Century Family

Ramsey, Koenig roots run deep at Pingree

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

As the crow flies, Bonnie Hebbert of Rist Canyon is not far from her family's roots in Pingree Park. Her great-grandfather, Hugh B. Ramsey, homesteaded there about 1890.

Signs of the family's many years at Pingree are still abundant, notably in the form of a cabin built by Hebbert's great-aunt, Hazel Ramsey Koenig and her husband Frank. The Koenig home is now owned by Colorado State University as part of its mountain campus, but Ramsey descendants still owns a small cabin at Pingree and have access to the Pingree Park cemetery. Three Ramsey children and two Koenig children are buried there.

Hugh Ramsey came west from Nebraska with several other family members in the 1890s. He and his brother Charlie both homesteaded at Pingree, where they trapped for furs and ran a sawmill at an elevation of about 9,000 feet. Hugh built a home for his wife, Drusilla, and their five children, who included Hazel and her brother Bradford, who was Hebbert's grandfather. This house later burned.

Charlie sold his homestead to Hugh, making a total ranch property of 320 acres. Hazel's mother died when Hazel was about 12, and as the oldest child, she became responsible for the younger siblings' care. While the children spent most of their time at Pingree Park, they received some schooling in Loveland.

When Frank Koenig came to Pingree in 1911 as a trapper, he stayed with the Ramsey family. He married Hazel and made his living by trapping and running cattle, later working as a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service.

Meanwhile, the couple proceeded to develop what was eventually called the Koenig Ranch. Hazel had received 40 acres of her father's ranch as a wedding gift, and Frank purchased additional acreage from Hugh.

When Hugh died in the 1930s, the Koenigs held on to their property but the family sold the remainder of the Ramsey Ranch to a logger and sawmill operator named Starkey.

Ramsey legacy

The Ramsey and Koenig pioneers were an industrious lot and left a significant legacy in the Poudre Canyon. Hugh built Twin Lakes, Hourglass Lake and Brown Lake. He, his brother Charlie and some of their children also built the old road over Pingree Pass to Buckhorn and down to Masonville.

Frank Koenig continued the legacy. As a ranger, he built many back country trails including one from Pingree Park to Estes Park. Using prison labor, he turned the trail from Poudre Canyon to Pingree Park into a road. He also ran the first phone lines to Pingree Park.

Hazel Koenig showed plenty of ingenuity, too. She earned income for the family by renting out cabins to fishermen and by catching and selling butterflies. Also, she made sure her children were educated. The Koenigs and a few neighboring ranchers convinced the county to form a school district at Pingree Park, and the children went to school each year from June to November. The old school building still stands.

The Koenigs had five children, but their family expanded when Hazel's brother Bradford lost his wife at an early age. His two children, Evelyn and Bonny, wintered in Loveland but spent their summers at Pingree Park.

In later years, when Evelyn fell in love with a man of whom her father disapproved, his natural reaction was to send her to Aunt Hazel in Pingree Park. The ploy didn't work; Evelyn's sweetheart, Lowell Cope, drove his new car up to Pingree Park to see Evelyn, and the couple were married in Denver.

The Copes continued the Pingree Park tradition, leasing land from the Koenigs for running cattle. The Cope family lived in Livermore and later moved to Rist Canyon. Their two children are Bonnie (Cope) Hebbert and her brother Tracey Cope, who now lives in Wyoming.

Sale to CSU

Near the end of her life, with her husband in a nursing home, Hazel negotiated a deal with Colorado State University which had owned property in Pingree Park since 1910. The sale, which closed in 1974, transferred 167 acres of the Koenig Ranch to CSU. Hazel kept seven acres and a cabin, and part of this property is still in the family.

Eighty acres of the old Koenig Ranch are now listed on the State Register of Historic Places. Bill Bertschy, director of CSU's Pingree Park Campus, secured a grant from the State Historical Society in 1997 to restore the 100-year-old barn on the property and stabilize the family cabin. The old school house is used by CSU as a classroom.

Thanks to the following people for information about the Ramsey and Koenig families and their Pingree Park property: Bonnie Hebbert, Joyce Koenig Ivers and Bill Bertschy.