A sharp-eared citizen contacted JCSO dispatch at about 6 p.m. on Oct. 9 to report a suspicious incident she’d witnessed at Safeway. She told deputies that, while dropping off a passenger at the Evergreen Parkway grocery, she observed a girl of possibly 9 years standing on the sidewalk near the entrance. Suddenly, a 35-ish man wearing a “Little Bear” T-shirt emerged from the store, approached the girl in a suspicious manner and suspiciously said “you look nice.” He then suspiciously continued into the parking lot, got into his car suspiciously, and suspiciously drove away. The girl, perhaps stunned by the encounter, waited a few moments and then wandered back inside. The girl could not be located for interview. The witness provided officers with the suspicious man’s license plate number, but a check with dispatch turned up nothing suspicious.
History and Heritage
On the occasion of its 40th birthday, folks who appreciate Evergreen’s abundant green spaces should raise a celebratory glass to little Heritage Grove.
Though small of stature, that tidy slice of alpine Eden alongside Meadow Drive stands tall in the history of Colorado conservation, and its towering pines cast shadows that reach across Jefferson County from Pine Grove to Coal Creek Canyon. It’s the pioneering legacy of pioneers, and the seed from which a stronger, happier and lovelier community has grown. It’s a quiet place to relax and reflect, a welcoming place for neighbors to gather, and an ancient place where brightest flower of Evergreen’s past remains forever in bloom. And, happily, we have mostly ourselves to thank for it.
Heritage Grove hasn’t change a whole lot since Mary Neosho Williams and her daughter, Josepha, purchased it in 1893 and commissioned Scottish mason and carpenter John ‘Jock’ Spence to expand a rustic hay barn on the property into a magnificent 17-room log mansion. The grove was their front yard, and the Jefferson County Historical Society (JCHS) possesses antique photographs of large, white tents pitched everywhere beneath the pines for the camping comfort of the Williams and their frequent downstream guests. “Heritage Grove is part of the original Camp Neosho property,” says the Hiwan Museum’s program coordinator and curator, Meghan Vickers. “It goes back to the beginning of this property’s history.”
With Mary’s death in 1938, her husband, the Rev. Charles Douglas, began renting house and grove to Darst Buchanan as his family’s private summer retreat. Delighted with the accommodations, the Buchanans soon purchased the property, which became first the stately seat of Darst’s sprawling Hiwan Ranch, and, for a very brief period, the therapeutic facility and restful grounds of the Evergreen Sanitarium and Lodge. In 1954 the Buchanans formed the Hiwan Development Company and began gradually subdividing their extensive holdings, in 1974, selling Mary’s mansion and Josepha’s playground to a developer who quickly platted the proto-park for 12 residential units.
Providentially for posterity, that same year the folks at Jefferson County Historical Society had the mansion officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places and persuaded then-two-year-old Jefferson County Open Space (JCOS) to buy the 1.2-acre plot containing the grand cabin and its several outbuildings before they could be turned into condominiums. One year later JCHS began operating the Hiwan Homestead Museum as the county’s very first Open Space park. The fate of the adjacent grove, however, still hung very much in the balance, and local historians rolled up their sleeves.
“The grove was essential to the site’s historical integrity,” explains current JCHS president Elaine Hayden. “It provides context and an authentic setting.”
If that sounds obvious enough now, back in 1974 it wasn’t necessarily an easy sell.
“At the time there were no other community parks in Evergreen, and no sense of urgency to establish any,” Hayden says. “If we were going to save the grove, we’d have to get the community involved.”
Enter “Save the Grove,” a scrappy band of grassroots preservationists led by JCHS and community firebrand Sheila Clarke that, in 1977, convinced the developer to part with the prime 3.2-acre parcel nestled between the museum and Lutheran Church of the Cross for the then-daunting sum of $158,000. Described at the time as an “impossible dream,” Clarke and her dreamers took their vision public.
“Many, many parties contributed to the effort,” says Vickers. “One of the more popular fundraising events was the sale of Heritage Grove ‘stock certificates’. The Society even asked John Denver if he would perform a benefit concert. He declined.”
But even without celebrity support, by the end of the year JCHS and “Save the Grove” had achieved the impossible, raising $112.000 – enough to nail down the sale – in just eight weeks. The balance wouldn’t be paid off for another three years, but the Evergreen community entered 1978 with a fresh outlook on natural and cultural preservation, a new appreciation of what motivated neighbors can accomplish, and Heritage Grove Park.
As a team, the museum and Heritage Grove are 4.4 acres of trees, grass and history that have figured prominently in local history for the last 40 years. Memorable events held upon its shady lawn include the Rocky Mountain Indian Festival, a well-attended series of Mountain Rendezvous, a short spate of Evergreen’s answer al fresco to the Antiques Roadshow, a popular quilt show, a couple of chamber of commerce business expositions and the Chow Down Doggy Olympics. Today the Grove is perhaps best known as the perfect canvas for Evergreens annual Fine Arts Festival.
Heritage Grove is less well known, but no less well attended, as an ideal site for family, church and business gatherings. An even dozen private groups rented the bandstand-equipped park in 2017, which can be reserved at will by groups up to 50 people for $50.00, and by groups up to 100 for a C-note. And with 75 ready parking spaces to choose from and more available by amiable arrangement with Church of the Cross, the Grove frequently serves as a convenient shuttle stop for large events occurring elsewhere in town. Add in picnickers, dog-walkers, adventurous tots and casual strollers, and Heritage Grove’s yearly guest list numbers something in the neighborhood of 12,000 very satisfied stakeholders.
For 40 years the site has been a cooperative effort of the historical society and Open Space, with JCSO maintaining the physical assets and JCHS maintaining the cultural ones. Since the Society formally deeded the museum to the county in 2009, Open Space now owns all of the park’s structures and all the ground beneath them, while JCHS owns most of its priceless resident collections and runs most of its artistic and scholarly programs.
In a broader sense, though, Heritage Grove remains very much a grassroots venture. Local volunteers from 18 to 80 guide visitors through the site, tend its exhibits, organize and staff seasonal events that entertain as they edify, and escort eager young naturalists on explorations of the Grove’s short, but nature-packed, Adventure Trail. Indeed, the same community spirit that rescued Heritage Grove from the bulldozer’s blade in 1977 sustains it today.
Evergreen’s original community park remains a work in progress, although occasional adjustments are always undertaken with cautious eye and subtle hand. Just now, the most obvious change that residents will notice is the name. Re-christened just in time for its 40th birthday, Mary’s alpine estate now answers to “Hiwan Heritage Park.”
“The name was changed to be more historically accurate, and to better fit within Jeffco Open Space’s parks system,” Vickers explains. “The property was never actually a ‘homestead,’ and the name Hiwan Heritage Park encompasses both Hiwan Museum and Heritage Grove.”
It’s a good name, paying due homage to both important halves of a single important whole.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand what an amazing achievement Heritage Grove is, or how lucky we are to have it,” Hayden says. “This was an important place in historical times, and I think it’s just as important today.”
An achy-brakey interlude
Dispatched to investigate a reported disturbance between neighbors in the wee hours of Feb. 24, deputies reached the Mauff Court address just in time to nearly run over a well-oiled man driving an ATV. He was apparently driving because he could barely walk, and deputies returned him to the alleged crime scene with some difficulty. According to the man’s wife, she and hubby had been “partying a little bit” with a neighbor and discussing country music when that volatile subject predictably led to violent discord. Her husband shoved her, prompting the gallantly lubricated neighbor to intervene, thus widening the conflict. Seeing his wife call 911, the man shoved her again and hit the trail on his trusty 4-wheeler, perhaps hoping to T-bone a police cruiser. As in any decent country western song, the unforgiving county lawmen tossed the hard-drinkin’ range-rider in the calaboose.
My Awesomeness Revealed
When used as intended, Facebook is not unlike a globe-spanning Freshman rush party.
As I remember them, barely, rush parties were noisy and chaotic affairs marked by skunky beer, sticky furniture, boorish guys, even more boorish chicks, shameless posing and transparently bogus biographical embroidery.
That’s Facebook.
In the second instance, of course, the skunky beer comes in a 12-ounce aluminum can instead of a 7-ounce plastic cup, the furniture is sticky because the garden hose isn’t long enough to reach your desk, and you can massage your curricula vitae as vigorously as you like because there’s exactly no chance your boorish online associates will catch you in an apron and hairnet serving steamed peas and carrots in the dorm cafeteria and deduce you’re not really on a full-ride lacrosse scholarship. Then again, fiction is generally more interesting than truth, and if everyone knew you actually drive an ’87 Plymouth Reliant and how you really spent last New Year’s Eve you’d have no friends at all. What makes Facebook work is that everybody’s so busy pretending to be that fascinating white-bearded rogue in the Dos Equis commercials they don’t have time to notice that everybody else is, too.
In a bold spirit of glasnost, let me take this opportunity to state, here and now, for the record and for all time, that I am not “the most interesting man in the world”, although I’d like to think that if I ever find myself in a Bangkok casino I could bench press two native beauties if I felt like it. But if I’m not James Bond, James Dean, James Joyce, Jesse James and Susan St. James all rolled into one irresistible package, it’s because I don’t have to be.
I’ve got people for that.
A few months ago I got a friend-request from Steve Knapp. I assumed, as would anyone who can still remember the Blue Screen of Death, that it was a mistake; a little glitch in the system; the World Wide Web having one at my expense. I would have ignored it all together except the idea of friending myself momentarily tickled my funny bone. Sure, I thought, I’ll play along. I extended the cold hand of online friendship to myself, and quickly found out that I wasn’t me. I was Steve Knapp of Manchester, England, England, across the Atlantic Sea.
Steve Knapp
Turns out the estimable Mr. Knapp (since we’re like brothers, I call him Steve, or Steve-O, or Dr. S, and sometimes K-Dog) has been on a mission to friend everybody in the world who shares our proud and mellifluous moniker. He’s run onto 62 of us so far, every one a titan among men, and each equipped to supply one or another of my few and minor deficiencies.
Case in point:
I don’t know anything about cars, up to and including how to safely operate one. Steve Knapp, 23, works at Shuls Express Lube and Tire in the town of Olean, NY, where he spends 40 hours a week expressively lubricating and tiring automobiles. So if Steve Knapp couldn’t grease his car with a lard cannon at 10 paces, Steve Knapp could do it in 30 minutes or your next service is free.
See where I’m going with this?
Steve Knapp
If I’ve got two bucks in my pocket, it just means that some online novelty gimcrack purveyor is about to make two bucks. After graduating from Whitefriars College in 1971, Steve Knapp has risen to become executive director of the Mawson Group, a financial services powerhouse in Melbourne, Australia. Thus, if Steve Knapp can’t handle his money, Steve Knapp can.
It’s Nature’s symmetry, I tell you.
Steve Knapp
There’s a Steve Knapp in Mannheim, Germany. Herr Knapp, 32, graduated from Geschwister-Scholl-Schule Hauptschule mit Werkrealschule Vogelstang. His favorite quotation is “das kurzeste zwischen zwei menshen is ein lacheln.” In Manchester, that means “the shortest distance between two people is a smile.” Now, Steve Knapp would never utter such a syrupy saccharine sentiment, and will now try mightily to forget he ever heard it. But Steve Knapp isn’t afraid to let his love light shine.
A warm people, are the Germans.
On a related note, Stephen Knapp, a student at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Calif., plays on the JV baseball team, says “i no a place were the grass is greener oho”, and claims fluency in English, French, German and Portuguese. Where Stephen Knapp has grown too cynical and indifferent to bother lying about his attainments, Stephen Knapp is willing to make the most transparently outrageous claims without apparent shame.
Steve Knapp
Here’s one for the books – Stephen Knapp of Detroit bills himself as an “Author of Books.” He’s authored 22 books at last count, all of them long-haired explorations of Hindu spiritualism, Vedic traditions, and how to achieve enlightenment in just 22 books. I consider myself more of a Reader of Books, provided the books are really movies and they don’t have any tedious subtitles, distracting dialogue, or confusing plots. What Stephen Knapp’s personal philosophy lacks in depth, insight and illumination, Stephen Knapp’s amply supplies by sheer volume.
Make that volumes.
It’s true. Steve Knapp isn’t a professor of astronomy in New Hampshire. He doesn’t spend weekends flat-boating on Lake Ponchartrain. He doesn’t run his own electronics company, or go to Romania twice a year, or guide raft trips out of Talkeetna, AK, or paint imaginative (and oddly masculine) female watercolor portraits.
Maybe Steve Knapp isn’t the most interesting man in the world.
But Steve Knapp is.
Dixie chick hen-pecks local bird
Just after breakfast, a mysterious female phoned a local woman for information regarding the current whereabouts of an apparently mutual acquaintance to be herewith designated “Waldo.” When the caller refused to identify herself, the woman suggested she lose her phone number and hanged up. A short time later, a male friend called and immediately handed his phone over to the aforementioned mysterious female, who again demanded to know where Waldo was. Again denied, the surly stranger growled “you better watch your pretty little boy, and you better watch your (caboose).” Alarmed, the hassled lass alerted sheriff’s deputies, who contacted her male friend, who cravenly denied knowledge of the threatening exchange, He did, however, admit knowing the mysterious female, and said he suspected she and her mysterious husband were gunning for Waldo with cruel intentions. Deputies eventually caught up with Mr. and Mrs. Mystery, who were visiting from Alabama, and asked how their interest in Waldo involved the complainant. Waldo owed them money, the couple explained, and may or may not have drained oil from their car. As to harassment charges, they said they’d never even met their accuser, and had certainly never spoken to her, unkindly or otherwise. Officers recommended they keep it that way.
