triassic Store, on Moab’s main street, that opened nearly two years ago.

There are tree root-balls on display, one as an outdoor table, another sliced and hung up on the wall; $5 bundles of campfire wood; and wood scraps shaped into blocks displayed on a tree stump, just inviting children (and adults) to play. There are dogbane and >>>

Jenni Urbanczyk and Scott Anderson in the Triassic Store, on Moab’s main street, below a mounted rootball on an exposed brick wall. A rootball table displays just some of Triassic’s constantly changing inventory, next page, from a breadboard to children’s blocks to spatulas and spoons and more.

60 glass necklaces, polished rock earrings, Utah wonderstone (like a miniature encapsulation of the red-rock desert sunset), bowls, platters, cutting boards, spatulas, and a constantly shifting array of wood spoons and earrings – all made from “scrap.”

“That’s the only one; sorry,” Anderson’s very-pregnant wife, Jenni, tells the rare customer who asks for a second piece of some favorite product, or for perfectly matching earrings. “Please try to enjoy our uniqueness.”

THE QUEST FOR IMPERFECTION Anderson has a soft spot for the generally reviled tamarisk, a major contributor to desertification in the western U.S., which is “beautiful, and highly prized in the Mideast,” where soil conditions keep the plant’s invasive properties at bay. His favorite wood, catalpa, is also non-native, and he describes it like the salesman that he is: “It’s got great big leaves and long seed pods, with little white flowers. It cuts well, dries well, smells

nice and is easy to work with – it’s just a friendly wood,” unlike, say, woods like walnut, “that want to fight.”

Catalpa, on the other hand, “is happy to oblige,” making it easier for the woodworker “to see something, and then figure out how we can bring out the natural beauty of the piece.” (Anderson was paraphrasing Michelangelo, who famously said he looked for “the angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free.”)

Last year, Triassic Industries recycled 750,000 pounds of trash waste into useable commodities that were sold online and through the store.

At Triassic’s headquarters, a few miles south of Moab, Anderson’s small office is filled with the sounds of drills and saws.

A window looks out on the cottonwood stumps lining the property where treetrimming waste is sorted and assigned to its next phase in the cycle of life. He scribbles on a legal pad. That 750,000 pounds translates to “12 yards a day at $8 a yard for 250 days a year,” he calculates.

“So we save $24,000 a year in county landfill operating costs.”

The Triassic store, on a main street dominated by tourist shops, draws in visitors from “Germany, France, England, Japan” – citizens of countries that still value “things that are made to last” over knickknacks.

“They say we’re the nicest store they’ve seen here in America,” Anderson says.

He’s proud that Triassic accounts for ten percent of Moab’s industrial base, and is offering skill-building jobs in a local economy where “McDonald’s pays pretty well, but I wouldn’t call McDonald’s a fulfilling job.”

“We’re not charging anything extra; we don’t have a ‘green tax,’” he says, seizing the chance to proselytize. “We don’t have to ask for money; we don’t have to ask permission; we don’t have to ask government for anything, or sway public opinion. The customer doesn’t have to care about side benefits. We’re the solution – that’s what I’m most excited about.

“We figured out what fits with the community.”

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artist /artisan

Steeled for Success Metal Artist Jeff Skoloda Hits His Stride

B y Sa m a n t h a T i s d e l W r i g h t

eff Skoloda is a master at taking rigid lengths of steel and “cold-bending” them into organic curvilinear creations that seethe with creative energy.

His knack for borrowing from the grace and energy found in nature, and combining that with formal design, is readily apparent in the work he does for clients near and far, designing and building unique handcrafted pieces of furniture and architectural metalwork such as stairs, gates, railings and decks.

It’s even more apparent in Skoloda’s work as an artist. Take, for example, the 20-foot centerpiece of the sculpture garden he has recently built next to his home, studio and workshop in downtown Ouray.

It starts with a tight little suspended sphere of energy – like the universe before the big bang – out of which swirls and loops of metal dance upward and downward in looser, bigger forms that are at once separate yet completely connected to the sculpture’s pulsing core.

“I always wanted to do something on this scale,” Skoloda said, squinting up at the sculpture as it flashed in the midday sun. “It’s called ‘The Gravity of Us,’” and is, he said, about “the way we all affect each other’s lives and new additions make new turns and may change your path and your focus.”

The stunningly tall sculpture “has a conversation” with a much smaller, smooth white >>>

A towering metal sculpture titled “The Gravity of Us” at Jeff Skoloda’s home and gallery in downtown Ouray. (Photo

by Brett Schreckengost)

66

marble sculpture nestled on the ground nearby, that Skoloda created years ago before he and wife Nicole became parents to their two young daughters. It seems to express a similar theme, with a central core around which energy swirls on a more compact, intimate scale.

“It’s called ‘Tumble,’ from a time when we were young, and it was just the two of us,” Skoloda, 41, explained. “All there was, was two people who became one, and now it is four people becoming a family. The conversation is totally there.”

Sculptures by other artists make their own quiet points nearby – an upright abstract powder coated steel piece by Mark Leichliter, who is known for his “cool largescale stuff and public installations,” stands at attention like a sentinel, while sheltering under a blossoming tree near the garden’s

entrance, a compact bronze replica of a piece called “Chaco,” by sculptor Bruce Gueswell, evokes the intricate sunbaked architecture of the Ancestral Puebloans.

Larry Scanlon (of Telluride Landscape Co. and Scanlon Design) helped Skoloda design the circular garden, which sinks gently into the hillside beside the Skolodas’ three-story home and gallery.

A LEGACY OF STEEL AND FANCY Beyond the “wildflower gates” that Skoloda crafted to enclose this private world, he has left a prolific mark on the landscape of Ouray over the past 15 years.

The Ouray Ice Park showcases the scope of his talent and artistic vision. Here, the lanky metal artist has built a soulful, wind-

strewn memorial gazebo for fallen climbers, and a 3.5-ton, 25-foot-tall steel competition tower overhanging the Uncompahgre Gorge, where for the past two years the world’s best ice climbers have competed at the annual Ouray Ice Festival.

He also helped build the intricate network of viewing platforms overlooking the iceclimbing action in the gorge below.

In town, his work can be seen up and down Main Street, from ornamental gates guarding public access to the city’s flume systems to an army of flower planters that will soon be dispatched up and down Main Street to a bicycle rack at Fellin Park. Inside the Ouray Brewery, beer-drinkers sit in whimsical swings suspended by salvaged chair-lift cable (in lieu of bar stools) also of Skoloda’s creation, inspired by the beach bars of Mexico.

67 A yoga sculpture by Bruce Gueswel (at left, photo by Brett Schreckengost) balances on a rock pedestal in Skoloda’s sculpture garden, in front of a glass and metal fence that Skoloda built in collaboration with glass artist Munroe DeForeest of Ridgway. Below left, a detail from the “Wildflower Gates.” At right, Skoloda welds in his workshop behind his house in Ouray. (Photos by Jack Brauer)

“I thought it would be cool to do a mountain version – the same idea, in a different environment,” he said.

In Telluride, Skoloda and his crew of three employees welded structural steel components for the new Baked in Telluride building that arose from the ashes of its predecessor, and have contributed architectural embellishments to many a designer home in Mountain Village, with clients including Overly Construction and Fortenberry Construction. In late May, his crew was feverishly fabricating exterior embellishments for one of the largest homes Mountain Village has ever seen.

Skoloda, who thrives on collaboration with other craftsmen and artists in the area, frequently teams up with Ridgway woodworker Dennis Conrad (DC Woodworks) to execute

projects for the Telluride-based interior architectural design firm Studio Frank, as well.

“They design the interiors and come up with furniture ideas, and we collaborate on building those pieces and installing them,” Skoloda explained. One such recent project was a map case drawer – a “massive piece of furniture” comprised of oak, steel and leather.

“It’s really fun to do homes like this,” Skoloda said. “You spend so much time in them, and they are in such beautiful places, that you really get to like the interiors and the space.”

It can be bittersweet to have such a brief, intimate acquaintance with a space that he will probably never see again, but “at the same time, somebody gets to enjoy it, and I think that’s very rewarding,” he said. “It’s a huge sense of satisfaction when something is

finished and installed, and functional.”

AN ARTIST AND A CRAFTSMAN Lately, business on these kinds of projects has been booming, so much so that his original metal shop behind his home and gallery in Ouray – which seemed “huge” when he built it almost a dozen years ago – has spilled over into the basement of the building next door where he and his crew now fabricate most of their bigger jobs.

Entering the 4,000 sq. ft. shop with 14-ft. ceilings is a bit like going inside a well-tended mine. The place is spic and span, cavernous and shadowy, and smells of metal and earth. On this particular morning, with employees dispatched elsewhere, and no activity, it is uncharacteristically quiet. The City >>>

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of Ouray’s new flower planters – fabricated last fall, but yet to be deployed – are massed like silent soldiers along one wall.

The new workshop is a physical manifestation of how Skoloda’s livelihood has grown in recent years. Things have gotten seriously bigger.

His original workshop space behind his house is still a busy place, too. Early in his career, this is where he built the metal frames of 30,000 chairs for Chipotle Grill – a years-long part-time project that put food on the table while he was first getting established as a metalworker in Ouray, after earning a BFA from the University of Wisconsin, and working in a full-service art foundry in Loveland, Colo.

The space is dominated by the cutting, bending, and welding tools of a metal fabricator. But it is also infused with the soul of an artist. In a back corner, there is an unfinished marble sculpture that may resemble a seashell when it is done.

Skoloda started carving stone about the same time he moved to Ouray. “I absolutely love that subtractive process,” he said. “It’s just about as opposite as you can get from metal fabrication. You start with your total block and you move into it. With fabricating you start with your pieces and you move out.”

COOL TOOLS Plus, he added, “It’s just plain fun, to make a huge pile of dust. It’s all about tools,” he said. “I love this job because I am just addicted to buying tools. Any opportunity to find a new cool tool is welcome.”

For stone carving, Skoloda uses an electric-powered circular saw with abrasive diamond blades, specially designed for stone. “They have electroplated edges with diamonds encrusted in them,” Skoloda explained. “This blade just slices right through a piece of marble, like butter.”

Next, Skoloda powers up the air compressor and demonstrates how to use a pneumatic chisel. As he leans into the power tool, the solid marble of the unfinished sculpture gives way before it like crumbling plaster.

“At full bore, this thing just tears through stone,” Skoloda said. “It’s a blast. It’s kind of addictive to start peeling into a chunk of stone and let the chips fly.”

As the desired form begins to emerge from the block of marble, he’ll switch to a

bantam chisel.

“The awesome thing is, as you expand your skill set, then you get to expand your tool set, too,” he grinned.

In another corner of his workshop, Skoloda has a small forging setup complete with an anvil and a recently acquired airoperated power hammer that “hits like a 75-pound sledge.”

Right now, he is using the setup for fairly simple things, like texturing metal for paneling. A finished sample piece that he holds up looks somewhat like a neatly cut piece of pitted slate.

“That’s the attraction of worked metal;

Following in Smith’s footsteps, Skoloda sees his twin pursuits of artist and craftsman as complimenting each other. “They meld nicely. I think that working in a craft hones skills for creating art work, and the skills you have as a craftsman make you a better artist, or at least broaden your abilities to create. You have more tools in your toolbox, literally.”

But, he said, “I don’t think I have become an established artist yet – I feel like I am still finding my voice. I am definitely a craftsperson, and I think I am getting really good at what I’m doing. As an artist, I am still working towards where I want to be.”

‘I don’t think I have become an established artist yet – I feel like I am still finding my voice.

As an artist, I am still working towards where I want to be.’ – Jeff Skoloda

it looks like a completely different product than standard fabricated material,” he said.

One of Skoloda’s favorite metal artists is the late David Smith, a pioneer of abstract sculpture who revolutionized the possibilities of metal sculpture in the 1950s and 60s by introducing the industrial process and using metal to “draw in space.”

Skoloda keeps a couple photos of the famous sculptor in his workshop for inspiration – he is massive and rough-hewn, with a furrowed brow and aggressive, steely gaze – in contrast to Skoloda’s own distinctly chiseled features and serious, thoughtful manner.

What the two men obviously have in common is a passion for using tools of industry to make art out of metal.

“He had a big thing about displaying art in the landscape, and I always liked that idea, too,” Skoloda said. The new sculpture garden is a move toward doing that kind of thing on a small scale, but Skoloda has a bigger dream that may someday come to fruition – doing a Jeep tour art display, placing pieces of sculpture up on top of the surrounding mountain passes.

FAMILY MATTERS Skoloda grew up in Wisconsin, the son of a journalist/poet father and a mother who “likes to dabble in art.”

He has an uncle who is an artist, but he credits his grandfather – a woodworker – for turning him on to the wonder of making things with tools. “I spent a lot of time hanging out with Grandpa in the workshop, for sure,” he said.

Now, Skoloda’s older daughter Ella likes to come down to the studio and “hang out” with him while he does design work. “She’ll come sit right next to me in the office and draw,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll look over her shoulder and get inspired – ‘Hey, that looks pretty cool!’”

On a chalkboard in the office, a 6-yearold’s careful handwriting proclaims “Ella and Jeff ’s Workshop.” She even has her own timecard, and has learned to use some of the smaller air tools in the workshop.

“She won’t weld yet, and that’s reasonable,” Skoloda allowed. “But she likes using the little sanders. She used the plasma cut>>>

69

Skoloda and his daughter Ella (above) collaborate on a marble sculpture. Below left, a weather vane crafted by Skoloda graces a Telluride rooftop. Below right, another of Bruce Gueswel’s signature yoga sculptures balances in a corner of Skoloda’s sculpture garden in Ouray. (Yoga sculpture photographed by Brett Schreckengost; other photos by Jack Brauer.)

feature ter for a few seconds, but that was a little too exciting.... I can understand why. She is a pretty brave kid, but there are things that can wait. She loves it down here.”

Becoming a father has changed the way Skoloda thinks about his own creative process.

“You watch kids make art, and you realize that they don’t worry about anything. And I think that I had started worrying about everything,” he reflected. “You can take those lessons, when you are working on a very detail-oriented project, and try to let go a little bit from the design end – not worrying about rules when you are making things.”

He tries not to get too tangled up in the paradox of it all – embracing the messy, uninhibited creative process, while shouldering the responsibility of running a business and supporting a family, and still finding time to enjoy it all, and get outside and play.

COMING HOME

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Skoloda lives amongst the things he’s made.

Everywhere you look around the “Skoloda family compound” – which he largely built himself – there are amazing pieces of his work, both functional and artistic, and sometimes a blend of both. Fences, gates, an outdoor fireplace, metal steppingstones....

It’s all still a work in progress that gets better all the time. “Building this place was a great opportunity,” he said. “If you have an idea, you just mess with it and put it someplace.”

A dozen years ago, when the Skolodas’ loft home/street-level gallery was in the planning stages, the couple looked to the remodeled industrial spaces of his wife’s native New York for inspiration, but their ultimate influence was the scenery around them in Ouray.

Windows in the living room intentionally frame Mt. Hayden and Mt. Abram like works of art, while Skoloda’s intricate carbon steel metalwork scrolls its way throughout the house like graceful, articulate, yet untamed vinery.

Handmade balustrades of arched bracing delineate the open spaces of the home, pairing Skoloda’s metalwork with 100-year-old recycled timbers from a mill in British Columbia.

The space has evolved over the years from a spare loft apartment into a home for their family of four, with bedrooms added on to the third floor for their daughters

Skoloda has a passion for using the tools of industry to make art out of metal, and lives among the things he’s made. (Photos by Jack Brauer)

when they came along.

Yet simplicity dominates, in both furnishings and décor. Light paints the entire area, thanks to generous windows and two domed plexiglass skylights. Pale bamboo flooring adds to a feeling of freshness. The living space extends outdoors, with fabricated metal balconies taking in gorgeous mountain views on three sides.

The ground floor of the building is devoted to Skol Studio, the high-end art gallery where Skoloda showcases his work alongside that of other outstanding local and regional artists whose energy and work he and Nicole admire.

The artwork of these kindred spirits inspires Skoloda to continue pursuing his own dream of eventually becoming a full-time artist.

TIME WARP Skoloda had a strange experience on a recent trip to the Front Range. Sitting down over beers at his friend’s house, a piece of furniture caught his eye. “I looked over and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s kind of a neat,” he recalled.

And then he realized, “Oh, I made that!”

It was a piece he had crafted with a woodworker friend back in the 1990s.

“It was like running into myself from 15 years ago, and saying, ‘I kind of like that guy,’” he said. “I had to totally inspect it, and I was like, ‘Well, that was a little shabby. I never would have made anything like this today. Not to say that it was bad. But it’s not me anymore.”

It made him realize just how far he’s come – as an artist, and as a human being – since staking his claim in Ouray all those years ago with his wife (and muse), Nicole. “She’s the one that has made it all possible,” said Skoloda. “She is the one who has brought the dream to full fruition. She is holding it all together” – like the sphere of energy that pulses at the nucleus of “The Gravity of Us.” “It’s been a wild ride,” Skoloda marveled. “I look around every now and again and think, I couldn’t be happier with where things are at.

I look back at what I wanted to have happen, and then, where we have come. There are obviously still goals to be attained, but at the same time, it is like, ‘We are on track.’ Time becomes precious, and you try not to waste it.”

For more information about Skol Studio and sculpture garden visit skolstudio.com.

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food

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Everything Old Is New Again

n the winter, after a good fall, when we open a particular cabinet in our kitchen, we are greeted by the aroma of the woods.

Dried porcini, a.k.a. King Boletes: harvested in the high forests above Telluride in the autumn, a virtual bounty of them when the conditions are right, as they were in the autumn of 2013.

Last September I showed a bag of porcini, recently harvested and dried, to a friend, a houseguest. I allowed her to lean in and inhale their promise.

“Are these for me?” she exclaimed.

“No!” I replied, shocking myself at how quickly my naked greed expressed itself.

These dried mushrooms are too precious to just give away. Certainly not an entire bagful of them. But I did give her a carefully apportioned allotment when she left, because I really do love her.

As the winter came to an end, my wife, Marta, observed that we had a lot of dried porcini in the cupboard, and soon we would be harvesting fresh porcini. Except, she worried, we might not find any this coming mushrooming season if we still have a large supply in storage.

There was no arguing with her, because mushrooms are, first and foremost, mysterious. Some seasons they are plentiful and other seasons you can’t find a single bolete in a vast woods where they were abundant a year or two before, no matter how hard you search; and while people speculate that it has to do with the amount and timing of monsoonal moisture, nobody really knows why the boletes come and go. Too many bags of dried boletes in too many local cabinets is as good an explanation for a poor harvest as any. Porcini ask to be eaten; this is what their aroma demands of us, and if you are miserly with them, they object. Or so the theory goes.

It was springtime and there was fresh spinach at the first Telluride Farmer’s Market. So I steamed the spinach in nothing but the water left after rinsing it, tossing in some butter and a fistful of the dried porcini. I let it all braise and seasoned it with a few twists from the nutmeg mill and wow.

Spinach and mushrooms are like tomatoes and basil, peanut butter and jelly, gin and tonic: a known and widely appreciated flavor combination that can’t really go wrong. If you combine local fresh spinach

and locally harvested porcini, you have something special. And there’s a kind of San Juan Mountains logic to it. The porcini are reserved, preserved by drying them, from the fall harvest; the spinach and other braising greens, like chard, are the earliest harbingers of spring and must be eaten as fresh as possible, and though they come from opposing seasons, these porcini and this spinach belong together: a locavore’s delight – even if the nutmeg is imported from Grenada, because none of us, in the end, is truly pure. Every one of us, after all, has a carbon footprint.

And yet, I thought, there was something missing from my simple creation of spinach, porcini, butter and nutmeg, and it was a foundation layer. Which got me to thinking about gluten and the new fad against eating wheat and other grains, some saying that the unrefined versions are even worse for your health than the refined versions. (Talk about revisionist!) And I really, really love artisanal bread – I’m picturing the ciabatta at Cosmopolitan in Telluride right now – and will argue at a moment’s notice that linguini – so toothsome, so brilliant slicked with olive oil or tomato sauce – is among humankind’s greatest cultural achievements, ranking right up there with the Mona Lisa or the Beatles.

My farm-fresh local spinach with local porcini deserved nothing less than a special pasta, so I finally bought a pasta maker after literally years of imagining that I would someday do it. Because, let’s face it, making your own pasta is so circa 1982. Fresh pasta was among the first movements among home cooks (in America) in rebellion against industrial food, and back then I somehow missed it. There was no dusty

By Seth Cagin

pasta maker in our garage, although there is a new one in my kitchen now.

Of course, it is easy to make fresh pasta; much easier than making bread, easier than harvesting and drying local porcini. Literally anyone can do it, and probably everyone should. Marta wanted me to write about mushrooming for Shelter, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I was feeling some kind of nostalgia for fresh pasta, brought on, inexplicably, by spinach with porcini.

Here are just a few tips I can pass on from my experience. First, always cook porcini with butter and never with olive oil. Animal fats are last year’s gluten, but they are OK now, per the latest healthy eating theories (can you say “paleo”?), and I can testify that when I cook porcini in butter they develop an irresistible nuttiness and they make people swoon. Cooked in olive oil, there’s not quite as much swooning around the dinner table. Spinach with olive oil and lemon is great. But if you are making spinach with porcini, stick with butter.

Second, if you’re going to put that spinach with porcini on pasta, add cream and maybe some sherry or white wine to make it into more of a sauce.

Third, use a lot of porcini, because this is what you can do as a home cook that even a good restaurant simply won’t do. More porcini is always better than less. Whoever you are feeding will sense your generosity.

And finally, here’s a secret ingredient: powdered Hawk’s Wings. Hawk’s Wings are always plentiful in the forest, even in a year when you can’t find a bolete or a chanterelle to save your life. Harvest some, clean and dry them, and then process them into a powder in a food processor. Few people like Hawk’s Wings cooked or served any other way, but powdered they add a mushroomy, woodsy and hard to identify note to any soup or stew and to creamed spinach. A little goes a long way (so you can use fewer porcini, but I contradict myself). And powdered Hawk’s Wings are a thickener, too, better than cornstarch and as good as roux.

So I served my creamed spinach with porcini on fresh fettuccini made from my new pasta maker to Marta, and I thought it was pretty darned good.

And here’s what she said: “Gluten. It makes me feel bloated.” And then she asked for seconds.

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changing the way we get our power since 1991

Ridgway, Colorado • 970.318.1803 • www.dcf-online.com

WWW.ALTERNATIVE-POWER.COM

609 W. CLINTON ST RIDGWAY, CO 81432 | 970-626-9842

U NITED C OUNTRY S NEFFELS R EALTY We are a regional office, serving San Miguel, Ouray, San Juan and Montrose Counties

• Residential • Ranches • Acreages • REO • Short sales • Auctions

Message • Facials • Manicure • Pedicure • Waxing 970.497.0019 or 970.728.9772

or email breatheintelluride@gmail.com to schedule your appointments

Creative Remodeling & Home Repairs

• Decking • Painting • Roofing • Additions g r e a t

• Complimentary Estimates

• Miscellaneous Home Repair

• Building Maintenance

• Quality Caretaking

l o c a l

r e f e r e n c e s

Kitchen & Bath Remodels (970) 729-0553

W E H AVE THE B UYERS AND N EED Y OUR L ISTINGS! 150 Liddell Drive One block West of the River Ridgway, Colorado 81432

www.sneffelsrealty.com

•

(970) 626 - 3555

Closet & storage solutions, llC Custom storage

for every partof your home and business!

C . j . wat t 970.327.4637 n o rwo o d, C o 8 1 4 2 3 w w w. o r g h o m e . C o m

O R G

®

hile there’s no shortage of impressive homes throughout the town of Telluride, 135 West Galena is truly without compare. This 5,800 square foot palatial estate brings together every detail the discerning vacationer could imagine while visiting Telluride. With 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms and unparalleled outdoor living space, the Galena Estate offers luxury and elegance in a breathtaking setting.

Located two blocks from Main Street, the home flawlessly combines state-ofthe-art amenities and high-end finishes in a warm, welcoming setting right in the heart of town. The outdoor living space provides an incredible backdrop for summer get-togethers. Prepare a gourmet meal al fresco in the outdoor kitchen, complete with Viking appliances or soak in the 12 person Nespa hot tub all while taking in unobstructed views of Ingram Falls, Ajax

Peak, Ballard Peak, Bear Creek and the Telluride Ski Resort.

Location, attention to detail, luxury and pure comfort intersect here at the Galena Estate, making for a truly impeccable vacation home in Telluride. If you’re unwilling to make any compromises during your stay, we invite you to experience this home for yourself. For information on reserving this property, call 970-728-8838 or visit latitude38vacationrentals.com.

A B O U T

L A T I T U D E

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As a full-service luxury vacation rental and property management company, Latitude 38 Vacation Rentals strives to provide each of our guests with a seamless, exceptional Telluride experience. We are passionate about offering our guests the best value

and highest standard of service.

From our hand-selected, meticulously maintained properties in Telluride and Mountain Village to our exceptional concierge services backed by deep local knowledge, we’ll coordinate all the details of your trip so that you can take the vacation that you have truly earned. Upon your arrival, we’ll personally greet you at the front door and show you around your vacation property. If any issues arise during your stay, our team is only a phone call away.

As a homeowner, partner with us to receive superior service, a greater return to your bottom line and the ultimate peace of mind while you are away. We strive to protect your investment and enhance your property and its profitability.

For more information on partnering with us, email kjones@latitude38vacationrentals.com.

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

INTERIOR DESIGN

FURNISHINGS

LIGHTING DESIGN

76

495 S Townsend

Telluride CO 81435

970.728.0662

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