ASPEN, Colo. - The Mountain Chalet is still the Mountain Chalet, a fixture in town since the days of the $8 room and the $1.50 lift ticket. But what happened to the mountain? Chalet guests on the south side of the building cannot see Aspen Mountain from their windows any longer, not since the big luxury hotel across the road went up and up, red stones rising four stories, blocking a splendid view.
On the other hand, there's a study in contrast: the humble, 51-room Chalet with its wooden faux Tyrolean facade next to the St. Regis Aspen, all 257 rooms of it, commanding the mountain base with the hauteur of a European castle. Side by side, the two hotels make a snapshot of a continuing story of Aspen renewal.
"Aspen seems to reinvent itself about every 10 years," says Larry Fredrick, a volunteer historian with the Aspen Historical Society.
He's overstating to make a point, but clearly Aspen has lived several lives in the ebb and flow of silver and snow. That is, money.
Aspen visitors may sample its several incarnations - a tour spanning more than a century of phases marked by boom, collapse, dormancy, rejuvenation, libertarian ease and wretched excess. Each period has left behind something. A cultural or architectural legacy, a stylistic touch.
If the oldest Victorian buildings in town could talk, they would tell about watching money flood the streets, then drain steadily away, then return, surging into the Roaring Fork Valley. In terms suitable for a bumper sticker, some folks in town sum up this moment in the 118-year life of Aspen by talking about how "the billionaires pushed out the millionaires." Maybe.
Perhaps it just feels that way.
Jody McCabe, director of the Aspen Historical Society, says the high-glitz image is grossly overplayed in the media. What about the culture, she asks? The Aspen Music Festival, Aspen Institute, Aspen Writers' Foundation, Jazz Aspen. That's the real story.
But Larry Fredrick, who moved to Aspen from Wyoming in 1981, looks around at the cars, the clothes, the houses, and cannot help but notice "people trying to out-do each other."
Rough stone and Cartier
Aspen presents a particular blend of Western rustic, Hollywood chic and High Culture earnestness. Today's visitor to Aspen is apt to feel a certain disorientation. To walk around Aspen in the late 1990s is to stop and say: What place is this? Who moved Rodeo Drive to the Rockies? Is this another Trump project, or is that The Donald himself there on the slopes?
Sample this moment, say, at the St. Regis Aspen, the biggest hotel in town, which opened in 1992 as the Ritz-Carlton. The lobby lounge with the rough-stone double fireplace is apt to be populated by a goodly number of 10-gallon Stetsons, but the glass display cases in the ground-floor corridors are not showing livestock feed. The cases show items from local shops: Cartier wristwatches, diamond-studded earrings. At peak snow season, St. Regis rooms start at more than $400 a night.
This has been the drift of things since the late 1970s, when the curtain fell on the era of latter-day hippies, on Aspen's days as an enclave for people who liked their marijuana regularly, their hair in ponytails and their police officers easy-going. The Aspen Skiing Co., the force that set Aspen on its path to greatness in 1946, was purchased by 20th Century Fox for $47 million in 1978. Fox has since been bought out by Lester Crown, a Chicago multi-billionaire.
Hollywood, a presence since movie stars began visiting in the 1940s, thus staked a claim on Aspen's heart and soul. The claim has only grown since. More moguls buying property, more slope-side celebrity sightings. More shops selling wristwatches for the sort of money that could have bought a small house in town in the early 1960s. To quote a cartoon in a local magazine showing a scene in a brokerage house: "Hold Everything! Disney just bought Aspen!"
It's this that strikes you first, this combination of rough-hewn construction and high-gloss accessorizing. It's places like the 90-room Aspen Club Lodge, its lobby done in blond, tree-sized timbers, stone floors and walls, great expanses of glass embracing soaring views of Aspen Mountain. The views, the prices - both breathtaking.
It's the Little Nell hotel right next door, a step up in price from the Aspen Club Lodge and the St. Regis. Named for an old silver mine, the Little Nell sits at the foot of Aspen Mountain, a cluster of peaked gables on the outside, a soothing blend of buttery/chocolatey stone and wood on the inside.
The silver years
Such places speak of mergers and acquisitions, money in commodities, corporate jets and commitments overseas. Much of this has happened in the last 20 years, completing the boom-bust-boom cycle that began when a few prospectors found silver nearby in 1879.
In those days, the place was called Ute City. Tourist traffic consisted mostly of members of the Ute tribe of Native Americans making summer encampments.
The Utes' days of dominion in the valley were numbered as soon as rich silver deposits were discovered nearby. White men appeared in great numbers. In 1880, they changed the name of the place to Aspen. Two railroads were routed through town to ship what was at one time a sixth of the country's silver supply. The hubbub attracted the East Coast money of such men as Jerome B. Wheeler, half-owner of Macy's Department Store. The money men built grand, red-stone banks, hotels, even an opera house. Aspen became the first city west of the Mississippi to have electric lights.
Thanks to historic preservation and re-creation, visitors can still spend a fair portion of a vacation in boom-time surroundings. The mark of the good years remains in the form of several splendid Victorian buildings, distinguishing Aspen from the nearby Rocky Mountain ski resort towns of Vail and Copper Mountain. There's nothing quite like Aspen, if only for the views of these grand 19th-century red-stone buildings standing in winter dusk against the backdrop of a snow-shrouded mountain.
One of the finest buildings is also one of the finest hotels in town, the Hotel Jerome, built at the height of the silver boom by Wheeler.
After a renovation in 1985, the hotel might now be considered a period interpretation with some original fixtures and furnishings. It feels like a live-in museum without the dust and the velvet ropes. Even if you don't stay in the hotel - peak season rooms start at nearly $500 - you might get a meal or drink at the bar, restored in all its tin-ceiling, brass-fixture glory. Fine beers on tap and good burgers and sandwiches.
The bar makes a nice stop before or after a concert or show at the Wheeler Opera House two blocks away. Jerome Wheeler put it up and would likely be pleased to see it since its restoration in 1984, a cozy jewel of a concert hall resplendent with crimson seats, blue walls and deep, reddish wood detail throughout.
Wheeler's trio of buildings is completed with the Wheeler-Stallard House, now a historical museum on Aspen's tranquil west end. Wheeler-Stallard is included in a west-end house tour conducted by appointment through the Aspen Historical Society.
Nineteenth-century ambience is carried on in varying degrees of historical authenticity at a number of other hotels, restaurants and pubs, including the Ute City Bar & Grill, the Red Onion tavern, the Sardy House hotel and Jack's restaurant, Bentley's pub at the Wheeler Opera House and the Mother Lode.
Culture and sport
Thirteen years, that was the boom. In 1893, Congress pulled the plug by adopting the Sherman Silver Act, withdrawing silver from the joint gold-silver monetary standard. Silver prices fell. Aspen began a steady decline lasting decades. By 1930 the population, which peaked at about 12,000 in the early 1890s, had fallen to 700 people, most of whom made their living growing potatoes and selling supplies to nearby ranchers and farmers. Local historians refer to this time as "the quiet years."
Finding some mark, some legacy of this period is about as tough as getting a good cigar for under $10 at the Pen Perfecto shop next to the Little Nell. A visitor looking for a taste of the quiet years might have to use her imagination, stroll out of town on Red Mountain Road and gaze at the open land to the north.
Because after Old Old Aspen - that is, Victorian Aspen - there is what you might simply call Old Aspen or New Old Aspen. This Aspen arose in the decade after World War II, when the city assumed prominence as a center for skiing. Thanks to the efforts of business people and veterans of the 10th Mountain Division, skiing troops who trained near Aspen, the first ski lift opened on Aspen Mountain in 1947.
The town gained international prominence in 1949 when Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke - a chief architect of Aspen's ascension - joined forces with the University of Chicago to stage a festival marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In 1950, Aspen was the site of an international skiing championship. In two years the old mining town had a claim on world culture and sport.
Live to ski
Aspen began attracting not only skiing visitors but people who wanted to build a new life around the sport. They waited tables, carried luggage, ran the drug-store soda fountain, whatever it took to support themselves.
Among them was Ralph Melville, who was building houses in Massachusetts after the war. He loved skiing and decided he wanted to open his own ski lodge. After hearing about Aspen through a friend, he arrived in 1951 to find dirt roads, many boarded-up buildings and a growing sense of excitement about what might be. Later he found a piece of land, a 60-by-100-foot plot, he could afford.
Melville opened the Mountain Chalet with four rooms around Christmas 1954. He's got 51 rooms now, a 99.9 percent glitz-free island of modesty with rooms starting at $140 in peak season. It's not fancy, it's not even stylish. Call it homey, don't expect to be waited on hand and foot, and forget the lobby lounge celebrity sightings.
Melville, a ruddy-faced 73-year-old, is as unpretentious as his lodge. He leans toward plaid flannel shirts and slacks without designer labels. You won't hear him making snide comments about the folks who shop at the Porsche Design store (limited edition stainless steel wristwatch, $2,300), but he can't help noticing "people who can't go skiing without their cell phones. ... Seems like it would take away some of the enjoyment."
Melville became a symbol of resistance to change when the developer of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, now the St. Regis, tried to buy his lodge to raze it and make room for the new hotel. Melville says they had a cordial conversation, but he refused. He wanted to run his lodge. That's why he came here.
The same pioneer spirit helped build the Boomerang Lodge, about 10 blocks away. Charlie Paterson - who first worked as a bellhop at the Hotel Jerome when he arrived in 1949 - opened the first three rooms in 1956. Three bucks a night plus $2.50 if you wanted dinner and breakfast.
Aspen allowed Paterson to pursue his passion for both skiing and architecture. In the late 1950s, he left Aspen to study with Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin. He returned to expand his lodge and teach skiing. The Boomerang, which began as a boxy cabin, grew in several phases according to Paterson's design, strongly influenced by Wright: long horizontal lines, cantilevered roofs and corners built entirely of glass.
It's not quite a showplace like the St. Regis or the Little Nell, but neither is it as plain as the Mountain Chalet. The 34 rooms and apartments at the Boomerang - starting at $200 in peak season - are done in a contemporary style with Western decorative accents, some rooms with marble-front fireplaces and marble bathrooms.
To dine in surroundings of similar vintage, consider three restaurants: Guido's, specializing in Swiss-French-Italian food, the Wienerstube, offering Austrian-style food and the Skier's Chalet Steak House, listed in the guide books as "ideal for families with hearty appetites." That is, Aspen pre-chic, a stalwart since the town was still awakening from a 50-year slumber.
It's not all Porsche wristwatches and beautiful people at the Little Nell, says Steve DeGouveia, who moved to Aspen from San Francisco in 1977.
"I don't find it in my face," says DeGouveia, who owns Footloose and Fancy Things, a leather goods and jewelry store. "People see what they want to see."
AN IDEAL DAY
6:30 a.m.: Grab a cup of coffee or whatever suits you for an eye-opener. Drive from Aspen about 15 miles west to Snowmass Creek Valley to pick up your sunrise balloon ride around the Rocky Mountains with Above It All Balloon Co. Inc. The $195-per-person fare includes a champagne brunch when you land. The whole experience lasts about three hours.
11 a.m.: Drive back toward Aspen and head south off state Route 82 into Ashcroft for an afternoon of cross-country skiing.
4 p.m.: Return to Aspen for drinks and appetizers at the Hotel Jerome bar.
6 p.m.: Walk through Aspen at dusk. When the street lights come up on these Victorian streets, when the flaming torches are lighted outside the Chart House restaurant against a backdrop of snow mountains, it's magical.
8 p.m.: Dinner at Cache Cache.
WHEN YOU GO ...
Getting there: Most major airlines fly from BWI to Denver with plane changes at airports in between. From Denver, the drive through the Rocky Mountains to Aspen takes about four hours, featuring splendid views and, in snow or sleet, potentially treacherous curves. United Airlines, the only carrier offering nonstop flights to Denver, is also the only airline that flies from Denver to Aspen Airport.
Tips: Be mindful of high altitudes. Drink lots of water to ease the effects of thin air. Cut back on alcohol consumption, and in the first couple of days don't be overly ambitious in outdoor activities. Allow for frequent rest periods when hiking or skiing.
Where to stay: Rates at most hotels change every few weeks during the ski season, peaking for holidays in mid-December to early January. During peak weeks, the most expensive places in town start at about $400 a night, the middle range at $230, the least expensive at about $150.
If money is no object, consider the Hotel Jerome, Little Nell, St. Regis Aspen or the Aspen Club Lodge. Condominiums in this range are the Residence Inn and the Brand Building.
Among hotels in the middle range are the Hearthstone, Beaumont Inn, Boomerang Lodge and the Molly Gibson. The Gant is a condominium building in this range.
Among the least expensive places are the Christmas Inn, Skier's Chalet, Mountain Chalet and Ullr Lodge.
For information on accommodations call Aspen Central Reservations, 800-262-7736; Aspen Ski Tours, 800-525-2052; Affordable Aspen, 800-243-9466.
Where to eat: With dozens of restaurants spanning a broad range of taste and budget, the main culinary challenge in Aspen might be making up your mind. You can stick to a budget with an array of pizza and sandwich shops and such places as the Red Onion, the Big Wrap, Aspen Harvest Cafe, La Cocina, Little Annie's and Boogie's Diner, owned by Baltimore's own Leonard "Boogie" Weinglass.
At the loftier elevations of Aspen's restaurant scene are the Baang Cafe, the Century Room at the Hotel Jerome, Pinons, Krabloonik, the Renaissance and the Crystal Palace.
In between there's the Ute City Grill, O'Leary's Pub, Bentley's at the Wheeler, Rusty's Hickory House and the Flying Dog Brew Pub.
High points: Aspen Mountain, 11,212 feet; Aspen Highlands, 11,675; Buttermilk, 9,900; Snowmass, 12,310.
A low point: Roaring Fork Valley floor, Aspen, 7,908 feet.
Information: Need maps, details? Call Aspen Central Reservations: 800-262-7736. While in town stop at the Visitor Information Center next to the Wheeler Opera House on Hyman Avenue.
Pub Date: 11/29/98