Twelve Mexicans and the “Ordinary Americans”
Growing up in Estes Park, I always thought Latino history here was pretty recent. In my head, Mexican presence in town started around my grandparents’ generation. People coming here for work, cleaning cabins, working construction, kitchens, housekeeping, and doing whatever work they could find.
But while reading a National Park Service history book on Rocky Mountain National Park, I found something that made me stop.
On PDF page 109, talking about the CCC camps near Estes Park during the Great Depression, the writer briefly describes the workers:
“An interesting lot, mainly from Denver, one Negro, twelve Mexicans, the rest ordinary Americans…”
— Battell Loomis
That’s it.
No names. No stories. Just “twelve Mexicans.”
Still, that one sentence says a lot.
By the 1930s, there were already Mexican men living and working in the Estes Valley. These camps helped build trails, roads, and infrastructure in Rocky Mountain National Park. The work was hard, especially at altitude, and this was during the middle of the Great Depression.
The same writer also said this about the men in camp:
“These aren’t panhandlers; they are the men we use to make wars, or revolutions, or crime waves. They’re husky, intelligent, clean-living youngsters.”
And then:
“You can build a new state out of men like these.”
Reading that nearly 100 years later, it is hard not to think about those twelve Mexican men.
We do not know their names. We do not know where they came from or whether they stayed in Estes. But chances are, they faced a lot of the same things many Mexican workers still face coming here. Arriving young, ready to work hard, trying to build something better.
The wording of the quote is strange to read today. The author separated the twelve Mexicans from the “ordinary Americans.” But in a way, maybe even he knew there was something extraordinary about them.
Young men, far from easy circumstances, working in the mountains during one of the hardest times in American history, helping build one of the most beautiful places in the country.
History only gave them one sentence.
But they were here.
And they are part of Estes Park history.
Source:
Rocky Mountain National Park Administrative History (National Park Service PDF) (PDF page 109)