Rustic demise torches Poudre Canyon tradition

By Dan MacArthur
North Forty News

The close-knit Upper Poudre Canyon community suffered another death in the family when the historic Rustic Resort was incinerated in a violent blaze visible for miles just before dawn on June 1.

"It appears at this point it is accidental," said Shawn Brann, assistant fire marshal for the Poudre Fire Authority.

No cause has yet been determined, he said, although an electrical problem is suspected because lights were flickering prior to the fire. Brann said arson has been ruled out and investigation by the building insurer continues.

The fire was in a sense the funeral pyre for one of the last of the declining ranks of lodges dishing up hospitality and hearty fare to visitors seeking peaceful retreat along the Cache la Poudre River. They also served as informal gathering places for isolated residents in a less-hurried time before modern transportation and communication brought the outside world ever closer.

Now locals and travelers alike are mourning the loss that leaves the community with a single surviving restaurant, the Glen Echo Resort--itself rebuilt following an April 2003 fire.

Uncertain future

"There's a lot of people crying up there for sure," said Bernice Camenisch, who with husband, Phil, own the site where Rustic once stood, as well as the Indian Meadows Lodge events center a bit farther down the canyon.

While seemingly resigned to the reality now, Phil Camenisch was among those mourners. "It really makes me sad," he said. "I couldn't sleep for a couple days."

Veteran restaurateurs, the couple are unsure of their next step, although they expressed serious reservations about rebuilding, given the cost and dismal prospects for profitability. They said it was already tough making a living with declining patronage of visitors and locals alike.

"And even if you rebuild (Rustic), it won't be the same," added Phil.

It is indeed tough and costly rising from the ashes, confirmed Gail Rowe, who with her husband, Lloyd, owns Glen Echo Resort. "It was devastating for us when we had our fire," she said.

Rowe said it required $1.3 million and several years to rebuild the restaurant and their business. "We lost our clientele after the fire," she said, and they are still working to lure diners - especially locals - with dinner specials.

Although theoretically competitors, Rowe said Glen Echo and Rustic consistently directed business to each other when one couldn't accommodate visitors.

"We try to support each other because we all have to survive," she said. "We all try to work together in this canyon."

"It would be nice if locals were more supportive," she added.

Fading history

Lodges such as Rustic and Glen Echo were among a string of such resorts that sprang up along the canyon catering to the vacation economy. This trend arose between the two world wars thanks in large part to increasing automobile ownership and leisure time.

To escape the summer heat, workers who had earned a newfound right-to-rest took to primitive highways in pristine mountains where they could fish in restorative rivers and savor the simpler joys of austere living.

Rustic was a vestige of that era. The hefty and definitive "The Poudre: A Photo History" by late Arrowhead Lodge owner Stan Case, shows the building that would later become known as the Rustic - at that time simply a small store and gas station. It was located directly across from the historic Rustic Hotel.

That hotel was built in 1881 to accommodate travelers on the toll road. It extended from Fort Collins to the North Park gold fields well before the route along the Cache la Poudre was completed in 1926. The hotel was seemingly cursed from the start. It was adopted by a succession of typically well-intended and well-financed owners only to be repeatedly abandoned when their energy and bank accounts were depleted. The hotel was closed for good in 1969 and demolished in 1978.

That left the store, gas station, restaurant and cabins across the road to assume the Rustic Resort mantle. Built in 1928, according to the Camenisches, the store was renovated and enlarged several times, with the last owner investing $200,000 in improvements. Ultimately, the structure totaled 4,000 square feet and sported a bright new coffee bar and ice cream parlor.

Community center

But Rustic was far more than a building. It was a living part of the Upper Poudre community. An important part of neighbors' lives, they gathered there for special events and regular breakfasts.

"It was a real landmark, kind of a community center," said Charles Bliss, fondly recalling the Halloween parties there. A canyon resident off and on since a boy, he and his wife, Elyse, for the last 25 years have resided at the Kinikinik Ranch established by his father farther up the canyon.

"It was just a real loss," Bliss said.

"Rustic was always a locals' place and you don't make a fortune off locals," said Kristine Sattler Williams. She has a special insight since her family owned the Rustic during its glory years. She returned to the canyon in 2004 following an itinerant life with husband, Ken, a professional fundraiser.

Her dad Herbert was a wheat farmer in Nebraska and her mother Berdena a teacher. "Nobody out there in the flatlands had ever seen the mountains," Williams said.

So her mother and aunt came to Rustic for a visit. Before leaving, they placed a down payment on an old ranch hand's cabin as a summer getaway. That cabin is still part of the family compound just west of the former resort.

That purchase provoked protests from her father and grandfather that wheat would never grow there. But their affection for the place did grow as Williams and her kin spent a month there every summer, roughing it with kerosene lamps and baths in a tub in the middle of the floor.

"It was just fun," she recalled.

Buttermilk boom

Then in 1960, her folks sold the farm and moved to Fort Collins, further surrendering to the siren call of the mountains. Finally, according to Williams, her mother told her dad, "Bernie, we ought to buy Rustic."

The sale was consummated on July 1, 1970, and they scrambled to open on the Independence Day holiday. Their team effort along with auspicious circumstances made Rustic a real success.

"It was my mom and dad who get credit for making Rustic go," Williams said.

Her dad was a master mechanic and fixer of all manner of objects who kept the place running like a fine watch. And her mom was a master cook who treated anyone walking through the door like family, according to Williams.

Word spread widely of her fine buttermilk flapjacks following a flattering newspaper review. The publicity promptly produced a huge breakfast business. "All of a sudden it was the food that really made the difference," Williams recalled.

Rustic's existence has always been a tenuous one, as documented in an inch-thick county assessor's abstract Williams offers for review in her inordinately orderly home. In neat tiny type it details 90 years of foreclosures, tax sales and transfers up through 1971.

Centennial calls home

But with their confidence, commitment and hard work, Williams said her folks--with periodic assistance from her and her siblings - turned Rustic into a going concern for several years. It was open seven days a week offering several enterprises under one umbrella, including the restaurant, bar, store, gas station and rental cabins.

At the same time, the crew producing the 1978 epic mini-series version of James Michener's equally epic novel "Centennial" was temporarily based at Rustic. It was a grudging choice, Williams recalled, because the resort was the closest site for food and a functional phone in the days before portable phone signals were capable of penetrating the canyon. She said her mother cooked special meals and fed the crew in separate quarters, and the author was a frequent visitor.

With that cinematic windfall, compounded with the trade generated by expansion of Long Draw Reservoir and widening of Highway 14, "We were busier than we could ever handle," said Williams.

Bust begins

But even then, she said, "the economy up here was never what we hoped it would be." And the bloom was truly off the rose when the boom subsided.

"We could get by and pay our bills," Williams continued, but it was a spare living made more so by substantial costs to meet new health department regulations. She said that combined with the declining patronage contributed to the gradual closure of many canyon restaurants.

Her parents saw the writing on the wall and sold Rustic in 1981, Williams said. It went through several other owners until purchased by the Camenisches. They in turn leased it to Eddy and Judy Reynolds, who lived in quarters behind the resort's Cache Inn restaurant. They were not injured in the fire and could not be reached for comment. The Reynolds were past proprietors of the Sportsman's Cafe in Red Feather Lakes.

Under their management, "it was nice to see Rustic coming back," Williams said, lamenting the loss that leaves Glen Echo as the only remaining full-time restaurant. But as a committed homebody, she concedes to seldom patronizing any eating establishment.

Therein lies the dilemma. Times apparently have passed for places such as Rustic. Nostalgia can't pay the bills. A relic of another era, Rustic is unlikely to rise from the ashes and will live on only through fading memories.