The Mountain Thread | Estes Park | September 10, 2026 |
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BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD
Moe showed up this morning still in a summer jacket. Worth mentioning, since by Friday half this town is going to be wearing wool and asking directions to the nearest bagpipe.
Told him the Highland Festival turns fifty this weekend. He didn't believe the number until I told him who started it, and why.
Trail Ridge Road is open. The elk are settled into rut season. And a Chamber of Commerce guy from the 1970s is still, fifty years later, filling this town's hotel rooms in September exactly like he planned to.
Sit Down. This One's Good. |
Who Started This, and Why?
Not a Scottish immigrant. A Chamber of Commerce guy. His name was James Durward. In the 1970s he was president of the Estes Park Chamber of Commerce, and he had a problem that anybody running a shop or a motel in this town still understands. Summer packs the sidewalks. Then Labor Day hits and the valley goes quiet for a month before ski season picks it back up. Durward happened to be a lifelong student of Scottish heritage. So he built an event around it. His obituary, printed in the Estes Park News after he died in May 2023, says it plainly: he created the festival "to provide commerce and community opportunities during the fall season." Moe asked if that meant the bagpipes were basically a marketing plan. That's exactly what they were. A good one, too. It's still running fifty years later.
Why a Highland Games in a Colorado Valley With No Scots in Sight?
There were more Scots in sight than you'd guess. Durward didn't build this out of nothing. Griffith Evans, a Welshman, showed up in this valley in 1867 and opened what's usually called the area's first dude ranch, years before Estes Park was anything but a handful of cabins. He wasn't the only one. The trade magazine Celtic Life International notes that a good share of the valley's earliest settlers came out of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Moe wanted to know if that meant the festival was really about ancestry. No. That's the part worth being straight about. Durward's own reason, the one his obituary states, was economic, not sentimental. The Celtic roots already sitting in this valley's early history are a nice coincidence he could point to. They're not why he did it. He did it to sell hotel rooms in September.
How Do You Get From a Picnic to a Weekend With a Sword-Fighting TV Star?....Read More... |
This Weekend
The Longs Peak Scottish Irish Highland Festival hits fifty years, September 11 through 13, at the fairgrounds on Manford Avenue. Festival Field is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. all three days. The Estes Park International Tattoo runs 7 p.m. Friday and 5:30 p.m. Saturday. Highland Athletics check in at 7:30 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, competition starts at 8. Actor Adrian Paul does live sword demonstrations Friday through Sunday at 10 a.m., 12:15, and 2:15.
The festival's own pub crawl kicks the weekend off Thursday night, the same day this newsletter lands in your inbox. 5:30 p.m. at Full Throttle, downtown.
Estes Valley Farmers Market. Thursday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Visitor Center parking lot, 500 Big Thompson Avenue. Running into mid-September. |
Trivia Question❓The Highland Festival started in 1976 as an idea from the president of what local group? Answer at the bottom of the newsletter |
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RMNP UPDATE
Elk rut closures are in full swing. Horseshoe Park, Upper Beaver Meadows, Moraine Park, Harbison Meadow, and Holzwarth Meadow stay closed to travel off established roads and trails from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. daily, through October 31. Fishing inside those posted stretches of the Fall River, Big Thompson, and Colorado River closes 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. Stay at least 75 feet back from elk, about two school buses, and skip the elk calls and the spotlights.
Trail Ridge Road is open to through travel. Timed entry stays required, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the general park and 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the Bear Lake Road corridor, with the Bear Lake requirement running through October 18 and the rest of the park through October 12.
Fire rules aren't the same everywhere in the valley right now. Rocky Mountain National Park stays under a full Stage 2 fire ban, no campfires anywhere in the park, charcoal included. The Estes Valley Fire Protection District is a step lighter, Stage 1 since March: charcoal and pellet grills are fine, and a wood fire is fine too if it's contained in a real fire pit or an approved portable device. Larimer County's broader order, the stricter one that bans even an outdoor fireplace, was set to expire the night before this issue landed, and whether it got renewed again wasn't public as of press time. Check estesvalleyfire.org or call the fire district directly at 970-577-0900 before you plan anything with a flame this weekend. |
DID YOU KNOW?
The festival's fiftieth-anniversary math checks out from three separate directions. Local newspaper coverage called it the "40 Years" festival in 2016, the 41st annual in 2017, and the 47th annual in 2023. All three land on the same founding year, 1976, without anybody comparing notes.
Adrian Paul, doing sword demonstrations at this year's festival, spent years playing the sword-fighting lead in the TV series Highlander. He's one of the festival's headline draws for its 50th.
Griffith Evans, a Welshman, opened what's usually called Estes Park's first dude ranch back in 1867, more than a century before anyone organized a Highland games here. The Celtic thread in this valley runs older than the festival that celebrates it.
"Tattoo," as in the festival's own Estes Park International Tattoo, has nothing to do with ink. It comes from a Dutch phrase, doe den tap toe, roughly "turn off the tap," the signal Dutch innkeepers once used to cut off soldiers' beer at day's end. |
Joke Of The Day |
What do you call a Chamber of Commerce president who spends fifty years convincing an entire town to wear kilts in September? Successful. (Four families and a picnic in 1976. This year's guest list includes a guy who fought immortals on television for a living.) |
💡 Answer to Trivia Question: The Estes Park Chamber of Commerce. James Durward, its president at the time, started the festival to bring visitors to town during the slow fall season. |
UNTIL NEXT WEEK
Moe asked if I was getting a kilt for the weekend. Told him I hadn't worn a costume since Bigfoot Days and I wasn't about to start now. He said that was probably for the best.
Trail Ridge Road is open. The elk are settled into rut season. And somewhere on Manford Avenue this weekend, four families' idea from 1976 is going to need its own parking plan.
"Stay smart, stay safe, and leave the mountains fifty years harder to explain than four families with a picnic blanket ever meant them to be."
This account draws from James Durward's obituary in the Estes Park News, published following his death in May 2023, Estes Park News coverage of the festival from 2016, 2017, and 2023, Celtic Life International's history of the festival, and the Longs Peak Scottish Irish Highland Festival's own 2026 schedule. The facts are as solid as I could get them. I shaped how this reads, not what happened, and where the record went quiet I said so instead of filling it in. Four families really did start this with a picnic.
- Buck Timber The Mountain Thread themountainthread.com/signup |