TELLURIDE — When Angie, Pam and Crissy Aldasoro were growing up in the family’s single-wide trailer on a mesa outside Telluride, they likened it to being in Antarctica.
Peering into the dark in the mid-1960s, they could never see lights. There were no neighbors near the 5,000-acre Aldasoro Brothers Ranch where herds of sheep made the mountain valleys look snow-covered in July. Their outside links were a radio station from faraway Oklahoma City and one TV station that would fade when an antenna was turned in the down-on-its- luck town of Telluride.
Fast forward. The Aldasoro girls — now Pam Bennett, Angie Petersen and Cristine Mitchell, or “the sisters,” as they are known around Telluride — are the executives in a slew of commercial property-management corporations. Part of their ranch is now the largest star-studded subdivision in this high- dollar region. Another piece is the highest commercial airport in the country.
But the sisters are most proud of being the keepers of an agricultural legacy.
The 735-acre heart of the ranch that their Basque grandfather bought as prime sheep pasture is still theirs, treasured for its colorful history.
“We never thought anyone would come up here,” said Pam, as she took in the panorama of peaks from the ranch where Angie lives in an upgraded triple-wide on the site of the original tin trailer.
Fanning out from this ranch, mountain manses, electronic gates and copper- topped fences dot and line the steep folds of land. Jets rise and sink below at the busy airport. Trucks hauling supplies grind up the hard-packed roads.
At times, the helicopters of paparazzi whir overhead. Tom Cruise has a home here. Other neighbors include writer Clive Cussler, a former NFL running back and a top executive with Frito-Lay.
Land’s history etched on aspens
The history of the land is carved on aspens where lonely herders recorded their exploits and fantasies. The history is also preserved in the street names, including Cristina Way, Joaquin Road and Serapio Drive.
The sisters named the roads in homage to Basque ancestors. Joaquin Road refers to Jose Joaquin Aldasoro, who came to the United States from the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain in 1913 to work for a Utah rancher.
The family’s immigration story nearly ended there. Joaquin was dropped off outside Green River, Utah, and told to walk to his sheep camp 18 miles away. He walked until exhaustion prompted him to bed down in the dark. In the morning, he discovered that if he had kept walking another 200 feet, he would have fallen over a cliff.
Joaquin did not just survive. He thrived. He married Cristina Aguirre, another Basque immigrant, and, with his brother Prudencio and cousin Serapio, started buying up homesteads on Deep Creek Mesa, near Telluride, in 1926. By the mid-1950s, they had acquired 12 homesteads and pastured 5,000 head of sheep there.
The sisters’ father, Albert Aldasoro, eventually took over the operation from the first generation after marrying local girl Yula Mae Anderson. He was well known as the outspoken, gruff-voiced, hard-partying, suspender-wearing face of the ranch around Telluride as change crept up and then steamrolled the area.
But before sheep ranching could no longer compete with development, the sisters had their remote idyll on a mesa that Barbara Walters would describe decades later as “the most beautiful place on Earth.”
The sisters remember eating meals with the sheepherders around their grandmother’s table. They called it “the Jesus table” because it was as large as the table in the “Last Supper” painting.
They climbed mountains, rode horses and little motorcycles, and listened to stories around bonfires. When thunderstorms regularly knocked out power to the trailer, they played Monopoly for days on end.
The sisters also learned to work hard. Their chores included pitching hay and gathering docked sheep’s tails. One Christmas, they were delighted to get matching coveralls and kneepads, which made the job of cleaning out the sheep-transport truck easier.
Their freewheeling life first changed in the early ’70s when “hippies” invaded the ranch. The uninvited visitors camped and made fires of fences. Suddenly, Yula Mae was afraid to let her teen daughters wander the ranch.
“There was a real clashing of cultures. The hippies were incensed that people owned the property where they wanted to camp,” Angie said.
By then, the ranch was struggling financially. Sheep prices were down. Too many loans had piled up. Albert was forced to sell the first parcel of land to a Swiss corporation in 1976, four years after the Telluride ski area opened.
Foreclosure threatened in the 1980s, and more developers came calling.
As it turned out, the land was becoming a gold mine after the ski area caught on and the über-wealthy came looking for scenic ground in the mountains near the West’s newest chic place to be.
Albert, who died in 2008, leased 140 acres for the Telluride Regional Airport. That land and 210 more acres were later taken through a condemnation that brought the Aldasoros a healthy payment. Albert eventually carved off more housing developments. The girls remember one memorable transaction that included a paper bag stuffed with $25,000 in cash as a down payment.
The Aldasoro family was no longer land rich and cash poor.
Proud that family roots remain
The sisters remain proud their family didn’t lose its roots in the process of becoming a major player in Telluride’s development.
All the sisters went away to college, but all eventually came back to the ranch. The pull was strong.
“When I was living in Kansas City, I would come around the curve up here and start crying. It was just so beautiful,” said Angie, who stayed away the longest.
A decade ago, they took over management of the ranch and its developments. The sisters work well together. Making multimillion-dollar decisions is easy, they say. Deciding on more emotionally laden things, like whether to tear down an old garage, has been much tougher.
They have formed 22 corporations and bought up other properties around the Western Slope. One of their companies reflects their shared sense of humor. Paddle Creek and Associates was named for being up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
They are each raising families and doing volunteer work as well as administering scholarships for kids interested in agriculture or who have attended school in San Miguel County.
They are putting together a display about their family history in the Telluride Historical Museum and possibly in an empty storefront this summer. They have also been presenting a popular series of “fireside chats” detailing Aldasoro and Anderson histories, which stretch back four and five generations in Telluride.
“These women are a regional treasure,” said museum director Lauren Bloemsma.
Along with their stories, the sisters have a treasure trove of artifacts. In her living room, Angie keeps a stack of pasteboard suitcases that belonged to her grandparents. They are stuffed with memorabilia. The sisters still have the metal steamer trunk their grandfather brought over in hopes he would fill it with money and move back to the old country.
Most of the large landowners from her grandfather’s era are gone, their land sold and their families moved on. The sheep ranchers have given up. Except for the sisters. They still maintain a flock of 1,000 sheep on summer pasture at the ranch.
“There is a lot of luck,” Angie said, “in us being where we’re at.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
