About

After learning the history, and with a love of nature, the Knapp’s created a life built on a vision of land stewardship, sustainability, and education. The Knapp’s learned the lore of the land from old-timers and got a clear timeline in the vast archives of the Eagle Valley Library District. Archaeologists theorized that prehistoric people inhabited the Eagle Valley year-round, traveling up East Lake Creek and West Lake Creek to hunt and gather in the summer months. Locally, the Ute Indians, Colorado’s longest continuous inhabitants, hunted, fished, and foraged for food in the Lake Creek Valley. In the mid 1800s, miners rushed to Colorado, hoping to strike gold high in the mountains. The discovery of the Leadville lode caused a flood of emigrant prospectors and subsequent extensions of the railway network in the mountains, including a line into the Eagle Valley. Seizing an opportunity, an entrepreneurial French florist-turned-miner named Joseph Brett settled in the valley just below Knapp Ranch and developed the region’s first recreational guest lodge, hosting businessmen and travelers. Eventually, a man named Joseph Vilda from Nebraska became the original homesteader. He trapped bear, grazed animals, and grew lettuce in the loamy soils of the upper West Lake Creek Valley at the turn of the century. After Vilda moved on in the 1930s local ranchers used the high country meadows for their sheep and cattle in the summer. In 1970, in anticipation of Olympic alpine events coming to Vail and Beaver Creek, a group of investors proposed 185 home-sites in the upper West Lake Creek valley. However, in 1972 voters rejected the Olympics and the developers retreated. What they left behind were the scars of deserted roads, until the Knapp’s revived it, rehabilitating it into the healthy, thriving environment it is today.