6 AUGUST 22-28, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | He hopes a similar fate doesn’t await the hundreds of boxes containing Buffalo Bill-related items in the Tepee’s cavernous basement and all of the souvenirs arrayed throughout the retail space — but it could happen. The city is noncommittal about how long the restaurant and gift shop will be inaccessible, or even if they’ll eventually return in anything like their current form. The same goes for Echo Lake Lodge. Equally unclear is the way Buffalo Bill’s legacy will evolve over the coming years. Debates over whether Western fi gures such as Kit Carson were heroes or villains have become more heated over time, and Cody is hardly immune from such historical re- consideration. Steve Friesen, director of the Buffalo Bill Museum from the mid-1990s until 2017, and the author of several books about Cody, sees him as quite progressive for his era. But Joshua Emerson, a comedian who’s also a member of the Denver American Indian Commission, says, “I hate him. Indian fi ghter, hunted buffalo with a rifl e, and I think his Wild West show was one of the most harmful infl uences on this country’s relationship with Indigenous people.” And then there’s the matter of Cody’s con- tinued relevance, or lack thereof. While his showmanship has many modern corollaries, he’s no longer as prominent a pop-cultural icon as he was for many decades after his death. Today the most recognized Buffalo Bill is undoubtedly Josh Allen, fi eld general for the NFL team of the same name, who previously quarterbacked at the University of Wyoming. But don’t bury William F. Cody yet. The roots of H.W. Stewart Inc. trace back to 1893, when Carle’s grandparents, Orrie and Helen Stewart, began peddling keepsake newspapers and more to passengers on the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. The company held on to the Pikes Peak conces- sion rights until 1992, when a much larger corporation, Aramark, outbid it. This bad break wasn’t an anomaly: H.W. Stewart has experienced a pattern of losing control of long-held businesses at Colorado tourist destinations. Orrie, Helen and their heirs ran Garden of the Gods’ Hidden Inn from 1948 to 1994; the Mount Evans Crest House from 1956 to 1979; and the Red Rocks Trading Post from 1963 to 2002. Carle and his associ- ates also provided food and drink service for Red Rocks Amphitheatre from 1994 to 2002 and secured the venue’s fi rst liquor license. “I thought hot chocolate and doughnuts sold well on Pikes Peak until I sold beer at Red Rocks,” Carle says, laughing. “I’d never made so much money.” But then Aramark won that contract, too. H.W. Stewart’s current fi ve-year pact for the Buffalo Bill enterprise expires this year — but Denver didn’t issue a request for a new proposal for reasons that Jolon Clark, Denver Parks & Recreation’s executive director, says have been lingering for sixteen years. “In 2008, a committee for a master-plan- ning effort looked into [Denver] Mountain Parks broadly, but it also looked at that build- ing and saw a need for it to be fully assessed for historic preservation,” Clark reveals. “And there’s a desperate need for that to be done. As our team looked more and more into the building, they saw major issues with rotting log structures and continuing problems with the septic system.” Anxiety over sewage was also cited to explain why Echo Lake Lodge needed to suspend service — Carle blames the city for putting in a “dumb system” that could pro- duce a powerful stench — and the potential for such issues may be even more acute at the restaurant and gift shop because of the site’s popularity. Carle says the facilities serve as many as 500,000 visitors a year and guesses that around 2,000 to 3,000 people stop by daily during warm-weather months to take in an awe-inspiring 270-degree view of Denver and its immediate environs. In contrast, the museum’s annual atten- dance tends to hover around 80,000, and only paying customers can use its restrooms, while the Tepee’s are open to all — a big reason for the plumbing strain. Still, Carle sees no evidence of looming catastrophe. Clark begs to differ. “Over the last several years, we have expe- rienced mechanical failures of the lift system, a high volume of sewage that had to be manually removed, pipe deterioration and visible surfac- ing in the soil-treatment area,” Clark outlines. “In 2022, the pump had to be replaced. The component failure registered an alarm, and even with the pump down, we had overfl ow of untreated sewage onto nearby terrain.” In response, Carle emphasizes that he’s dealt with such challenges in the past with- out having to close. He recalls that when he and his family took on the restaurant and gift shop again in 1988, the building was on the verge of collapse, but they saved it by using steel supports instead of telephone poles to prop it up. He covered the repair tab, he says. Clark acknowledges that funding for signifi cant repairs was in short supply back then. But he says the situation changed with the passage of 2018’s Measure 2A, a parks- and-open-space sales tax he championed when he was a member of Denver City Council. Now there’s money to tackle what he calls “deferred maintenance” at the Tepee, the Lodge and other Denver Mountain Parks landmarks. In his words, “It’s really exciting to see the moment where we start to reinvest in these things for the long term.” There’s another potential factor behind Den- ver’s move to close the Tepee, Carle be- lieves: “They think Canceling Buffalo Bill continued from page 5 continued on page 8 Bill Carle inside the store he runs in the century-old Pahaska Tepee (above left), built on Lookout Mountain in the ’20s by Buffalo Bill’s grave. MICHAEL ROBERTS MICHAEL ROBERTS BUFFALO BILL MUSEUM AND GRAVE
