Harvesting Historical Riches

The MacGregor Ranch, Estes Park

Colorado’s dry air cured Alva Adams’s tuberculosis, but it could not mend his broken heart.  Adams moved to Colorado Springs from Black Earth, Wisconsin, in 1871 after his older brother died of consumption and he and his other siblings developed serious respiratory ailments.  The young man led his family west in a prairie schooner to avoid the rapid climate change associated with railroad travel.  Upon arrival, he found work hauling ties for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and later opened a hardware store.  His health improved as he established his business, but he longed for the company of his Wisconsin girlfriend, Clara Heeney.  He wrote letters to her often, asking her to share his frontier life.  “Could you but be with me tonight as in the photo which I have before me,” he wrote.  “How long before you will come to remain forever [in] the arms of your loving A?” Clara eventually came to Colorado, but not for Alva’s sake.  She met another “A” after she arrived, and settled down with him on a ranch in Estes Park.  The ranch, established in 1873 and recently restored with assistance from the State Historical Fund, evokes Clara’s life with Alexander MacGregor and their role in Estes Park’s history.

Clara’s love for Alva waned as her interest in other things grew.  While Alva recuperated in Colorado, she attended art school at the Chicago Academy of Design.  Mentored by academy founder Henry Crawford Ford, she demonstrated a talent for landscape painting.  When Ford suggested a class expedition to Colorado in 1872, Clara saw an opportunity to paint the mountains and not an excuse to see Alva.  Whatever feelings she still had for him died after she met a young law clerk named Alexander MacGregor in South Park.  Taken with the beauty of the mountains, and perhaps with Alex, she decided to set up a studio in Denver.  She married Alexander on Christmas Day, 1873.  Although they had already constructed a homestead cabin in Estes Park, they built their first real mountain home a little over a year later.

The MacGregors influenced Estes Park’s development through entrepreneurial vision.  In 1874 Alexander’s Park Road Company started a toll road between Lyons and his ranch.  This road encouraged tourism, ranching, and town building (today’s U.S. 36 follows parts of the old route).  Two years later he built a small sawmill that had the same effect.  The MacGregors also maintained a working cattle ranch, a post office, a general store, and several small tourist cabins.  Visitors praised the couple and their contribution to Estes Park’s prosperity and culture.  One reporter wrote, “The view from Mr. MacGregor’s residence is indescribably grand… The walls of [the] house are adorned with paintings—the work of Mrs. MacGregor—which would rank among the best.” In another article, the writer pronounced Clara “an artist and a real lady who it does one good to meet.”

The MacGregors added on to their 1875 home in 1882.  However, they often spent winters in their second home in Denver.  Alexander wore many hats during the following years; he managed the toll road, maintained the ranch, and worked as an attorney in Denver, and for a time he served as a judge in Fort Collins.

Clara’s old flame, Alva Adams, remained close to the family and bought a stained glass door for the 1882 home.  Two years later he wrote a letter to Clara declaring his hope that she was “as happy and healthy as the girl I used to know.” But he did not let nostalgia keep him from thinking of his own future.  His tenacity, tempered by adversity, earned him Colorado’s highest elected office in 1886.

Ten years later the MacGregors built their final ranch house.  However, Alexander did not live long enough to enjoy it.  On June 17, 1896 lighting struck him dead on a mountain near the ranch.  He left Clara with three sons, aged nine to twenty-one.  Grief tempted Clara to sell the ranch, but happy memories stayed the impulse.  Her son Donald increased the ranch’s size to 3,000 acres, raised Black Angus cattle, and enlarged the house.  Between 1908 and 1950, Donald and his wife Maude raised the ranch to its highest level of prosperity.

The ranch remained in the family until Donald and Maude’s granddaughter Muriel—a rancher and lawyer—passed away in 1970.  Since then, the Muriel L. MacGregor Charitable Trust has operated the estate as a working ranch, historic site, and public museum.  In keeping with Muriel’s wishes, the Trust’s programs have always maintained a strong focus on youth education. Twenty-eight of the forty-two structures are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Trust could not prevent age- and weather-related deterioration of the agricultural complex, despite careful stewardship.  Without immediate repairs and restoration, some of the older structures faced imminent collapse and without financial assistance the Trust would not be able to interpret significant aspects of the ranch’s past.  Recognizing the site’s unique heritage and public value, the State Historical Fund awarded the Trust $252,721 for a phased project to restore eleven of the twenty-eight National Register structures from their foundations to their roofs.  The project also expanded interpretation to the agricultural complex for the first time.  Previously completed historic structure assessments and site evaluations guided all of the preservation work.

Hundreds of schoolchildren and other visitors have learned about the MacGregors, their ranch, and high country cattle raising through educational programming or hands-on activities in the restored structures.  Some may notice a stained glass door on the 1896 house and ask about its importance.  Opening that door, an alert educator will see an opportunity to bring history to life by telling a story about an artist, a rancher, and a lovesick businessman who became governor.

BY BEN FOGELBERG, Editor