The River Runs Yellow

BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD

 

May starts tomorrow. The wildflowers are coming up on the south-facing slopes. The park reservations open tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. on Recreation.gov for anyone planning a visit between May 22 and June 30. Trail Ridge Road is still closed but the snowpack is thin enough that the crews might surprise us.

 

And Saturday, thousands of rubber ducks are going to race down the Big Thompson River through downtown Estes Park while several hundred people stand on the Riverwalk and cheer for a piece of yellow plastic they paid $25 to adopt.

 

This is the 38th year they have done it.

 

Moe stopped by Tuesday and asked how something like that gets started.

 

I told him the way most good things in this town get started. Four guys having coffee with a decent idea and nowhere particular to be.

 

SIT DOWN. THIS ONE'S GOOD.

 

The River Runs Yellow

 

How four men having coffee in 1989 accidentally built one of the most beloved traditions in Estes Park history

 

What Were Four Guys Doing Having Coffee in 1989?

 

Solving two problems at once, as it turned out.

 

Estes Park in 1989 had a gap nobody had figured out how to fill. There was no United Way. No organized way to collect and distribute money to the nonprofits and community groups that needed it. Local organizations were running their own fundraisers and competing for the same limited goodwill. The town also had a shoulder season problem. Early May was quiet in the way that quietly kills a merchant's bottom line before summer arrives and fixes everything.

 

Stan Pratt, Nick Kane, Mike McDonald, and Steve Nagl were sitting over coffee talking about both problems. Stan mentioned he had recently seen a duck race up in Oregon. It looked like fun. Good way to raise money. Good way to bring people to town in a slow month.

 

Mike looked up and said the thing everyone in the room already knew. Estes Park had a river running right through the center of town.

 

Nick said the race could start at his restaurant on the water.

 

Steve said his place downstream could be the finish line.

 

Nobody formed a subcommittee. Nobody hired a consultant. Nobody scheduled a follow-up meeting to assess the feasibility of the duck race concept relative to other charitable fundraising mechanisms in the mountain resort context.

 

They finished their coffee and started a duck race.

 

What Happened Next?

 

The first Great Estes Park Rotary Duck Race ran in 1989. It ran again in 1990. And every first Saturday of May after that for 37 consecutive years.

 

According to the Rotary Club of Estes Park, it has returned more than $3 million to local charities and organizations in the Estes Valley. It has become the second oldest continuing duck race in the United States.

 

Some ideas are just good from the start.

Why Does Any of This Matter?

Because four men could have finished their coffee and gone back to work and done nothing.

 

They had identified a real gap in how this town supported its own. That gap would have eventually been filled by someone. Maybe a committee. Maybe a foundation. Maybe a very long series of meetings with a strategic plan and a five-year implementation timeline.

 

Instead it got filled by a duck race on the Big Thompson on the first Saturday of May. The Rotary Club runs it. Volunteers staff it. Local nonprofits get the money. Thirty-seven years. Three million dollars. Second oldest in the country.

 

Stan Pratt saw something in Oregon and thought it could work here. He was right in ways none of them probably saw coming over that first cup of coffee.