Journal 63: The Cuchara Camps Outing Club

In the early years of the 20th century, before paved roads reached the high country and long before Cuchara became a beloved summer village, George Alfred Mayes had a dream. The Cuchara Camps Outing Club would help make it a reality.

In 1906, he secured financing to purchase a cattle ranch in the valley from W. J. Gould, with the intention of developing a healthful mountain resort he called, Cuchara Camps. Mayes wanted to create outdoor opportunities both in and outside of the camp itself. (1)   To facilitate these affordable outdoor opportunities Mayes created the Cuchara Camps Outing Club. The club would transform a remote valley into a vibrant playground where families fished, danced, rode burros, picnicked in alpine meadows, and forged memories still cherished today.

Founding of the Outing Club (1912)

By 1911, Cuchara Camps had become far more than a mountain getaway. It was a thriving summer community with regular guests who returned year after year. Sensing the momentum and eager to shape the valley’s future, George A. Mayes joined forces with two trusted partners to formalize the resort’s growing vision. In early 1912, they established the Cuchara Camps Outing Association, an ambitious organization designed to expand both the reach and the quality of the camp. (2)  

Its founders formed a remarkable trio. At the helm was George A. Mayes, the visionary who first imagined the resort and brought it to life. He was joined by John W. Powell, a respected La Veta businessman with deep roots in the community, whose local insight and reputation added credibility to the venture. Rounding out the group was C. C. Whitney, a former U.S. Forest Service ranger and sawmill operator whose intimate knowledge of the surrounding mountains made him an invaluable partner. Together, they blended vision, community leadership, and practical frontier experience into a partnership uniquely suited to transform Cuchara Camps into a true mountain destination.

Bringing the Camp to Life

The Outing Club quickly grew into the beating heart of Cuchara Camps. It didn’t simply maintain the resort, it animated it. One of its earliest responsibilities was taking over the bustling commissary store Mayes had established, a one-stop outpost where campers could pick up groceries, fishing tackle, and everyday necessities. (3)    But the club’s influence stretched far beyond stocked shelves. It also became the chief promoter of the resort. As club president, G. A. Mayes scattered bold “Cuchara Camps” signs along major highways reaching Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and even Raton, New Mexico, some nearly 100 miles away, guiding motorists straight into the valley. By 1909, local newspapers were already running a seasonal “Cuchara Camps Notes” column that chronicled the resort’s arrivals, adventures, and daily bustle for readers back home. (4) This wide-reaching publicity helped transform Cuchara Camps into a well-known mountain destination.

During its 1910s–1920s peak, the Outing Club presided over a social and recreational scene so vibrant that visitors readily embraced the nickname “Nature’s Playground”. (5)     Guests saddled up for horseback trail rides while children delighted in burro trips through the forests and meadows. For many, it as their first taste of mountain adventure. (6) At trout-stocked ponds, families cooked fresh catch over morning fires, only to return in the evenings for campfires beneath the pines, roasting hotdogs, singing familiar tunes, and sharing stories under the stars. (7)   

Summer nights were no less lively. Weekly dances in Mayes’s open-air pavilion drew crowds eager for waltzes, two-steps, and the newest fads of the Roaring ’20s. Guests danced the two-step and Charleston under the stars – Cuchara’s very own “roaring” nightlife (complete with mountain lions and bears occasionally listening in).On nights without dancing, guests enjoyed talent shows, concerts, and masquerade parties that fostered a warm, communal spirit. Daylight hours brought just as many delights like baseball games, horseshoe matches, and by the mid-1920s, a humble golf course cut into a nearby meadow. A “golf course” so rustic, local dear may have served as caddies. Children organized scavenger hunts and group hikes, strengthening the camp’s reputation as a haven for families.

The Outing Club’s signature touch was its community fish-frys. Mornings saw campers gathered around pans sizzling with fresh-caught trout, while evenings brought them back to the fire pits for wiener roasts, marshmallows, and sing-alongs that echoed into the trees. In those moments of firelight flickering and voices rising in harmony, the true spirit of Cuchara Camps seemed to come alive.

Expanding the Adventure

The Outing Club’s first great civic undertaking reached far beyond the boundaries of Cuchara Camps. At a time when Blue Lake was known only to the most determined anglers and hikers, the route to it remained little more than a primitive wagon track. In the 1910s, this rugged two-track road made the journey slow, steep, and accessible only to the hardiest teams and drivers. Imagine riding up to Blue Lake on a bumpy Model T road that the Outing Club helped build.

Determined to open this alpine jewel to everyday visitors, the Outing Club set out to upgrade the trail into a passable automobile road. Their efforts included coordinating surveys and trail work with Huerfano County officials and the U.S. Forest Service, even as World War I and scarce funding threatened to stall progress. (8)    

Yet the magnitude of the project soon revealed the need for broader collaboration. In 1920, civic leaders from Walsenburg, Trinidad, and Aguilar united to form the Spanish Peaks Mountain Playground Association, a bold regional coalition that picked up where the Outing Club had begun. Building on the Club’s foundational work, the Association completed new amenities at Blue Lake, including rustic cabins, picnic areas, and a Forest Service campground by the early 1920s. (9)      In this way, the Outing Club’s early vision became the spark that ignited a much larger regional recreation movement.

Closer to home, the Club also expanded off-site activities that helped define the Cuchara experience. Guides led horseback rides up forested hillsides, while children delighted in burro trips that wound through alpine meadows. (10)   For many city youngsters, these sure-footed burros offered their very first taste of mountain adventure that became a staple of future tourism.

By the 1920s, the Cuchara Camps Outing Club had grown into something far greater than a resort booster group. It became a driving force behind recreation and tourism throughout Huerfano County, shaping not only local experiences but regional development. One of the strongest measures of its influence was the creation of the Spanish Peaks Mountain Park in 1919–1920. Administered by the Spanish Peaks Playground Association, the new park drew direct inspiration from the Outing Club’s early work at Blue Lake, which had demonstrated the area’s potential for public recreation. (11)  

Working in concert with the Forest Service, the Outing Club helped establish trails, roads, and fishing access points throughout what is now the San Isabel National Forest. This occured years before such infrastructure became standard practice in recreation planning. In many ways, it was the Outing Club that laid the foundation for today’s trail systems and campgrounds, crafting a regional vision that made Cuchara not just charming and livable, but a lasting destination for generations of nature-seekers.  (12)  

Changing of the Guard (1920s to 1940s)

Yet even as the Outing Club enjoyed its golden years, time quietly reshaped the world around it. The exuberance of the 1920s soon faded into the hardships of the Great Depression, stretching the durability of leisure ventures across the country. At the same time the Club’s original leaders who carved recreation out of wilderness were growing older, and a new generation would soon be called upon to carry their vision forward.

The year 1930 became a defining moment for Cuchara Camps. In October, the community lost its guiding force when George A. Mayes, the imaginative “father” of the resort, passed away unexpectedly. For a short while afterward, management fell to trusted associates and family members who worked to keep the camp steady during an uncertain transition. By early 1931, however, a natural successor emerged: Charles “Charlie” Powell, owner of a nearby ranch and the younger brother of John W. Powell, one of the Outing Club’s original founders and the son of Pinehaven homesteader John L. Powell. (13)  

Under the care of the Powells, the camp continued to “flourish,” just as Mayes had hoped, though not without necessary adjustments. During this era, the Outing Club itself gradually slipped from public view. While records do not pinpoint when the original “Outing Association” formally dissolved or evolved into something new, it is clear that after Mayes’s passing the formal Outing Club organization gradually faded, living on more in spirit than in structure.

Decline and Legacy (1950s to Present)

After World War II, Cuchara Camps entered one of its most transformative eras. The prosperity of the 1950s ushered in a building boom unlike anything the valley had seen. Longtime owners expanded or winterized their rustic cabins, while newcomers eagerly snapped up remaining lots to build vacation homes of their own. By the middle of the decade, the once-modest “camp” had grown into a thriving village with private summer homes, nearly 150 cabins, lodges, and small businesses that catered to the steady flow of tourists. (14)  

The decades that followed carried Cuchara through cycles of quiet and renewal. The 1960s and 1970s were gentler, more subdued years as many from the founding generation passed on or no longer made the annual trek to the mountains. But even in those quieter seasons, new efforts occasionally emerged to rekindle the spirit of fellowship and outdoor adventure first championed by the Outing Club.

Many Pinehaven families today enjoy traditions – from trail rides to community campfires – that began with the Cuchara Camps Outing Club’s efforts a century ago. Today, only traces of the formal Cuchara Camps Outing Club survive. We only have a few old documents, fading photographs, and stories handed down through generations. Yet its influence remains unmistakable. From its spirited founding in 1912, through the lively interwar decades when it helped make the valley famous as “Nature’s Playground,” to its gradual blending into the rhythms of a growing mountain village, the Outing Club’s story mirrors the evolution of outdoor recreation in Colorado itself. Modern-day Cuchara stands as a tribute to that legacy as a “little slice of heaven” in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where, if you listen closely on a summer evening, you can almost hear the echo of laughter, music, and campfire songs drifting through the pines. (15, 16)

← Return to Table of Contents

Footnotes

Parenthetical numbers in the text (e.g., 5) correspond to the sequentially numbered citations listed below.

1. Nancy Christofferson, “Way Back When in Cuchara Camps,” The World Journal, July 7 2011, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/way-back-when-in-cuchara-camps/#:~:text=In%201911%20Cuchara%20Camps%20was,buy%20a%20cabin%20or%20real. Although often described in local histories as a direct 1906 purchase from William J. Gould, county records reveal a more complex transaction. George A. Mayes did not acquire the former Gould Ranch through a single, direct conveyance from Gould, but through a two-stage, privately financed arrangement. In October 1907, William J. Gould and his wife conveyed the ranch to Charles M. Mack by warranty deed. Mack subsequently entered into a seller-financed purchase agreement with Mayes, retaining legal title while Mayes assumed possession and began development of the property, as evidenced by contemporaneous mortgage and deed of trust filings covering land described as Sections 3 and 4, Township 31 South, Range 69 West. Full legal ownership passed to Mayes on December 6, 1910, when Mack executed a warranty deed conveying title, completing the transaction.

2. “Huerfano County News of the Day,” kmitch.com, January 1912, La Veta: “The Whites intend to improve and sell resort,” accessed November 14, 2025, https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/news1910.html#:~:text=1912%20January%20La%20Veta%3A%20The,improve%20and%20sell%20resort.

3. Nancy Christofferson, “Way Back When in Cuchara Camps,” The World Journal, July 7 2011, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/way-back-when-in-cuchara-camps/#:~:text=In%201911%20Cuchara%20Camps%20was,buy%20a%20cabin%20or%20real

4. Nancy Christofferson, “Way Back When in Cuchara Camps,” World Journal (Huerfano County, Colorado), July 7, 2011, para. 4 (“By 1909 a column entitled ‘Cuchara Camps Notes’ was a regular summer feature in the La Veta Advertiser”).

5. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – One Wild Playground,” The World Journal, July 30, 2020, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-one-wild-playground/

6. Karen Mitchell, “Recalling the 20th Century in Huerfano County”, Huerfano County, Colorado History website, contributed by Louise Adams, January 6 2000, https://www.kmitch.com/Huerfano/century.html#:~:text=buddies%20in%20and%20all%20drove,schoolhouses%20doubled%20as%20dance%20halls

7. The Cuchara Foundation, “Cuchara Valley,” Cuchara Foundation, accessed November 14, 2025, https://www.cucharafoundation.org/cuchara-village.

8. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – One Wild Playground,” The World Journal, July 30, 2020, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-one-wild-playground/

9. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – One Wild Playground,” The World Journal, July 30, 2020, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-one-wild-playground/#:~:text=In%201927%2C%20the%20caretaker%20at,were%20warned%20of%20its%20steepness.

10. Nancy Christofferson, “Way Back When in Cuchara Camps,” The World Journal, July 7 2011, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/way-back-when-in-cuchara-camps/#:~:text=In%201911%20Cuchara%20Camps%20was,buy%20a%20cabin%20or%20real

11. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – One Wild Playground,” The World Journal, July 30, 2020, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-one-wild-playground/

12. Colorado State Forest Service, “Historical Collaboration Records: San Isabel National Forest Project Files” (1920s).

13. Gene & Rhonda Roncone, “Part 4 — Homesteaders’ Dream: John L. Powell,” Cabin in the Pines: History and Happenings of Pinehaven (blog), June 2025, accessed November 14, 2025, https://cabininthepinescuchara.blogspot.com/2025/06/part-4-homesteaders-dream-john-l-powell.html.

14. Nancy Christofferson, “Regional History – One Wild Playground,” The World Journal, July 30, 2020, https://worldjournalnewspaper.com/regional-history-one-wild-playground/

15. “Cuchara Village,” Cuchara Foundation, accessed November 14, 2025, https://www.cucharafoundation.org/cuchara-village.

16. Author’s note: In preparing this article, the author used AI-assisted tools for research support, proofreading, fact-checking, and stylistic refinement. The narrative, analysis, and historical interpretations are the author’s own, and responsibility for accuracy rests solely with the author. The blog’s research methodology statement is available at:

https://cabininthepinescuchara.blogspot.com/2019/03/methodology-sources-and-use-of-research.html