Ahead of another closed summer, uncertainties remain for Colorado's Echo Lake Lodge

A Colorado mountainside lodge loved for generations will be closed for a second straight summer, with no signs of reopening anytime soon.

Denver Mountain Parks previously laid out closure plans for Echo Lake Lodge through 2025. Those plans could last longer, as the owning agency continues to learn more about the state of the 98-year-old structure beside the road to Mount Blue Sky.

“Our hope was to be able to consider reopening in 2026 for the 100-year anniversary,” said Denver Mountain Parks Director Shannon Dennison.

“At this point, it’s looking like the building needs more work than we’ll be able to achieve by 2026. Historic preservation is generally not a fast process.”

The Echo Lake Lodge that people have known for decades ended after the 2022 season. Heading into 2023, Denver Mountain Parks did not renew the lease for the family who long ran the gift shop, restaurant and bar.

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That’s the family of Bill Carle, whose history also goes back to businesses atop Pikes Peak and Red Rocks Amphitheater. In a recent interview, Carle lamented the end of another decades-long contract through Denver Mountain Parks: the gift shop beside Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave.

“I keep hearing stories of how much these places mean to people,” Carle said, recounting memories of deep family traditions.

He called Echo Lake Lodge’s continued closure “a shame” and “irresponsible.”

“It’s an icon,” he said. “Are you kidding me? It’s craziness in my opinion. But hey, I’m just a businessman.”

For ending the agreement at Echo Lake Lodge, officials have cited a 2008 master plan that detailed past-due work on the building’s mechanical systems and lack of accessibility.

Last summer saw a food truck posted outside the lodge, which was looked after by a resident caretaker. That was while specialists were brought in to assess the facility, Dennison said. She said a yet-to-be-finished report will “help us determine what the limitations are and what the operations for the building might be going forward.”

What seems likely, she said: “We’ll probably never be able to have a full-service restaurant in the building again. I think the building and the mechanical systems just can’t handle it.”

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The septic system has been of highest concern to Denver Mountain Parks. Dennison said the system was designed for an average of 2,000 gallons a day but was seeing closer to 7,000 gallons during the summer.

“Everything there operates good,” Carle said, adding that reservations introduced in recent years to limit the number of drivers on Mount Blue Sky cut down numbers in the lodge.

But “it was not only the visitors coming in,” Dennison said. “It was the dishwasher going all day, we had a full-time staff living on site with showers and (toilet) flushes, the washer and dryer going throughout the week. It just put an unsustainable load on the building’s mechanical system, especially the wastewater.”

Those staffers lived in rooms that were part of a hotel that Dennison said operated into the 1980s.

“We’d really like to bring those (rooms) back into use for overnight programs, bringing kids up from Denver to learn about the outdoors,” she said. “I’d really like a stronger emphasis on education.”

She said she foresaw less space for a gift shop and more space for visitor center-type exhibits, educating on Mount Blue Sky and the neighboring Echo Lake Park. Denver Mountain Parks acquired the lake and surrounding 600 acres in 1921, ahead of the lodge’s construction in 1926. A year later, the lodge expanded for dining and dancing.

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Now Dennison said she envisioned “a mix of public and programmatic use.” She sounded intrigued by what she called a historic use on Echo Lake.

“There used to be ice skating. We think it would be a pretty amazing opportunity to possibly bring that back.”

She said that and other possibilities would be determined by the assessment, which is expected to detail the lodge’s carrying capacity and suggested rehabilitation. Dennison said she expected the report this summer.