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Dolores, Colorado

Holding True To Its Rugged Roots While Finding Its Place In The New West

By Amy Maestas

Found in: | Outside | Our Towns | Where to Go |

History of Dolores

Dolores is approaching its 108th birthday. On July 7, 1900, the town incorporated. This was long after the first explorers came to town and named the river, which is the town's namesake. The famous Spanish explorers Dominguez and Escalante first entered the area in 1776 as they were seeking routes between missions in Santa Fe and California. Upon discovering the river, they gave it the Spanish name, “Rio de Nuestra Señora de las Dolores,” translated in English to “River of Our Lady of Sorrows.” That opened the area for settlement for the first time since the ancestral Puebloans inhabited the area until about A.D. 1300. Much of Dolores is an archaeologically rich place just like nearby Canyons of the Ancients, Mesa Verde National Park and scads of other ancient sites - known and unknown. Dolores also was home to Ute Indians, who traveled in all directions and settled the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute reservations. During the years, Anglo farmers, ranchers and expeditions made their way through the narrow canyon in which Dolores sits. At one point, cattlemen settled the lower Dolores River Valley, which once was where the present-day McPhee Reservoir sits. Much of Dolores thrived through the years when the Rio Grande Southern Railroad made the town its railhead and ran trains between Durango, Mancos, Rico, Telluride and Ridgway. The railway connected the towns by providing goods such as lumber, ore, livestock and food products. Eventually, the struggling railway, victim to the Silver Panic of 1893 and the 1929 stock market crash, introduced the Galloping Goose, self-propelled rail car with an automobile drive train and a passenger bus body. For years, the Galloping Goose took passengers and mail to and fro in the region. (The car was so named for its “honking” sound from the engine.) The Goose operated until the 1950s, one of the bust times in Dolores' cyclical history. Volunteers of the Galloping Goose Historical Society of Dolores built a replica of the train station in 1991. About seven years later, volunteers restored Goose No. 5, which today sits in front of the train museum. The town and history buffs are still working on a plan to raise money to build a track that would be able to a scenic train trip between Dolores and Mancos, via the Galloping Goose. That's one of the established efforts the town is taking on to modernize it. Also in recent years, the pro-active Greater Dolores Action group has worked to have the town install sidewalks through parts of downtown. Besides history and archaeology, Dolores is a prime spot for launching a number of outdoor activities. Nearby San Juan National Forest has endless trails for hiking, mountain biking and horse riding. In the winter, the thousands of acres of backcountry offer quiet places for skiing. The Dolores River captures both anglers and paddlers. Minutes outside of town is the Anasazi Heritage Center, a combination museum and educational center for the public to learn about the Native Americans that came long before Spanish explorers.

I took a place on the stool at the storied Hollywood Bar in Dolores, Colo. As the 40-something guy next to me dug into his savory chili-filled potato skins, and after asking him if he was in fact a Dolores resident, I followed-up with what I thought was a logical question.

"What brought you to Dolores?" I asked.

"My mom," he replied, pointing to the lady behind the bar, the Hollywood's bartender.

Turns out, the answer to my question wasn't about "what," but rather "who." Instantly, I realized I'd made the mistaken assumption that few people in the more desirable small towns in the Four Corners are long-term residents, if even natives. I had somewhat ignorantly - though innocently so - thought that Dolores had become like so many other towns in Southwest Colorado where generations-deep residents are a rare breed and the newcomers have arrived en masse to outnumber the native population.

With Dolores, fortunately, I was half-way wrong.

The guy next to me arrived in 1970, still a high school student, when his parents moved to Dolores. His mother, that now-famous bartender, Lynn Hilton, was born in McElmo Canyon, just southwest of Cortez. Some four years after arriving in Dolores, Hilton took her place at the Hollywood and has remained ever since. It's been 33 years and a lot of bar owners, d�cor modifications (but only minimal), law changes and patrons since.

If there is anyone in town who knows how Dolores has evolved during the years, it's Hilton. She's lived it, seen it, heard it. Similar to many mountain mining towns, Dolores has moved through the boom-bust cycle more than once. But even as it has cycled through, I quickly learned after my question from the bar-stool that Dolores is still finding its place in the lexicon of the New West. And it may end up being a town that - all assumptions aside - is one place that remains true to its rugged roots.

WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD

Of the many places in Dolores, perhaps none has as much character and exposed history as the Hollywood Bar. Built between 1902 and 1910 (the one that currently stands was rebuilt in the 1950s, after a fired leveled the building that was a few paces down the block), the Hollywood is a Dolores institution. Before becoming the bar, the building housed the Smith-McCord-Townsend Dry Goods building, a soda fountain shop, a pool hall and the Green Frog Restaurant. When it became the Hollywood sometime in the 1960s (or '50s, depending on who you ask), it is almost as if the clock stopped then.

Inside, the bar is classic small-town bar. The interior decoration is equal parts tacky and traditional.

Stuffed deer and elk heads hanging from the wooden walls? Check.

Lighted beer signs from the '70s? Check.

An amalgam of haphazardly hung pictures both serious and spoofs? Check.

A machine in the women's restroom where you can buy "a variety of six different unusual items to create your fantasy"? Check (and an assumption that the men's restroom provides items for a "safe" fantasy).

Bartender full of stories that could make or break reputations? Check.

If there's one thing Lynn Hilton is, it's the keeper of all good and bad behavior. She doesn't dish if it doesn't serve a purpose. In other words, she's guarded with her gossip, like a polished spokesperson who knows what to say and when to say it. The saying "If these walls could talk" has nothing on Hilton, a 60-something gentle, friendly woman you know instantly you can trust.

Hilton also is a walking historical society. Having lived in town since about 1970, and being born less than 30 minutes down the road, she's watched Dolores go from an agricultural town to a thriving whistle stop on the Rio Grande Southern railroad. From a hopping construction base for workers building McPhee Reservoir to a quiet, vacant building pass-through at the beginning of the San Juan Skyway. Walking around town shows a town that was prone to fits and starts. The historic Del Rio Hotel, a wood-and-stucco building on a corner of Central Avenue, dates to 1931. It closed in the 1950s (a decade that recurs in so much of Dolores' legends and records) and has been undergoing a renovation for nearly 20 years. By far one of the tallest and most striking buildings in Dolores because of its three stories and Alpine Vernacular architecture, it clings to a time in the past that is evident in hollowed-out abandon cars, farm implements and ramshackle houses situated next to modernized ones. Even with empty storefronts and a struggling economy, Hilton believes Dolores is in a boom cycle.

"It's like all of a sudden we were discovered," Hilton says about the town.

She's speaking of the last decade's modest increase of growth. That includes people and businesses. Hilton refers to the rise of trophy homes "up river," north of Dolores along the river that, almost like a clich�, runs through town. Many of those homes are second residences for out-of-staters, who take refuge from cities and weather to spend a month here or there on their sprawling mini-ranches. Even if they provide a modest shot in the local economy's arm, those are the kind of developments that are helping drive up the cost of real estate in a once-inexpensive town. Pair that with younger recreation-seeking, simple-living residents and you have a town that is beginning to find balance and a sense of hope.

This has changed the "tone" of Dolores, says Melinda Green, a 27-year Dolores resident who once co-owned with her husband the Dolores Star newspaper and is now an instructor at San Juan Basin Technical College. Green explains that Dolores' population is getting younger, "more like Durango and Telluride than previously." The change is reflected in the new businesses, such as the Dolores River Brewery, second-hand shops, artist studios and restaurants.

"Whether you think that is good or bad is up for debate," says Green.

GETTING ALONG

Debate is difficult to find in Dolores. It's hard to know if its residents are content, hesitant to vociferously share their opinions, or just passive. It's likely a mix, but one of the outstanding traits of Dolores residences, says Gareth Martins, is that there isn't really divisiveness.

"Residents range from young to old, self-employed professionals to a family two or three generations old," Martins explains. "It's a great town because it's a range of people who get along quiet well."

Martins moved to Dolores in 1999. He was familiar with Southwest Colorado because he attended Fort Lewis College in Durango in the mid-1980s. He left the area and returned from the Pacific Northwest to work at Osprey Packs, a lifestyle pack and gear company that once was headquartered in Dolores and now is based in Cortez. In fact, Osprey in the 1990s was one of Dolores' claims to fame. Co-founder Mike Pfotenhauer moved the company to Dolores from Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1990, where the manufacturer took over space that once was a GORE-TEX factory. Osprey served as a sort-of publicity provider for Dolores. As the packs became increasingly popular among outdoor enthusiasts, people learned that the company was based in a small Colorado town that sat smack dab in the middle of a recreation Mecca. It was the ideal setting for touting packs and the surrounding mountains and rivers for climbing, skiing, paddling, hiking and fishing.

Osprey outgrew Dolores and moved to Cortez in 1999. Yet many of the company's employees live in Dolores, where they share similar ideas to help the town become economically viable. Martins says that younger residents who moved to Dolores as a lifestyle choice and older residents who homesteaded in the valley are generally in lockstep about most ideas.

"The older residents have a solid vision of moving the town forward. They aren't really resistant to change," he says. "The majority of the town board seats are held by old-timers. And there's a push-pull that goes on at all political levels, but it's not over the top."

T.J. Holmes, the Dolores Star's current editor, says town board meetings are generally devoid of political antics and arguments. When asked what the scuttlebutt of Dolores is, the issue of the day, she replies, seriously: "Chickens."

Recently, a 6-year-old town resident went before the Dolores Town Board and asked for a change to the ordinance that bans people living in town limits to have chickens. The boy wanted to raise the chickens so that he could have eggs. Holmes says board members went back and forth about changing the ordinance, not just dismissing the idea out of hand. In the end, the kid's request was denied, the ordinance remained in place and chickens remain outlaws in Dolores.

Though a seemingly innocuous issue, it sometimes represents the laid-back culture of the town, Holmes says. It does not mean that the town doesn't have serious issues or its future to confront, she adds. Realistically, the town can grow only so far, because it's confined geographically by a narrow canyon - sheer rock-face cliffs on one side and a river on the other. Last year a developer proposed to build a 40-home subdivision atop the mesa that overshadows the town. Ultimately, the town decided the development would impose too much burden on the water system and that the dirt-road access wasn't suitable for the increased traffic. At the same time, new restaurants were getting operating permits; a fancy, modern library went up right on the main drag and a historic bed and breakfast found new life.

Martins says he's struck by the legacy Dolores residents, especially those who live on the western outskirts of town, where agricultural land makes up the landscape. Instead of selling out to upscale developers (though he concedes it has and does happen), ranchers and farmers often try to continue handing down the family land to the younger generation to work.

"When you drive by, you see young livestock and know that the land is still part of the agriculture and ranching heritage. It's exciting. It's an integral part of life."

While the subdivision decision wasn't a landmark case that shut the door on growth, and the economic benefits - from property taxes to an infusion of cash from newcomers - weren't overlooked, it is indicative of how Dolores can appeal to the town's rediscovered nostalgia for its historical roots of the Old West and to that tingling money-flushed excitement for tomorrow. The difference between Dolores and some other Four Corners towns or metropolises is that Dolores has no desire to be reclaimed and converted into an impeccably designed playground. Ultimately, it's not the place for idle noodlings of urban fantasists.

"BIG LITTLE RIVER TOWN"

Both Holmes and Martins point out how active the community of fewer than 900 residents is. Holmes is struck by the community and family support she sees at school activities and sporting events.

"The people here are very supportive of their kids," she says. "It's an involved community."

Martins has watched recurring events take off. He's involved in the annual Dolores River Festival, a nine-year-old event that town residents and the Greater Dolores Action group took over from Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance. The festival highlights live music, an arts fair, silent auction and educational information about the Dolores River and the coalition that works to protect it.

Dolores bills itself as the "Big Little River Town." Part of that comes from the river that flows through town, and part comes from the surplus of outdoor recreation offerings. As the town begins what may be another boom in the cycle, it has potential to look like the old black-and-white photographs that adorn the walls of the Hollywood Bar or those that Hilton, the bartender, pull out and lay on the old, worn bar.

Hilton shows how the various photos prove that Dolores once had it going on. In the photos, cars line Central Avenue, then - as now - a dirt road that is where many businesses were open. People milled about, doing business at a bank, picking up the miscellany at the General Store or stopping in on Sunday-morning church services.

Those photos also stand as testament to how the Hollywood has evolved during the years, from a rough-and-tumble bar (Hilton said she "threw out more people one year than she allowed in") to one that spans generations and draws in a mixed crowd at any time. Of all the relics, the most telling about Dolores residents are a couple of things.

First, there's "Old Gold," which is what Hilton calls the bar's ceiling. Over head is an evenly colored ceiling in a pumpkin shade. The material is familiar, looking suspiciously similar to tin ceilings that were once so prevalent in older buildings. The Hollywood's ceiling tiles are square and ornate. But there's nothing tin-looking about them.

Hilton recalls the time someone who was opening a new business in town went into the bar to find the name of the paint color on the ceiling. The person carefully tried to match the color, unwittingly putting effort into dialing in the hue and tint without knowing that the bar's ceiling is, in fact, tin and has never been painted.

"That old gold is all nicotine," Hilton says.

She laughs about the newbie business owner's lack of awareness.

"He never really matched the sheen," she says with a chuckle.

It remains to be seen how and if the ceiling's color will change now that Colorado prohibits smoking in public businesses. Regardless, the ceiling is almost a sacred Hollywood artifact. Once, a drunken bar patron wrapped a rag on the end of a pool stick, pushed it to the ceiling and wrote her name in the nicotine-stained residue. It exposed the real tin on the ceiling and prompted the bartenders to quickly buy paint to cover it up and match the rest of the unnatural ceiling.

"When she did that, I threw her out. Put her on my '86' list," Hilton says.

Then she pulls out a piece of thin cardboard from behind the cash register. On the front, which has some sort of food ad meant as a promotional piece, is written "86 list". On the flip side is about 30-40 names of people who have behaved so poorly in the Hollywood that they've been banned from returning - some for six months, some for life. Most of the names on the list now are "lifers."

Those on it are sort of the poster-people for bad behavior in Dolores. As small and friendly as this town is, ill-mannered people don't always find a way to redeem themselves. At least not at the Hollywood. Hilton is no mean and heartless bartender. She just has standards. And she's aware of those who try to finagle their way into the bar or take on a different identity for trickery.

But because Hilton has endured 33 years, three bar owners, prosperity and poverty in this town, nary a Dolores resident - newcomer or old-timer - can pull a fast one on Hilton. One man's name - a lifer - on the 86 list has the word "dead" beside it. When asked why Hilton doesn't remove the name altogether if the man is dead, she admits she sometimes keep peoples' names on the list for a year after they die. There's nothing nostalgic about it, Hilton says. Then why keep it on there?

"I don't trust 'em," she says.

Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine and actually hung out at the Hollywood without even drinking.