Nathaniel Dauth

Despite having a river run through it, the Big Thompson is an arid place, where life clings to where the water flows. The secret to Idlewild's early success as a settlement was its fortuitous access…

In 1947 Albert Appleby, of the Appleby Motel, purchased Idlewild Lot 6. Here he began construction of a second motel which would be known as the Ritz.

In the early 1920s, Clarence H. Stump, a grain farmer from Loveland, purchased Idlewild Lot 17.

Florence Dauth (birth-name Yeaton) was born in 1878 in the small farming town of Bancroft, Nebraska. After graduating high school she began working in a millinery parlor in Omaha, Nebraska before…

The first cabin built at Idlewild was most likely the Idle Wild House. Constructed in 1906, this building was Ella Van Bramer's personal residence and headquarters for her Idlewild Camping Resort.

Shortly after purchasing Idlewild Lodge in 1921, George Dauth sold Idlewild Lot 1 and part of Lot 2 to the John Jones family.

The completion of the Riley Road in 1903 marked the beginnings of a tourist boom in the Big Thompson Canyon. For the first time a road went through the narrows, which would allow travelers to bypass…

In 1878 Frank Marvin, the trapper of Idlewild, was tending to his traps in the Buckhorn canyon when he came across a mule. Not seeing anyone about he took the mule back to his camp, and was…

One of the first persons to be documented living in the Big Thompson Canyon was a trapper by the name of Frank Marvin. Frank was born in Ohio around the year 1829. At the age of 29 he made his first…

The Big Thompson Canyon is an ever changing landscape. Rock falls, floods, and human development have dramatically changed the canyon in the last hundred years. So many landmarks that were once…

Between 1946 and 1949 Hubert Appleby built a restaurant across the river from Appleby Motel called Appleby’s Cafe. The restaurant sat beside the highway between the motel convenience store to the…

The history of the Appleby Motel begins in the 1920s after Ed Wild purchased the land west of Idlewild bridge that would later become the motel grounds. Ed Wild’s first construction was a stone cabin…

If you wander the northern valleys on Sheep Mountain you may encounter a few hundred stumps of trees cut well over a century ago. These serve as a reminder of the mostly untold history of some of the…

About the time that George Dauth purchased Idlewild Lodge in 1920, a large portion of the Idlewild homestead was purchased by Frend Alford Neville. This area encompassed the hundred or so acres of…

Before Idlewild was officially platted as a subdivision and parceled into recordable land plots, a number of individuals, aside from Ella Van Bramer, were living here. The 1910 sub division plat…

Before 1875 traversing the Big Thompson Canyon was a difficult task There were no roads in or around the canyon and most exploring could only be done when the river iced over allowing travel up the…

The Idlewild Sub-division plat was filed by Ella Van Bramer on August 9th 1910. The plat document officially named the area "IDLE WILD" and divided Ella's land claims into twenty-two 100ft wide lots.…

In October of 1921 George Dauth sold part of Idlewild Lot 2 to the Albert James Luther family. The Luther's built a cabin there, and named it the DAM'FINO. One of Albert Luther's sons, Lawton, wrote…

An idyllic wilderness, an Idyl Wilde, Idle Wild, Idylwilde, Idlewild. Different spellings, same meaning. The first mention of Idlewild, in 1906, spelled it phonetically "Eydl-wilde."

George Dauth was born in Westhofen, Germany on October 24, 1868. At the age of 15 he immigrated to the United States to join his siblings who were living in Colorado. When he arrived he started…

Harvey Witwer was the son of Elizabeth Studebaker and nephew of John Mohler Studebaker of the Studebaker Automobile Company. Harvey first worked for the family business by selling wagons and horse…

The story of Idlewild begins with Ella. She was the daughter of Frank Bartholf, a businessman of Loveland, who was developing the land around the confluence of the Big Thompson and the North Fork,…