When the doors of the New Eldorado Hotel opened in 1908, guests could relax on the 40-room resort’s wraparound porch and view the canyon’s red cliffs-all for $3.50 a week.
For a dime, outdoor enthusiasts could launch themselves from the 40-foot diving towers into 76-degree water piped from the artesian spring.
Decades later, music lovers at the resort paid a quarter to dance to Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong.
“It was considered the Coney Island of the West,” said Jeremy Martin, vice president of marketing at Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc., a water-bottling company and the resort’s current owner.
These days swimming is about the only activity left at the resort. After 100 years, it has grown a bit threadbare.
The ballroom, which rang with the shouts of roller-skaters during the day and hosted dancers at night, sits almost empty.
Despite its fading fortunes, the owners have not forgotten the site’s history. On July 4, a century after the grand opening, they are marking the warm spring’s centennial in a fashion similar to its debut – with big-band music and, of course, swimming.
“I’m sure 100 years ago, they did it as grand as they could,” Martin says. “We figured 100 years later you have to do something big too.”
In the resort’s heyday, the area’s natural beauty and the resort’s attractions lured as many as 2,000 people a day to the pool in Eldorado Springs in Boulder County. Droves of people from Boulder and Denver came by trains, carriages and even cars set on railroad tracks to what was advertised in a circular of the day as the “grandest day trip into the mountains.”
“It was very different for a lot people,” says Joanna Sampson, author of “High, Wild and Handsome,” a history of Eldorado Canyon and South Boulder Creek. “Some people went in for just the natural aspect of the canyon, which is the way it is now, and some went in for the glitz and the glitter.”
The main attraction for many was watching high-wire artist Ivy Baldwin walk the 635 feet across the canyon with no safety net.
“He was a star attraction in the canyon, and he was an amazing man,” Sampson said. “When he got on the wire, you could not keep your eyes off of him.”
The tightrope act, clean water, dances and natural beauty of the area drew world-famous celebrities to the resort. Champion boxer and Manassa native Jack Dempsey, actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, comedians Jimmy Durante and W.C. Fields, physicist Robert Oppenheimer, and Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower all came to take the waters.
Fields, famous for his tippling, supposedly put down his beloved bottle during visits. “He’d always been known for drinking whiskey, but he was known to drink some Eldorado too,” Martin says.
Despite the resort’s roster of famous guests, its stint as a prominent retreat did not last. The very remoteness that made it attractive to visitors left it susceptible to natural disasters. Fire and flood have destroyed bridges, hotels, pools and other structures throughout its history.
“The 1938 flood was the biggest flood they ever had,” Sampson says. “And it pretty much tore the town apart.”
The flood swept away the shaded stands that towered over the pool. A year later, fire razed the New Eldorado Hotel. Like the stands, it was never rebuilt.
What remains – and still attracts adults and children alike in the summer months – is the pool that is constantly recharged with fresh spring water. The water, which some claim leaves the skin soft and sweet-smelling, is the main revenue source for Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc., which bottles and sells it.
“People came here and grew up swimming here, and then they’d have kids, and they would bring their kids swimming here,” Sipple says. “That tradition kind of hung on.”
Other traditions have evaporated, but Martin says there are plans to try to salvage the memories by restoring some of the historic sites on the property, such as Ivy Baldwin’s cabin.
“The goal is to fix the place up and get it back to where it was in the heyday, so it’s more than a place where people come to swim – which is basically what it is now,” Martin says. “We really feel we’re guardians of this place. We want it to feel like you’ve gone back in time and keep it that way for another 100 years.”
Staff writer Joan Gandy can be reached at 303-820-1689 or jgandy@denverpost.com.
Eldorado Springs Resort
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION|New Eldorado Hotel’s 100th anniversary celebration; Monday; pool hours, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; big-band performance, 2-6 p.m.|$4-$6
