OCR Text |
Show Baldpate Keys Lure Tourists Collection Highlights Rocky Mountain Hostel ESTES PARK, COL. There are nearly 12,000 of those keys to Baldpate Bald-pate now. If you've ever been a tourist in Colorado's Rocky Mountain national na-tional park you surely have seen the keyroom at Baldpate Inn. It has keys from all parts of the world large keys, small keys, keys of strange shapes and bizarre histories. his-tories. The inn is a modest log building just off the South St. Vrain Canyon road, about 10 miles from Estes Park village and an easy two hour drive from Denver. The west wing of the inn is pretty well given over to the key collection. collec-tion. Keys hang from the round log rafters and cover the pine walls. Visitors are encouraged to add keys to the collection, tagged with their, names and the date. Gordon Mace, Baldpate's proprietor, proprie-tor, who is getting a bit thin on top' himself, talks about the keys with as much sparkle in his friendly blue eye as he must have shown the day he and his brothers started the collection. col-lection. "Yes, close to 12,000 keys now," he said, "but they don't come in as fast as they used to. People who know about the collection wait until un-til they get something really special before they send it along." Mace has devoted one whole section sec-tion of walls to keys sent to him from cities on the war fronts by Americans in the armed services who once visited Baldpate. There is a key from the Imperial hotel at Tokyo in this batch and a tiny one reputed to open a drawer of Hitler's desk. A chaplain in New Zealand wrote Mace he was sending send-ing him "the most important key in New Zealand." It was an opener for a C ration tin. The pilot of a bomber based at Texas wrote Mace he would drop him a key by parachute the next time he flew into Colorado. On th designated day he swooped low over Lake Estes, down the valley from Baldoate, and let fly. - i |