Long before porch lights flickered in Pinehaven, the cabins nestled on Raspberry Mountain were truly off the grid. Off-grid and deep in the forest, night falls like a velvet curtain. Life gets so dark you can’t see your own hand in front of your face, only feel the wilderness breathing around you. And then, at last, Pinehaven saw the light—literally.Imagine it’s a moonless night in the early days of Pinehaven and you have no porch light, no humming refrigerator, and no comforting glow from a nearby cabin. Just you, a wool blanket wrapped tightly around your shoulders, and the sound of the wind slipping through the pines like a whispered warning.
You step outside the cabin, lantern in hand. The door creaks shut behind you with a hollow thud, and suddenly the silence is overwhelming. No cars. No hum of electricity. Just the rhythmic rustle of trees and the distant call of an owl somewhere up the slope. The beam from your lantern barely cuts through the inky dark, throwing dancing shadows on the ground and turning tree stumps into lurking silhouettes. Every twig snap makes your heart race. You shuffle forward, eyes darting into the black, certain you just heard something, a branch? A bear? A mountain lion with bedtime curiosity?
The outhouse looms ahead like a wooden sentinel. You open the door slowly, half expecting something (or someone) to be inside. It’s cold. It smells exactly how an outhouse should. But you made it. You’re a wilderness survivor. The return trip is no easier. Your imagination runs wild. That rustling to the left, was it the wind, or something watching? Your pace quickens. Then you see it, your cabin, your safe little sanctuary of warmth and light. You burst through the door, heart pounding, cheeks flushed, vowing never to drink that much water after sundown again.
Back then, nature didn’t just surround you, it challenged you. Even a simple midnight trip to the outhouse was a test of courage on the wild and wonderful slopes of Raspberry Mountain.
From Lanters to Lighbulbs
There was a time when the only light dancing through the shadows of Raspberry Mountain came from flickering candles and lanterns, fragile beacons in the vast Colorado wilderness. In those early days, candles lit the corners of rustic cabins, casting long silhouettes across log walls. As the years rolled on, firelight took over and crackling hearths warmed homes and hearts. Then came the hum of gas-powered generators, bringing bursts of modern convenience to the forest. And finally, after decades of improvisation and frontier ingenuity, Pinehaven was wired into the real deal: a bona fide power grid. But the journey from candlelight to current wasn’t simple. So how exactly did the lights come on in Pinehaven?
In the 1920s, the only electric glow in the entire Cuchara Valley came from a modest generator at the old Cuchara Camps resort. It powered the lodge, the pavilion, and a few lucky cabins, but left the surrounding forests dark and quiet after sundown.(1)
That all began to change thanks to the grit and vision of local ranchers. In 1940, Gus Goemmer and Clark Falk rallied the community and tapped into a New Deal program known as the Rural Electrification Administration (REA).(2) Their goal? To string power lines through the valley’s rugged canyons and high mountain meadows, no small feat in such remote terrain.
The Electrification of Pinehaven
After WW2, their persistence paid off. Trinidad Electric, later known as Frontier Electric, took up the challenge. With a price tag of $64,741, the company laid 53 miles of power lines through Huerfano County’s wildest stretches. On July 19, 1948, the lights finally came on in the Valley at Cuchara Camps.(3) Though the system served just 144 rural families, it marked a turning point in the valley’s history.
For Pinehaven, the timing couldn’t have been better. Just one year later, in 1949, Steve Pierotti began carving out cabin sites beneath the pines. Thanks to the newly available power running up Highway 12, Pinehaven’s developer, then Steve Pierotti, extended the lines uphill to bring power to every cabin.
By the 1970s, as Filing #2 opened for more development, electricity was a given. The infrastructure had matured, and responsibility had shifted from the old investor-owned utility to a community-focused cooperative. In 1955, Frontier (Trinidad) Electric’s system was turned over to the San Isabel Electric Association.(4)
High-Tech in High Country
One of Pinehaven’s most striking contradictions is this: it’s a place where you can sip coffee on a deck surrounded by whispering pines in a forest a hundred miles from a large city and stream a Zoom meeting in crystal-clear HD at the same time. In a community built for slow living, the arrival of blazing-fast internet is nothing short of astonishing.
Thanks to a marvel of modern engineering called fiber optics Pinehaven is now connected to the digital world at 21st-century speeds.
In 2023, Jade Communications began threading this high-speed lifeline up the mountainside from La Veta, extending it through Cuchara and into the heart of Pinehaven.(5) The result? A once-remote wilderness now offers internet connectivity so fast, you could be working remotely with the same bandwidth and efficiency as a tech firm in downtown Denver. It’s a paradox that would make the old homesteaders blink; a cabin in the woods, and the world at your fingertips.
Pinehaven’s electrification story is more than a tale of power lines and utility crews. It’s a testament to local perseverance leveraging government support and braving steep ridges and deep ravines to bring modern comfort to their mountain retreat.(6)
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Footnotes
Parenthetical numbers in the text (e.g., 5) correspond to the sequentially numbered citations listed below.
6. 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:
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