Stories find their way into the popular imagination through circuitous routes, but legends take more direct paths.
At 80, Enda Mills Kiley '41 is a legend in her own right. The daughter of Enos Mills, father of the Rocky Mountain National Park, Kiley devotes great energy, and passion to helping others discover what her father did a century ago.
Her story begins with her father's 1885 train ride across the Kansas plains to Estes Park, Colorado. Sickly when young due to an allergy to wheat, Mills left his home near Pleasanton, Kansas, to seek adventure in the fresh air of Colorado. Though he was only 14 when he left his parents, Kiley says her father had a great curiosity and enthusiasm for the world. In Colorado, he embarked on a lifelong campaign to preserve nature and teach others to embrace it.
"As a nationally known advocate for all kinds of parks and open spaces, my father kept journals of his travels--ones he knew others would want to readthat were recollections of his experiences," says Kiley. Mills befriended naturalist John Muir through his travels, and was greatly influenced by their friendship. "Even at the turn of the 20th century, loggers and hunters were quickly depleting natural resources," says Kiley, "and my father taught about preserving the living woods--birds and trees of the forests."
In Estes Park, Mills built the Longs Peak Inn at the base of the mountain and invited hundreds of visitors from around the nation for extended "nature stays." "It was a unique and wonderful place," says Kiley. "People came to get out into the wilderness, discover nature, and to be refreshed by it." While the Inn sported some strict rules--no music, no dancing, no card playing--it was all part of Mills' desire to give people a "change of pace," and a new way to enjoy life, says Kiley. The Inn offered several nature activities emphasizing the benefits of the outdoors.
"He created nature-guiding--the seed for nature interpretation today," says Kiley. His walks and talks, more inspirational than informational, stimulated people's interest in nature. "My father avoided the word teacher in describing himself," says Kiley. "He believed that his responsibility was to incite people's interest, and that nature was the teacher."
With her daughter and granddaughter, Elizabeth and Eryn Mills, Kiley continues her father's legacy, operating a museum and gallery dedicated to the work of Enos Mills. The museum's home, the original one-room homestead cabin built by Mills in 1885, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "Many buildings called "original" have actually been moved or renovated," says Kiley. "This one isn't like that. This is the original cabin in the same spot my father built it."
Enda, Elizabeth, and Eryn still offer nature activities based on Enos Mills' nature-guiding methods, as well as lectures, a gallery of Mills' photography, letters and historical documents, and reprints of his books, including Adventures of a Nature Guide (1920).
"We call our guests 'visitors,' not 'tourists,'" Kiley explains. "We want people who have the time to stay a while and savor this story." Kiley, a spry 80, still gives the nature discovery talks for visitors. "But I leave most everything else to my girls."
In 1915, Mills succeeded in a campaign to create the Rocky Mountain National Park. His concern for the fate of the earth nurtured by his friendship with John Muir aided him in his campaign. Years of lobbying for the creation of the park and his "talking" tours made him a national figure. "My father used to say that he had a campfire in every state," says Kiley. "He urged everyone to save some special scenery near them," she says.
"Most everything my father did was people-oriented," says Kiley. "His goal was to get them into nature, to get them interested, then to let nature take over." That method certainly worked for two women who came from Ohio in 1916. Esther Burnell, an interior designer educated at the Pratt Art Institute in New York, and her sister Elizabeth, came to Longs Peak Inn in 1916 for a respite. Captivated by the area and by Enos Mills' zeal, the two stayed on. Esther married Enos Mills, and Elizabeth continued on at the Inn for a decade.
Both women were trained as nature guides, later becoming the first guides to be licensed by the National Parks. Enos Mills invited people from around the world to be trained as guides. "We have Chicago newspaper clippings in the museum from the 1920s encouraging college girls to become nature guides," says Kiley.
Enos Mills died in 1922 after suffering from blood poisoning from an abscessed tooth. He lived only long enough to see Enda, his only daughter, turn three. "I know that we did lots of fun things when he was around because I have so many photos of him," says Kiley. "In fact, the museum wouldn't exist today if my mother hadn't saved so many things from Enos' life."
After her husband's death, Esther Burnell Mills kept the Inn open, continuing to run it as Mills had. She dedicated the remainder of her life to keeping her husband's work and concerns alive. "My mother truly believed in what my father had done, and wanted to make sure his legacy continued."
After graduating from Pomona in 1941, Enda Mills Kiley earned a master's degree in education from the University of Denver. She spent time teaching at Northwestern University, then joined the Navy where she met Robert Kiley. They were married in Rhode Island. With their four children, the Kileys returned to Colorado after her mother died in 1964. "I took my husband there for a Christmas vacation, and we've never left."
Though given the opportunity to run Longs Peak Inn shortly after she graduated from Pomona, Kiley declined. Instead, after her mother died, she and her husband opened the Enos Mills Cabin Museum and Gallery as a monument to her father's work with nature discovery and preservation.
"The cabin and the trails are still here for you to turn on your senses," says Kiley. "My girls and I believe as my father did that you have to discover nature, learn from it, then become concerned with saving it. Every person living in the city needs to look around and see what's critical--trees, bushes, animals, sky, water. Then speak out. Save the environment. Start with what's closest to you."
The Enos Mills Cabin Museum and Gallery is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and by appointment throughout the year. Call (970) 586-4706 for reservations.
--Sarah Dolinar
--Photo by Glen Asakawa, originally printed Jan. 3, 1999,
reprinted with permission of the Denver Rocky Mountain News
