This National Historic District town serves up a friendly, laid-back visit in incredibly lovely mountain splendor. Redstone is one of those unforgettable experiences that feed our soul. The tiny community offers all the reasons tourists come to the mountains and packages it within easy walking distance. Most of the living here is outside, from patio dining to wandering among the galleries’ treasures, and to top it off there’s a castle to tour.
Redstone is within an easy half-day drive of the metro area: follow I-70 west to Glenwood Springs and CH 82 south to Carbondale. From there, follow CH 33, a designated Scenic Byway paralleling the rushing Crystal River. The views of one of Colorado’s most impressive peaks, Mt. Sophris, and the Crystal River demand frequent photo stops.
Redstone Inn
The town itself is situated between imposing red sandstone cliffs and rambles along one street paralleling the Crystal River. Outdoor activities are abundant: horse and mountain bike rentals are available and the Crystal River offers excellent fishing. Plenty of hiking trails beckon, and volleyball and horseshoes are close. The Redstone Inn includes an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts, as well as a hot tub.
The town may be small but it offers plenty of good shopping: gift shops and galleries, antique stores, a country store and a museum. Such a lovely town attracts artists, including sculptors carving in the bountiful Colorado sunshine on blocks of marble. The sculpture/owner of Live Out Loud studio can usually be seen sculpting along Redstone Boulevard. The town of Marble is just a few miles down the road and the famed quarry there supplied the pure white stone for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
Tour the Redstone Castle, named Cleveholm Manor, on Saturday and Sundays in Redstone.
The one street, named Redstone Boulevard, features several delightful restaurants with patios along the Crystal River behind them beckoning visitors to sit in the shade, listen to the murmur of the water and enjoy a coffee or tasty lunch. There are three lodges/motels between the street and the inviting river and the Redstone Inn at the end of the “Boulevard” offers first class accommodations.
The Redstone Inn, open year-around, has its own listing on the National Register of Historic Sites. John Cleveland Osgood built the Inn in the early 20th century as a social experiment: In fact, the entire town was a socially-progressive experiment. Osgood was the benevolent coal baron who built his castle and the town close to the prodigious coal discoveries nearby. Workers were housed in the town he created. The Inn housed the bachelor employees of Osgood’s company, Colorado Fuel & Iron. Great care and thought was taken to make this company town different from the previous colorless, monotonous company towns in the Midwest and East. The quaint cottages along the lane housed 80 married employees and their families, and the cottages varied in size and were built in different styles. They were ornamented differently, were painted in different colors, and each was enclosed by a picket fence. Managers’ houses were constructed higher, on the slopes above the Boulevard, and they featured gambrel or gable roofs and decorative trim. All the homes had electricity provided by Osgood’s hydroelectric plant, and running water was piped in from a reservoir above the town. The larger management houses boasted indoor bathtubs, unusual for this era, 1900–1902.
Marble is just a few miles down the road from Redstone where the famed quarry there supplied the pure white stone for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
The nearby 249 beehive ovens cooked the coal mined at nearby Coalbasin. The 11,000 tons of high-grade coke produced every month in Redstone was then shipped over the Crystal River Railroad to the mighty Pueblo steel mills, also owned by Osgood.
Redstone was the crown jewel of all Osgood’s company towns. The town included a school, a clubhouse with a theater, billiard rooms, card rooms and a library, a lodge for guests, a doctor’s office, a blacksmith shop, a general store and an assay office. But the demand for coke plummeted after 1908 and the Utopian town was nearly abandoned.
The impressive, 42-room castle, named Cleveholm Manor, was completed in 1901 and is also listed individually on the National Register of Historic Sites, as is Osgood’s Gamekeeper’s Lodge. In 1902 dollars the imposing manor house cost $2.5 million and it rivaled the finest manor houses in Europe. Touring the castle is truly memorable. Most of the original furnishings remained with the castle. Osgood was the fifth-richest of the “Robber Barons” of the early 1900s and incredibly, he was a self-made millionaire. He began working at age 15; by the age of 18, he was working as a clerk in the coal industry and began carefully planning his route to the top; and by the time he turned 30, he was president of the company. The story of Osgood’s meteoric rise and his three marriages is fascinating and the guides at the castle were quite well trained and interesting when I visited there. Tours are available on Saturdays and Sundays.
For more information, visit www.redstonecolorado.com.
