South Park is a giant short-grass prairie ringed by high peaks—the Continental Divide along the left flank, the Tarryall Range and Pikes Peak to the right. Formed by geologic upheaval and volcanoes millions and millions of years ago, followed by inexorable break down and erosion, it is a valley that the Colorado Geologic Survey calls a highly complex structural and depositional basin. But Virginia McConnell, author on the classic tract on the area, Bayou Salado: The Story of South Park said it so much better: “If ever there was a land of subtle, magnetic charms, South Park is that place.”
Hartsel Geology
By Donald McGookey, Author of Geologic Wonders of South Park, Colorado
Driving through Hartsel, the area appears to be a simple geologic setting. But if you study of the surrounding hills and the available subsurface data, they tell a much more interesting and unique story.
Hartsel is located at an elevation of 9000 feet above sea level near the center of South Park. The town lies just east of a sandstone ridge in the middle of a very large (40 miles EW by 60 miles NS) intermountain basin. South Park is one of a string of four broad intermountain valleys down the middle of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. They include North Park near the Wyoming State line, Middle Park centering around Kremmling on the Colorado River, South Park and Alamosa Valley that straddles the New Mexico line around. All of these parks are surrounded by high mountains; in South Park's case, the mountains are the Collegiate and Mosquito Ranges on the west, the igneous intrusive mountains along the Continental Divide on the north, the Front Range on the east and the Thirty-Nine Mile volcanic pile on the south.
Click here to read the full story, and view more photos, detailing Hartsel's geology.
Hartsel History
By Linda Balough, Park County Historic Preservation Director
The wide-open grasslands in the center of the South Park area once hosted vast herds of buffalo, antelope, elk and other grazing animals as well as the predators who fed on them. Humans were among those hunters. Ute tribes returned to the South Park every summer to enjoy the mild summers and abundant game. Other Native American tribes often made excursions into the high elevation valley and sites of the resulting battles were still evident when the first permanent settlers arrived.
In the early days of the 1800s, French trappers began to trap and collect rich beaver pelts and other furs in the salty marshes of the South Park. They named the area Bayou Salado which combines the French word for marshes—bayou and the Spanish word for salty—salado. They also noted there were three excellent hunting areas in Colorado, and named them the North Park, near Walden, the Middle Park, near Krimmling and the South Park, in which present-day Hartsel holds center stage.
During Colorado's gold rush (1859 and 1860), many of the prospectors and hopefuls raced to the banks of the streams feeding into the South Park area. Towns of tents and hastily built log cabins sprang up nearly overnight in the mountains surrounding South Park. All those miners needed to eat, and one of the men who rushed to the gold fields was Samuel Hartsel. He quickly traded prospecting for collecting the sorry oxen that had pulled the miner's wagons into the gold mining areas and began feeding them up to become dinner for the hungry miners.
Sam Hartsel set up his 160-acre homestead where the Middle and South Forks of the South Platte River met, and brought in twenty head of Shorthorn cattle to start his herd. Soon Sam Hartsel was a man to be reckoned with, having built his livestock to include fine horses and top-grade cattle, and his ranch to include a wagon shop, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill and trading post.
Included in the ranch area was a hot springs that attracted the Utes and increased Hartsel's trading post business. After watching the Native Americans easing their weary joints with relaxing baths in the 134- degree hot springs, Sam developed another business. By the late 1870s, he was able to entice tired travelers on the roads that intersected at his ranch complex to stop to enjoy his hot springs and stay at his newly-built hotel. When the Colorado and Midland Railroad built their line through Hartsel, the hotel grew and a full-fledged town was platted.
After the Hartsel family moved to Denver in 1912, the ranch continued to grow under a variety of owners, and had been built up to 10,000 acres by 1946. when, under the direction of oilman A.D. McDannald, the ranch grew to over 200,000 acres. By 1959, it was split in two, with one half promoted as a subdivision of 5-acres lots, while the other half still grazed livestock.
While the ranchland has changed size, use, and ownership over the years, the little community of Hartsel has remained steadfast in its history—still sporting its train depot, hot springs, bathhouse, historic schoolhouses and merchantile store. The hotel burned in the 1970s.
For a more detailed information on the History of Hartsel, and to view more great old photos of Hartsel and Park County, visit:
www.parkcoarchives.org
Thanks to Park County Historic Archives for the use of these photos!