Back In Time - Monarch Virtual Cache

Virtual cache in the Arapahoe National Recreation Area on the shore of Monarch Lake.
Monarch Lake, at an elevation of 8337 feet, is a scenic gem with 12,000+ foot peaks for a backdrop and a “picture postcard” island in the middle.

Take a three-quarter mile hike over an easy to moderate trail to the cache. The trail meanders around Monarch Lake for a total distance of 4.5 miles. Parking waypoint below. A pass is required. One-day, three-day, or weekly passes may be purchased at an obvious kiosk. Federal land annual passes will also work.

A special thank you to The Lost Grasshoppers for originally placing this cache!

Monarch was once a bustling town and the rail head of the Rocky Mountain Railroad. Boulder businessmen T.S. Waltemeyer, Frank Wolcott, and Charles A. Wolcott heard about traces of gold, silver, and mostly copper at the junction of the Arapahoe Creek and the South Fork of the Colorado River. In 1905 they established the Monarch Consolidated Gold and Copper Mining and Smelting Company and built their company on the assumption that a major belt of minerals extended east through the Continental Divide. The Monarch Company consisted of several subsidiary companies including lumber companies. With 1740 acres of placer and lode claims, the main objective of the company was to mine metal ores, but supplement it with timber and build a railway to benefit the whole company.

The Monarch Company shipped heavy machinery by flatbed cars to Granby on the new Moffat Road. They then put an ad in the paper asking for bids to haul heavy machinery 16 miles from Granby to Monarch. The machinery included “5 boilers (eight and a quarter tons each), one engine (over eleven tons), one flywheel (6 tons), other machinery (from 1 to 5 tons), a carload of nails, and several hundred pounds of miscellaneous supplies.” The task of hauling the heavy equipment was made especially difficult by mud-holes and bridges not made for heavy loads. Denver hauling companies refused to take on the job and one logging company from Wyoming abandoned the challenge after the first wagonload stuck in a mud-hole. Finally Dick McQueary agreed to move the machinery. To accomplish the job, McQueary purchased several hundred feet of hardwood planks in Denver, 3 inch thick, sixteen inches wide and twelve feet long. Accompanying the heavy pieces up the mountain was a “4 horse team hauling hardwood plank, a 4 horse team pulling six inch pine poles, 10 feet long, and a four horse team pulling two ton large nails”. The crew built temporary bridges across mud-holes by laying pine poles 3 feet apart with hardwood planks laid across the poles. Two light loads were driven across to test bridge followed by the heavy load pulled by 12 head horses. Finally the planks and poles were pulled up to be used at the next mud-hole. The heavy machinery was hauled in 2 weeks.

The town of Monarch included employee housing, business offices, a post office, and an assembly hall. Grand County's first hydro-electric generator was in Monarch. The waterworks system was created by piping water from the falls at Mad Creek and had pressure up to 300 lbs per inch. In 1907, the Monarch Box Factory and the Rocky Mountain Railway, a standard-gauge 16 mile line from Granby to Monarch, were constructed. The Monarch Company created Monarch Lake by damming the valley, at the junction of Arapahoe Creek and South fork of the Colorado River, for use with the saw mill and the box factory. A 2800 foot long chute carried tree trunks down the hillside to the lake where they hit the water and could bounce up to 50 ft high. Then a stern-wheel steamer pushed logs into a system of canals and flumes that led down to the saw mill and box factory. The box factory only operated for 2 or 3 months before it was totally destroyed by fire. In the fall of 1907, the Monarch Company declared bankruptcy.

The railway continued to be used for a number of years. Ed McDonald, a dude rancher, put a Cadillac touring car on flanged iron wheels to carry mail, supplies, and guests to his ranch. The center of town was preserved and developed by the Dierks as a summer resort called Ka Rose, after Katherine Rose Dierks, the owner's daughter. In 1912, the rail line was used for transporting fisherman along the river by Ernest F. Behr, a former Colorado and Southern engineman. Finally, in 1918, the rails were sold to a junk dealer in Denver to satisfy the World War I need for scrap metal.

Since 1947, the Monarch town site, mill site, and box factory have been under the waters of Lake Granby. In 2002, a year of low water, there were still a few signs of this town on the dried lake bed (see waypoint below). Today, at Monarch Lake, you can still see some of the original machinery as well the flume.

Monarch about 1907		McDonald’s Ranch dated 1909-1912
KaRose dated 1920-1930		Monarch Lake

Email us either the (1) seven-character name and three-digit number cast(upside down) on the lake-side base of the machinery or (2) twelve-character name stamped into the side of a globe valve casing about 10 feet off the ground on the northwest corner of the machinery.

We'll verify and you can log the find.

Please do NOT put the answer (even encrypted) in the log.

Back In Time is a series of caches placed near historic sites to remind us to remember our past. We can learn so much from studying the past. This series will provide a history tour of Colorado.