Minturn – Like most of us, Bill Reis has spent years gathering stuff.
Today his place is, well, cluttered. It’s so full of stuff – the everyday junk we all collect – that some days he wonders if the authentic birch bark canoe made by Ojibwa Indians in Minnesota in 1900 and now leaning in a corner is going to topple onto his head as he sits in his 1910 barber’s chair beside the heavy metal Scottish suit of armor and the 1890 one-horse sleigh with the stuffed coyote lying on the red velvet cushion.
Reis has been gathering that kind of stuff for 30 years. He’s 60, his beard has turned gray and he’s tired. To use the old expression, he can hear the 1885 handcrafted German Black Forest grandfather clock ticking.
His place is the Battle Mountain Trading Post. The converted turn-of-the-century gas station sits on Main Street in this tiny Colorado town in the shadow of a famous ski resort. If nearby Vail is, as its residents will tell you, the crown jewel of the Rocky Mountains, Minturn is the worn-out pair of hunting boots or the faded wool plaid shirt of the Rockies.
Somehow, as money swirled all around it but never landed, the old silver mining town has survived. And so has Reis. But these days he walks past his shining nickel-plated 19th century Baseburner Simplicity coal and wood stove and his gigantic, stunning 1950s Navajo rug with a heavy heart.
The Battle Mountain Trading Post may be nearing the end of its life.
The trading post is not really a trading post, of course. Unless you consider handing over $40,000 for the Black Forest grandfather clock to be a trade.
It is, in fact, a store. And it is filled with remarkable things. On a recent day, as a mountain morning faded and the sun began to warm the chilly air, Reis sat in a polished oak and leather barber chair from the 1920s. On either side of him were two dogs – Daisy and Charlie – with a combined weight of about 10 pounds.
Reis went back to the beginning.
He came to the Rockies from California more than three decades ago, lured by elk hunting and the solitude and the majesty of the place. And he stayed. He bought the old gas station and began making and selling redwood burl coffee tables.
He glances around now at the things that take up nearly every inch of the floors, walls and ceilings.
“I guess I got sidetracked,” he said, and he laughed.
He began driving around the country and finding things. The old Ford truck, in pristine condition, with the moose head mounted in the back. Wood stoves. The grandfather clock, which had sat for nearly a century in a girls’ school in Oakland, Calif. The 14-foot birch bark canoe. And a thousand other things, from 100-year-old pool tables to covered wagons.
Covered wagons?
“Sold three of them to a Japanese businessman a few years ago,” he said. “He was starting an American amusement park near Tokyo. He offered to buy my entire store.”
Reis didn’t sell everything. But the bill for the covered wagons and truckloads of other items came, he said, to about $300,000.
Now, though, you just might be able to buy the whole store.
In the past few years Reis lost a dear friend to cancer. Today, two more close friends have been diagnosed with other forms of the disease. Tick-tock.
“My life has been a constant treasure hunt,” he said. “Everything I bought for this place, well, it was like grabbing a piece of time. But now my buddies are dying. I think maybe 30 years of this is enough.”
He sits in the old barber chair with Daisy, the Chihuahua, on his right. Daisy was owned by the friend who died. Reis raises a heavy hand and brings it down softly on the dog’s head, stroking Daisy behind the ears.
“I’ve spent half of my life in this store,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to travel. I always meant to travel more.”
He pauses now and stares out the window, past the 10-by-12-foot black, red, gray and white Navajo rug the Indians called an “eye-dazzler” and is, he said, valued at $45,000.
And then a soft laugh bounces around the room.
“Although once I get on the road,” he said, “I’d probably just end up buying more stuff.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can
be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
