Hot steaming mess (cont.)...
So, for the moment, let's leave the Larimer County clerk looking through aperture cards (whatever they are - I don't know why the original books are always off limits, unless they don't exist anymore), and return to Estes Park, which I did that afternoon, faced with something of a dilemma.
I had no hard evidence that this neighborhood had in the past prohibited, or was still attempting to prohibit, adherents of the Jewish faith from buying property in their neighborhood. The original plat said nothing, and the covenents filed with the original plat had yet to be found. Either they had been purposefully (conspiracy theory - this document did indeed contain a restriction based on religious beliefs, but bribe money slipped to the right person years back had made it disappear) or accidentally purged.
But I had promised the president of the neighborhood's homeowners' association I would return that day with documents in hand, confirming what I had already assured her was an easy absolute. On top of that, Channel 7 from Denver was arriving the following day, and would likely need a list of which neighborhoods had these offensive restrictive covenants on the books, so they could visit these locations and interview residents.
Fixing the first part was easy, I just stopped by the homeowners' association president's house, again unannounced, and apologized, explaining that I was getting my information from someone else, and the plat had not included anything close to what I had been assured by them it would include, and since I now knew this subdivision wasn't platted until 1965 anyway, it seemed very unlikely to contain any restrictions related to race or religion. So, until Larimer County was able to locate the actual original covenants, I wasn't absolutely sure one way or the other, but I was definitely leaning towards their neighborhood not being "stained" with this type of restriction, as other Estes Park neighborhoods were, and so wouldn't mention their neighborhood in the discussion with Channel 7, and wouldn't include it on the list of potential places for them to visit.
Unfortunately, the map I had prepared the night before for Channel 7 (and to keep a running tally) already had this neighborhood cross-hatched in permanent black marker. The map wasn't large enough to make out the specific neighborhood (plus the cross-hatching obscured most of the letters in its name anyway), so it wasn't like anybody but me knew, but sadly, I had not created different cross-hatching patterns for "tentative" versus "confirmed" neighborhoods, so when you see reporter Ryan Luby referring to the "four black eyes" of Estes Park, this included one neighborhood that ultimately turned out not to have any covenants restricting property ownership by race or religion.
I wasn't that worried, then or now, because, again, this neighborhood wasn't being mentioned by name, or serving as the backdrop at the time the map was being discussed. Plus I knew (and stated as much on camera), since this examination had just begun, this was likely just the beginning, there were almost certainly more "problem" neighborhoods to uncover. Indeed, I found our true "fourth black eye" without much effort ten days later, and am now suspicious of most Estes Park subdivisions created in the 1940s, since they all just copied covenants off each other.
(to be continued)
I had no hard evidence that this neighborhood had in the past prohibited, or was still attempting to prohibit, adherents of the Jewish faith from buying property in their neighborhood. The original plat said nothing, and the covenents filed with the original plat had yet to be found. Either they had been purposefully (conspiracy theory - this document did indeed contain a restriction based on religious beliefs, but bribe money slipped to the right person years back had made it disappear) or accidentally purged.
But I had promised the president of the neighborhood's homeowners' association I would return that day with documents in hand, confirming what I had already assured her was an easy absolute. On top of that, Channel 7 from Denver was arriving the following day, and would likely need a list of which neighborhoods had these offensive restrictive covenants on the books, so they could visit these locations and interview residents.
Fixing the first part was easy, I just stopped by the homeowners' association president's house, again unannounced, and apologized, explaining that I was getting my information from someone else, and the plat had not included anything close to what I had been assured by them it would include, and since I now knew this subdivision wasn't platted until 1965 anyway, it seemed very unlikely to contain any restrictions related to race or religion. So, until Larimer County was able to locate the actual original covenants, I wasn't absolutely sure one way or the other, but I was definitely leaning towards their neighborhood not being "stained" with this type of restriction, as other Estes Park neighborhoods were, and so wouldn't mention their neighborhood in the discussion with Channel 7, and wouldn't include it on the list of potential places for them to visit.
Unfortunately, the map I had prepared the night before for Channel 7 (and to keep a running tally) already had this neighborhood cross-hatched in permanent black marker. The map wasn't large enough to make out the specific neighborhood (plus the cross-hatching obscured most of the letters in its name anyway), so it wasn't like anybody but me knew, but sadly, I had not created different cross-hatching patterns for "tentative" versus "confirmed" neighborhoods, so when you see reporter Ryan Luby referring to the "four black eyes" of Estes Park, this included one neighborhood that ultimately turned out not to have any covenants restricting property ownership by race or religion.
I wasn't that worried, then or now, because, again, this neighborhood wasn't being mentioned by name, or serving as the backdrop at the time the map was being discussed. Plus I knew (and stated as much on camera), since this examination had just begun, this was likely just the beginning, there were almost certainly more "problem" neighborhoods to uncover. Indeed, I found our true "fourth black eye" without much effort ten days later, and am now suspicious of most Estes Park subdivisions created in the 1940s, since they all just copied covenants off each other.
(to be continued)
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