On a sunny Monday in March, Grace Marx unpacks gear from the back of a car at the remote South Platte River trailhead outside of Conifer, Colorado. Sheās preparing for a three-day backpacking trip with her husband and two young kids.
The trailhead where Marx and her family will embark serves as one of many starting points for the , a 567-mile high-altitude wilderness path that traverses eight mountain ranges between Denver and Durango.
Marxās family isnāt new to the Colorado Trail. Theyāve already hiked a couple stretches together, but itās no accident that theyāre back for more.
āThe plan is to finish the trail by the time these kids graduate high school,ā Marx said with a nod toward 7-year-old Niels and 9-year-old Miriam. āItās a great way to get the kids out and enjoy the area, see parts of the state we havenāt seen before.ā
Today, the Colorado Trail welcomes thousands of hikers, bikers, horseback riders and others to explore the stateās mountain peaks and river valleys, but it wasnāt always that way. A new archive at the Denver Public Library's Central Library documents the highs and lows of building the Colorado Trail with a spotlight on , an avid outdoorswoman and mother of four known as the 'Mother of the Colorado Trail.'
The collection focuses on Gaskillās life and legacy and includes thousands of photographs, awards, songs and poems, newspaper clippings and more related to Gaskill and the Colorado Trail.
Denver Public Library Special Collection Archivist Laura Ruttum Senturia is in charge of processing Gaskillās archival collection. She said the archive serves as starting point for researchers and other curious souls who want to learn about a piece of Colorado's outdoor recreation history.
"Anyone interested in the trail itself I think would love this collection. Anyone who has hiked the trail I think would love it. They'll see many photos of places that they themselves have been," Ruttum Senturia said. "Then I think, you know, people interested in women's history, conservation history."
The Colorado Trail, akin to other U.S. long-distance hikes such as the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails, was a among some outdoorsy Coloradans until the trail's construction began in the 1970s. It took over a decade and many volunteer trail crews to develop and the process wasnāt always smooth sailing.
āThe country we have here in Colorado, it hadnāt even been opened up to the public,ā Gaskill said in a . āThe idea was, it was going to be a trail for the people of Colorado.ā
The archived interview was recorded when Gaskill was in her 80s and a few years after her 2002 induction into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. That interview allows Gaskill to tell parts of the story herself. Ruttum Senturia said other parts of the new archive also give viewers a window into Gaskill's motivations and personality as a leader on the Colorado Trail.
"She had obviously such a strong personality, and a warm personality, that just looking at the photos and seeing some of the things she collected, you really get it," she said. "I never met her, but I feel like I have a strong feeling for her character and what kind of person she was."
Gaskill's son Steven Gaskill said most of the items donated to the archive were actually collected over decades by his father, Dave Gaskill, who compiled them into scrapbooks and boxes later on.
"They weren't kept like a historian," he said. "But probably everything that was ever associated with Gudy and the Colorado Trail is in those archives if somebody wants to dig through them."
Gaskill was charged with organizing the trail effort in 1974 as chairwoman of the Colorado Mountain Clubās Huts and Trails Committee. While the initial goal was to finish the trail by 1980, it proved a more difficult feat than planned. By the mid-1980s, progress to build the trail stagnated and funding for the effort began to run low. Some questioned whether the trail would ever get finished.
Gaskill, however, wasnāt ready to give up. Instead, she dug in her heels, rallying dozens of volunteer trail crews to complete the remaining sections of trail. With her determination and diligence, the trail was finished in 1987.
Ruttum Senturia, the archivist, said many of the collectionās photographs illustrate the process of building the Colorado Trail.
āA lot of them are people with shovels digging or breaking things out, taking a break,ā Ruttum Senturia said.
Building a long-distance trail was hard work, but items in the archive also demonstrate the fun and levity that came with working together for days on end.
āYou find photos where they're making ice cream in a bucket while they're all camping, drinking champagne,ā Ruttum Senturia said. āThere's a photoā¦where Gudy (Gaskill) is getting her hair cut while drinking a beer while sitting on the trail.ā
On trail workdays, Gaskill worked nonstop. She would get up at 4 or 5 a.m. to make breakfast for crews of 10 to 20 volunteers. She worked on the trail with them until the afternoon, then made dinner for everyone.
Steven Gaskill said even after dinner at the end of a long day in the field, his mother was tireless.
āShe would lead songs and just be around the campfire talking with people until they were done talking,ā he said.
Steven Gaskill recalled getting in an argument with his mother about why she wanted to expose pristine portions of Colorado wilderness to the public. Gaskill was ready with her answer.
āShe said, 'You know, if you want to save wilderness, No. 1 you have to have people that understand it and have seen it, so they'll fight for it,'ā Steven Gaskill recalled. āThen she said, 'No. 2, if I build a trail, people will use the trail and that will be a corridor where people will see the wilderness, and the rest of the wilderness will stay wilderness.'ā
Bill Manning, the recently retired former executive director of the Colorado Trail Foundation, said outdoors education was at the heart of what Gaskill did.
"She was a teacher at heart and she loved to share learning with others," Manning said. "She loved the outdoors, loved the mountains and wanted other people to experience the mountains."
Many of the items in the archivesāsome of which were notes, songs and poems sent to Gudy from past volunteers she led on trail crewsādemonstrate Gaskill's popularity as a leader. Manning remembers a letter and small hand-painted watercolor of a mountain Gaskill sent him in thanks for a gift he had given her.
"She ends it by saying, 'A hug to you, long overdue, Gudy,'" Manning read from Gaskill's letter.
Gaskill wasnāt without her detractors, though. Her doggedness to see the Colorado Trail through as a woman leader posed a threat to the status quo.
āThere was a real discrimination for some woman to come into a manās world, which is the Forest Serviceāhis districtāand say, āWeāre going to be building a trail in your district,āā Gaskill said in the archival interview.
Back at the trailhead, the youngest backpacker in Grace Marxās family, 7-year-old Niels Reid, seemed to sense Gaskill's spirit of perseverance as he prepared to embark.
āI'm not scared at all,ā Reid said. āEspecially because there are snakes!ā
Though itās unlikely snakes would be on the trail this time of year, Reidās enthusiasm to see what lay in remote parts of Colorado wilderness is exactly what Gaskill would have wanted.
As Marxās family took off, crossing a bridge in Gaskillās honor and veering right to tread carefully across an icy patch of trail, the South Platte River rushed on. Itās a reminder of the continuity of Gaskillās legacy, which lives on in the path through Colorado's wilderness, the people who traverse itāand now, in the archives.
A go-getter to the end, Gaskill died at 89 years old in 2016. She was also the first woman president of the Colorado Mountain Club, a painter and sculptor, and a world traveler.
āThe women would all say, āGosh, if you can do it at your age, I guess I can do it,āā Gaskill said in the 2008 interview. āIām aware that Iām pretty strong. I can still do this, and Iām in my 80s, so Iām thankful."
The Gudy Gaskill archive is now open to the public at Denverās Central Library. Visitors can access the collection by visiting the library or by ahead of time. Some pieces of the collection will soon also be available online.
