Silver fox farm made name in RFL

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from "The Story of Fox Acres" (1978), authored by Robert C. Looney, former managing editor of the Boulder Daily Camera, and edited by Amanda M. Vance.

Fox Acres Country Club, a golfing and residential community of distinction, evolved from a commercial fox farm--and from the vision of Raymond O. Stenzel. The Red Feather Lakes area has long been a mountain home and recreation site, but a major industry was the commercial fox operation envisioned by area planners in the early 1900s.

The Redfeather Mountain Lakes Association sold 37.9 acres in 1925 to L. G. Gupton for use as "a first class Silver Fox Farm." Gupton sold the fox farm site to The Redfeather Silver Fox Farms Inc., of which R. N. White was president and William G. Edwards secretary. In 1928, the title passed to Redfeather Fur Farms, which had been incorporated by White, Edwards and J. Harper Hertel. That company sold most of the property in 1934 to White, who conveyed a one-third interest to Harold and Adeline Blincow. In 1946, the Blincows bought White's remaining two-thirds.

At the beginning of the project in 1925, 20 pairs of foxes were purchased from Windswept Farms of Henderson, N.Y., according to "Red Feather Lakes --The First Hundred Years." A manager from New York, Merle Sanborn, remained in that capacity until 1937.

Before Sanborn left, Harold Blincow came from California to be manager. "Harold was a wizard with foxes," Ted Dunning remembered. "I helped him some. He'd catch a fox and tie its mouth so it couldn't bite us with its needle-like teeth, and Mrs. Blincow would hold the animal while I tattooed a number in its right ear (for recordkeeping of mating production). Then we would clip tendons in the animal's front feet so it couldn't dig under the fence of the pens and escape. ...Harold could skin 25 or 30 foxes a day and prime pelts brought as much as $200 each. ...$50,000 would have been a very good year."

Blincow increased the original 60 breeding pens to more than 100 and production reached 350 to 400 pelts a year. The pens and runways occupied three or four acres. The first equipment shed was a fox kennel unit, which had been converted from a barracks building used at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp on Deadman Hill.

A log house with a lookout cupola was built about 1925 and two rooms were added in the early 1930s. The purpose of the cupola was to give operators an unobtrusive vantage point for observing fox mating.

The farm began with silver foxes, which were first ranched on Prince Edward Island, Canada. "In the late '30s and early '40s," Blincow reported, "platinum, white-faced mutants showed up from the silver strain. These beautiful foxes were bred and raised on the Red Feather fox farm along with the silver. The fur primed and the animals were pelted in November and December each year. Most of the pelts were sold at auction in New York City, or sometimes in Denver."

Silver and platinum foxes were descendants of red foxes, a breed still seen regularly in the Fox Acres area.

The fox fur business began weakening in the late 1940s. The United States lifted its import quotas on foxes from Russia and other countries, and short fur such as mink and beaver became more fashionable. Harold Blincow closed down the business in 1950.

In 1960, the Blincows sold the 38 acres, log house and sheds to Ray Stenzel, and so began the creation of Fox Acres Country Club.

For further information about Fox Acres Country Club, visit the web site www.foxacres.com or call 881-2191.