Chicken bone? No, apple core. Oh, right, chicken bone...

The grand opening of Estes Park’s original Hupp Hotel was front-page news in the Thursday, 27 June 1907 Loveland Reporter.  “Estes Park Has a New Hotel”, the headline proclaimed, paired with a photograph of the building, matching in all aspects (structure, location) every other identified picture (including commercially produced and labeled real-photo postcards) of the original Hupp Hotel (today’s Indian Village on the southwest corner of Elkhorn Avenue and Moraine Avenue).

If someone was looking to answer the question “When did the original Hupp Hotel open for business?”, this Loveland Reporter article would seem to provide the answer.   The Loveland Reporter was a weekly newspaper in 1907, so the ribbon cutting, if there was one, might have occurred just after their deadline a week earlier.  I would even be willing to concede the Hupp might have opened in early June 1907, and the Loveland Reporter was finally getting around towards the end of June to reporting it.

But you would have to be loony to read this article and come away with the idea that the original Hupp Hotel opened in 1906.  You would have to somehow contend that this particular issue was actually a 1906 newspaper incorrectly dated, and set about attempting to prove that every other article or editorial in this putative “misdated” issue reported events occurring in 1906, not 1907, and the classified advertising, much of which repeated verbatim issue to issue, was a better fit with surrounding 1906 issues, not 1907 issues. 

I have looked at the articles and the classified advertisements for all of the June 1907 and July 1907 issues of the Loveland Reporter, and the issue dated Thursday, 27 June 1907 fits in perfectly with its surrounding bedmates, meshing not at all with corresponding issues from 1906.  

As well, there is no appearance in issues of the Loveland Reporter published after Thursday, 27 June 1907 of a correction or retraction or apology along the lines of “Hey guys, we screwed up, we forgot to mention that the article about the opening of the Hupp Hotel reported in our 27 June 1907 issue has actually been sitting on our desk for over a year” or “what did y’all think of our one-year anniversary photo and article about the opening of the Hupp Hotel that we forgot to identify as such?”

So for me, the issue is pretty open and shut – The original Hupp Hotel opened in 1907.  Move on.  Find a building whose history presents an actual challenge, some structure or business with real potential for dispute.

Not so for the author(s) behind the current “Pikas in the Park” brochure.  They continue to revisit the Hupp Hotel, over and over, twisting what seems to be a fairly straightforward matter into a convoluted 11-letter word nearly rhyme-colliding with custard truck.

“Josephine ‘Josie’ Hupp was one of Estes Park’s early business owners,” the first printing of the brochure proudly proclaims.  “She built the Hupp Hotel (today’s Indian Village) in 1906.”

Obviously, the author(s) are not contending that Josie did any of the actual building, and I’m not requesting proof of Josie’s contribution to the finished structure beyond paying others to do the work.  That’s not the issue.  The issue is with the (incorrect, I would contend) date attached to the building process, and how the author(s) interpret, or expect us to interpret, the verb “built” (past tense of “build”), or why they’re even forcing us down this path.   

Are we talking “built to completion, the finished product”, or are we examining the various stages of construction, from setting stakes to ceremonial groundbreaking to digging a basement to putting in the foundation to framing to roofing to drywall to plumbing to wiring to plastering to flooring to painting to etc., etc., or however the process unfolded in the early 20th century?  If the former, this occurred just prior to the grand opening in late June 1907.  If the latter, this occurred in the months leading up to the grand opening in late June 1907.  More importantly, if the latter, why are we wasting everyone’s time talking about it?

This was not an automobile factory, or, to use an actual neighboring example, soon to be undertaken, something on the scale of the Stanley, whose daily progress might have been recorded and worthy of note, although again, ultimately irrelevant when it came time to summarize for the sake of a brochure. 

Photos show the Hupp Hotel to be little more than a glorified house, larger and with more upstairs bedrooms.  I recognize it wasn’t erected along the lines of an Amish barn-raising festival (or if it was, this escaped newspaper mention).  I grant that construction took more than a few days, and the building process may have lagged behind what it takes to build a large house today (or in this particular case it may have been faster, I have no idea and neither do the authors of the brochure).  What exactly are the author(s) contending by saying “built in 1906”? 

Are they claiming:  (A) That construction on the Hupp Hotel started in 1906?  Do they have any evidence for this?  If so, provide evidence, reword the brochure copy to properly match 1906 to when construction started, and then ask yourself how many readers actually care when construction began on the original Hupp Hotel, compared to when construction was completed.  (B) That the bulk of the actual construction took place in calendar year 1906, with the building then just sitting idle (or suffering through an extremely protracted furnishing and decorating process) until June 1907?  Again, is there any evidence for this?

Indeed, there is no evidence for this.  All primary-source material points to the bulk of the construction work (indeed, likely all of the construction work, unless acquisition of property is considered part of the building process) taking place in 1907.

The original Hupp Hotel, built and opened in 1907.  The photographer who produced this real-photo postcard
was an Estes Park resident, so was unlikely to be confused about what he was photographing.
The separate building partly visible on the right was the Estes Park post office.

(to be continued)