Barbara Lawlor
NEDERLAND

    Barbara and Earl Bolton’s cabin in Eldora nestles next to Middle Boulder Creek, in the same location that the corral for the town livery stable used to be. When Barbara’s grandparents owned the livery, it was a thriving business in a bustling town.
    Back then, Barbara and Earl were children, best buddies, growing up in an idyllic setting together. Now, after 66 years of marriage, the couple continues to enjoy their peaceful place on the creek, each other, and knowing they are an integral part of the area’s history, and the Eldora/Nederland area is embedded in their souls.
    The Boltons will proudly represent the area’s history as they lead the annual Old Timers’/Miners Days Parade on Saturday, July 25th at noon. Listening to them talk of their childhoods opens the door to Eldora’s past.
    Barbara’s grandparents John and Evalyn Lilly lived in Eldora in 1895, when the earliest photographs of them show them in front of their stageline livery stable which they co-owned with a man named Talmage. The coach made daily runs between Boulder City and the El Dora camp, which was popular with tourists at the time. The halfway point was at Boulder Falls in Boulder Canyon.
    An advertisement claims that travelers could expect, “cyclopean peaks of solid granite rising to enormous heights calculated to excite surprise throughout the entire distance, until the canon spreads apart abruptly revealing El Dora with its serried walls of porphyry and granite which contain, beneath their hoary breasts, untold wealth of rich fissure veins of sulphide ore mines continuous of the Gilpin Gold Belt.”
    When the stagecoach line was discontinued because of the advent of the automobile, the livery stable continued as an attraction for the plains tourists who wanted to ride the mountain trails. Barbara was often their guide, as she spent her summer days on the backs of the horses.
    “It cost 50 cents an hour to rent a horse and $3 a day,” said Barbara, who says, that when school started and she had to return to Boulder, Sunday nights were the saddest times. “I hate crickets to this day because it reminds me of going back down to Boulder, to school.”
    Barbara remembers taking the horses to Nederland to let the Montrita Camp girls ride. Montrita is now St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Nederland.
    In 1933, there were up to 400 people living in Eldora in the summer and Earl’s parents owned four operating grocery stores in the town. But Earl was more interested in being outside and ended up helping Barbara’s dad at the stable. He says, “It was nothing for me to walk to Arapahoe Peak in a day. I’d rather be outside than working in the store.”
    He was eight years old and Barbara was 12 years old and they became the best of friends, playing with the other Eldora children who filled the night time street with games of kickball under the grocery store lights, the only ones in town, run by a generator.
    “It was a wonderful place to be a kid,” agree the Boltons. “We could go anywhere we wanted as long as we stayed away from the mines and the creek when it was high. The world was ours.”
    The Boltons say they didn’t visit Nederland often, that they had everything they needed in Eldora, although the older kids would go to Rollinsville to socialize at the dances.
    Every summer, Earl and Barbara would spend time together. And then, when Earl was 17, “He discovered I was a girl,” chuckles Barbara. They became inseparable. “If we had a dime, we shared it,” remembers Earl.
    When the war began, times were hard. In 1942, Earl and Barbara headed for Cheyenne to work in a plant that modified B-17 bombers. They were married in November, knowing, as many other young couples knew, that the war would send them in different directions.
    “The B-17s were coming off the line fast and would be sent to the modification plants. We would put the new parts inside the bombers.”
    Earl joined the Air Force in June, 1943, and Barbara took a course in drafting and went to Boeing in Seattle where she was the first female engineer draftsman in the power plant division.
    When Earl was discharged from the Air Force and the couple was reunited, they had little money and the only place they could afford to live was in their cabin in Eldora. It was February and they were the only people in town. Barbara remembers, “There was no chinking and there would be snow on our bedspread in the morning and one night the outhouse blew over.”
    They remember stopping at the Silver Dollar Tavern in Nederland on the way up. Earl had his uniform on and the bartender offered him a free drink, but all he had was milk. He says he has made it through two wars and has never tasted a drop of whiskey.
    The couple had no idea what to do next. The American boys were coming home from the war all at once and there was little work. They stayed in Eldora until October. In 1946, Earl worked on the refacing of Barker Dam. Large cement slabs were fastened in place with large steel pegs to reinforce the face of the dam. The slabs were made across from where the high school now stands.
    After a year the Boltons went back to Cheyenne where he went to work for United Airlines and then joined the Wyoming International Guard and Barbara "played housewife."
    In 1950, Earl went off to the Korean War and when he came back, the couple returned to Boulder. Barbara was the supervisor of the drafting department at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. She also took flying lessons.
    When Barbara was 55, she made her first solo flight. “That was the most excited I have ever seen her,” says Earl. He bought her a Grummin Traveler plane for her birthday. Since then the couple has flown together, he as pilot, she as navigator with the ability to take over. They loved flying to a Navajo reservation to take the children for rides.
    Recently, Earl built a Kit Fox airplane from scratch for one of the girls they took in for a while. Over the years, they have taken in and offered helping hands to seven young women and one young man who needed a bit of help in their lives. He was 80 years when he quit flying.
    In 1980, the couple retired, spending the summers and as many weekends as they could in Eldora. Earl was the president of the Eldora Civic Association in the 70s and 80s and both of them are involved in the happenings in their small town.
    “This is really home to us,” says Barbara. “We feel a part of the whole area and the area is part of us. We value retaining the historic character of the town.”
    They are still active in their community, saying that the biggest issue they are now discussing is the size of the homes in their town filled with smaller, historic mining cabins.
    “We want the historic character of the town preserved. We don’t want the ambiance of Eldora changed by the bigger homes. But, in general, there are no nicer people anywhere, than our Eldora neighbors. It takes four hours to walk a mile, because of stopping to have conversations.”
    The Boltons say it is an honor to be chosen as the Grand Marshals. Earl says he’ll enjoy it just as long as he doesn’t have to wear six-shooters like Marshal Dillon. He said he won’t wear his uniform because it is now in a museum in Cheyenne.
    Barbara says the last time she remembers leading a parade, she was just entering Boulder High School and she brought her good-looking sorrel horse to the celebration in Nederland. She had polished his hoofs and brushed him until he gleamed. They were just starting out from the intersection of the highway and First Street when her horse decided it was time to take a pee and the whole parade had to stop and wait for him to finish.
    “I was so embarrassed, and I couldn’t do a thing about it,” she remembers.
    This year, she and Earl will lead the parade in style, after 66 years of marriage, bringing their memories of a time gone by and cherishing the love they have for their mountain community and for each other.