PHOTOS: Historic Hunter Creek Valley building gets excavated, tree-ring dated

Other buildings also restored

News News | Sep 30, 2024

Regan Mertz

A historic Hunter Creek Valley building was excavated and tree-ring dated on Friday, Sept. 20.

The building, which experts think housed farm animals, is made of wood that is around two centuries old, said Mardita Murphy, a program manager at Historicorps.

Historicorps, a Morrison-based nonprofit, gives volunteers of all skill levels hands-on experience preserving historic structures on American public lands.

“We determined that the trees are over 200 years old and that they had a steady supply of water during their life, aka, little stress,” Murphy said. “Due to the minimal variance from year to year, we have to spend some more time processing the cores to get a fell date. We may have to carbon date them to get the fell date. I’m hoping for some updates in the next month.”

Tree ring dating, or dendrochronology, is done by boring a hole into the center of a log or tree. This core sample then tells researchers how old the wood was when it was cut down by how many tree rings can be counted. These rings also tell researchers a history of the tree’s life. Wider rings indicate that year the tree received plenty of rain; a narrower ring indicates drought conditions.

One of the building’s logs on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Aspen. “It doesn’t necessarily tell you how old the cabin is, but it’s another piece of the puzzle,” said Hunter Creek Historical Foundation Co-Chair Graeme Means. “Certainly it couldn’t be built after whatever they come up with. So, that makes a pattern and puts a whole history, a timeline into a log. They have all kinds of records of all different logs, so they can compare the pattern of wide and narrow tree rings and calibrate that to tell how old this log is.”

Excavation and restoration

Other buildings were restored in the Hunter Creek Valley near Aspen.

Volunteers from Aspen and all over the nation have worked since 2022 to restore these buildings to their former glory. Volunteers travel to the area once a year in the fall to work on various restoration projects. This year, work ran from Aug. 25 to Sept. 20 in one week rotations.

About ten volunteers, mostly from Denver with two from Arizona, helped out in the final week. Some were repeat volunteers, and for some, it was their first time out at the site. There were also several Historicorps members, which brought the group total to around 20.

One building, the Hunter Creek Roadhouse, underwent a foundation replacement.

Built in the early 1900s, the roadhouse, on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Aspen.

The foundation is “more or less the same” height, said Historicorps Operations Manager Denis Moran. Moran, who was also at the site last year, said pine tar preservative was put on the flooring prevent deterioration from bugs and weather. Most of the floor is made up of original boards.

An architectural history project was also led on the building that was tree-ring dated.

The foundation was exposed to allow the team to capture drawings, measurements, and photo documentation. This will allow the team to understand what needs to be done to preserve the building next year, as well as better understand why and when it was built.

Artifacts

During their work, the team found horse shoes, horse bridles, stovepipes, bottles, cans, glass fragments, machinery parts, tools, shoe fragments, silverware, combs, beer cans, hundreds of nails, abalone shell and milk glass, or white, buttons, and bones.

“Some of the bones indicated that they’ve been cut, so probably butchered, observed some teeth marks, but they were mostly small animals,” Murphy said.

Abalone shell and milk glass buttons and a nail were found at the site on Sept. 18, 2024, in Aspen.

These artifacts are cataloged and collected by the U.S. Forest Service.

The Hunter Creek trail runs right past these structures. Hikers and bikers can see them on their excursions, and backcountry skiers have even used the structures for shelter in decades past.

A tub of ski wax that is estimated to be from the 1970s was also found.

“I know a number of people who came here in the late ’60s and ’70s who said they lived in these buildings for a while before they could find a place in town,” said Hunter Creek Historical Foundation Co-Chair Graeme Means.

“I think about the history of Aspen is that it’s super late. There weren’t any recorded whites really in here until the 1870s. There were big cities on the West Coast, and it’s because Glenwood Canyon was really difficult to navigate, and also there were fierce Ute Indians down there, and then there was 12,000-foot Independence Pass. So these buildings, their dates, may not impress people from around the rest of the country; nevertheless, they date to the very, very beginning of Aspen’s history. So that’s why they’re pretty intriguing,” Means said.

A full report on the site will be released in a couple of weeks, and Historicorps will return to the site next year.