VAIL — On any given Sunday at both the Vail or Beaver Creek Interfaith Chapels, pastors can be seen setting up services for as many as 350 people in as little as eight minutes.
The Rev. Brooks Keith, of the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, has done just that, and it’s just one of the many reasons he loves being a part of the valley’s interfaith community.
The interfaith community was born in the very early days of Vail, said Don Simonton, who was a minister for the earliest Protestant services held in Vail. Simonton now serves as treasurer of the Vail Religious Foundation, and is the director of the building committee for the new interfaith chapel being built in Edwards. The new chapel will house four congregations.
Vail Associates presented the early congregations with a proposal to build a single church on land the ski company would donate to them, so that’s what they did, Simonton said.
The groundbreaking for the Vail Chapel happened in the summer of 1968, and the building was finished and dedicated in the fall of 1969, he said.
That’s the site of the Vail Interfaith Chapel today. The Vail Religious Foundation was already operating at the time, but there wasn’t much money to build the chapel, Simonton said. Everyone put their heads together and found the right people to help contribute.
Many of Vail’s second-home owners from Denver pitched in too. They just felt Vail ought to have a church building, Simonton said.
Evelyn Rosen, of B’nai Vail, said members have tried to find other interfaith communities around the country, and have only been able to track down two that operate outside of a military facility, prison or college campus.
“It’s pretty rare that we’d have this in the Vail Valley,” Rosen said.
