The Palmer Lake Historical Society Turns 70

The Palmer Lake Historical Society was founded in October 1956 to publish a single book: a town history that had sat in manuscript for 14 years. Seventy years later it runs the Lucretia Vaile Museum, has helped place two Palmer Lake landmarks on the State Register of Historic Properties, and still meets on the third Thursday of the month at Palmer Lake Town Hall. It marks the anniversary there on Thursday, Oct. 15.

The Palmer Lake Historical Society is an all-volunteer organization, and always has been. Its bylaws from the first year barred officers and directors from being paid. What it has instead is continuity. The society’s first president was Marian McIntyre McDonough, an author of Western novels for teenagers, who read the town’s history aloud to her neighbors in the fall of 1956 to raise the money to print it. She was still its president in 1969. The museum’s director, Roger Davis, is her grandson. He has held the post since at least 2007.

Asked what the society counts as its most important contribution in 70 years, its museum committee gave a short answer: the Vaile Museum.

A manuscript that needed a society

The book came first. Marion Savage Sabin finished Palmer Lake: A Historical Narrative in 1942 and gave it to the town library committee chaired by Evalena Macy, pastor of the Little Log Church, whose members had done much of the research. It then sat unpublished.

In July 1956 McDonough, then chairing a Palmer Lake History Committee, told The Columbine Herald, then published in Palmer Lake and now readable in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, that her committee was considering a historical society whose main job would be to publish it. Members would pledge to buy at least one copy and pay about $1 a year. An organizing meeting followed on Sept. 28 in the Palmer Lake School auditorium; the paper’s notice urged residents to come because “the opportunity for making permanent records is fast passing away.” At a second meeting on Oct. 18, members adopted bylaws and elected officers. The society counts that date as its founding.

McDonough was elected president. Lloyd McFarling became secretary and J. Kenneth McCall treasurer. The vice president and one director appear in the paper, in the style of the day, under their husbands’ names, as Mrs. Newt Medlock and Mrs. Bert Story. The seven directors elected that night were a roll of the town’s institutions: Scott Carpenter; Evalena Macy; Reba Bradley, whose family owned the Sundance Mountain land beneath the Palmer Lake Star; Rogers McDonough, a lieutenant colonel and the president’s husband; Lucretia Vaile; Story; and Charles Clark. Dues were $1 for an active member, $5 for a sustaining one and $25 for life.

The society’s certificate of incorporation listed purposes well beyond one book: to operate libraries and museums, to collect and preserve historical material, and to publish from time to time. Its first project was the book. McFarling, a writer and former town official, edited Sabin’s text. The Denver publisher Alan Swallow brought it out in an edition announced at 1,000 copies, about 120 pages with 29 photographs and three maps and a cover painting of Elephant Rock by the Palmer Lake artist Arthur Bradley. The society bought 500 to sell to members. By mid-June 1957 it was in local stores at $2.50 in cloth and $2.00 in paper.

The book is in print again. The fifth edition, dated 2019, runs to 148 pages, with more than 75 new or re-scanned photographs and illustrations and a person index covering every chapter. The society now counts it as the first of three books it calls its trilogy. The other two are by Lucille Lavelett, a Monument native who served as that town’s official historian: Through the Years at Monument, Colorado and Monument’s Faded Neighbor Communities & Its Folklore, written in 1979 and newly reprinted.

The shelf has grown since. In 2011 the society’s volunteers wrote Communities of the Palmer Divide, a picture history for Arcadia Publishing. A member, Dan Edwards, has written a series of occasional papers on Glen Park, the Chautauqua and the Rocklands Hotel, and the society co-produced Jim Sawatzki’s documentary Summer Sojourn. All are sold through its bookstore.

From book to museum

One of the seven directors elected in 1956 gave the museum its name. Lucretia Vaile’s father, a lawyer for the Denver & Rio Grande, bought land in Palmer Lake in 1884, and the family spent its summers there. A librarian in Denver and New York and one of the founders of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1912, she brought the Yule Log ceremony to town with Macy and, when she died in 1977, left Palmer Lake a bequest of $46,000 for cultural purposes.

McDonough led the founding of a second organization alongside the society, the Palmer Lake Community Library and Museum, and the society raised the money for it the way small towns do. It held a public auction at Town Hall in August 1962 for the library fund, and a bake sale in March 1965 to pay for a furnace, a lavatory and a finished basement. The library’s first home, opened in February 1964, was the former Santa Fe section foreman’s house, a building that later became the town police department’s office. The museum moved into the building in 1965, the year the society’s annual report also recorded repairs for “minor tornado and flood damage” and, to top it all, a cash balance in the treasury. Her bequest, with county money and funds from the society, paid for a new library and museum building, dedicated on Oct. 4, 1981, and named for her. An addition in 1996, paid for with money the society received from the estate of Lena Royse, gave the museum storage and office space.

The Lucretia Vaile Museum occupies the lower level of the Pikes Peak Library District‘s Palmer Lake branch at 66 Lower Glenway St. Its exhibits, as the society listed them in 2019, run from Native American artifacts through the Denver & Rio Grande depot and Judd Eating House, the Rockland Hotel, ice harvesting, fox farms and the Pillsbury General Store, to the Palmer Lake Star and the Vaile family. The glass cases came from a furrier who was going out of business. The best-known resident is a mountain lion called “Old Disappearance,” shot in 1922, which the society’s newsletter once listed on its masthead between the museum director and the membership telephone number. The museum is free and open Wednesdays from 1 to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; volunteers staff it.

Seventy years of projects

The record of what the society did is fullest at the two ends: for its first 15 years, in the local papers of the day, and for the past 25, on its own website and in its newsletters. Between them it reads as a list of the towns’ public landmarks.

• 1961: It placed a plaque at the Pioneer Cemetery on the grounds of the Air Force Academy, dedicated July 29, to the families who first settled the country between Palmer Lake and Colorado Springs. Ten years later its board sent $100 toward repairs and new fencing there, and in all, an undated society history sheet says, it gave the Academy five bronze plaques for the cemetery. The cause was close to home. McDonough’s grandparents, William Bangs Young and Mary Eliza Young, came west from Chicago in 1871 for Mary’s health and bought a ranch on Monument Creek, on land that is now the Academy’s. McDonough transcribed her grandmother’s diary of the journey, and Davis drew on it this year for a booklet he wrote for the museum on the nation’s 250th and Colorado’s 150th.
• 1966–68: It sponsored the Palmer Lake Little Art Group’s annual art show, which gave a share of its sales to the museum. The 1967 show at Town Hall drew 82 exhibitors and a record 350 visitors.
• 1971: With Rogers McDonough it obtained the last Denver & Rio Grande Western building left in Palmer Lake, a Victorian railroad house on Highway 105, and leased it to the art group as the Apple Tree Gallery.
• 1998: It gave the town the fountain in the lake, a replica of one that stood there at the turn of the 20th century.
• 2001: With the Town of Palmer Lake, it dedicated a memorial on May 26 to William J. “Bill” Crawford, the Palmer Lake resident awarded the Medal of Honor for action in World War II. Crawford had been one of its own: a president of the society and a director of the museum.
• 2006: For its 50th anniversary it commissioned a bronze of Dizzy, the German shepherd who carried supplies in a pack for the volunteers building the Palmer Lake Star in 1935. The sculpture, by Donna Arndt, was dedicated on the Village Green on Oct. 21, 2006.

• 2008: On Aug. 3 it revived the Rocky Mountain Chautauqua, the summer assembly that had put Palmer Lake on the map in the 19th century, as a one-day event with lectures, music and a nature walk. It has staged the Chautauqua again in later summers.
• 2009: It gave the Town of Monument the bronze “Monument 1879” bas-relief in Monument Town Hall, made by the local artist Ronny Walker and paid for entirely by the society’s members. The same year it held a Native American festival and powwow beside the lake that drew about 200 people. The powwow moved indoors to Colorado Springs in 2013 in partnership with One Nation Walking Together, drew almost 3,000 in 2014, and has been run by that charity since 2016.
• 2013: It nominated the Palmer Lake Star to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties in October 2012, in a nomination written by a board member, Jack Anthony; the state approved it unanimously in January 2013.

• 2017: It refurbished the town’s 1891 jail for the third time, having earlier helped the town move the building to save it from demolition. As far as the society knows the jail held one prisoner, who tried to burn his way out through the window frame with a candle; the char marks are still there. The same year it awarded its first scholarships, $500 each to a graduate of Palmer Ridge and of Lewis-Palmer.
• 2019: Palmer Lake Town Hall, built around 1914, was added to the State Register on Sept. 20, 2019. The society credits Anthony and a team of members and residents.
• 2021: With its own money and a Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection grant, it had the area’s old papers digitized from museum originals, many of them the only copies known, and from state microfilm: The Columbine Herald (1956–59), its successor the Palmer Lake-Monument News (1965–71) and the Black Forest News (1960–79). The founding story told above, and the entries here for 1966 to 1971, come from those pages.
• 2022: The museum reopened by August, having been closed since April 2020, first for the pandemic and then while the library above it had its entrance rebuilt.

The Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce has named it Nonprofit of the Year. The society also publishes an annual Tri-Lakes history calendar and holds a Father’s Day ice cream social on the Village Green, which drew about 285 people in 2018 and about 200 in 2021. In July 2026 it hosted Palmer Divide History Day, its part in the region’s 250/150 observances.

The society now

The society elected its 2026 board at its annual meeting on Jan. 15, where it also marked its 70th anniversary: Jeannine Engel, president; Diane Kokes, vice president; Patricia Atkins, secretary; Dave Powell, treasurer; Roger Davis, museum director; and directors at large Barbara Morehead, Heather Krueger, Wayne Russert and Kathie Lombardy.

Its monthly talks this year have covered the Cherokee Trail, fox farming on the Divide, the Pike and Long expeditions and transportation across the Divide, from trails to the interstate. Programs are free. Membership, $1 a year in 1956, is now $20 for an individual and $30 for a family, and runs by the calendar year. Anyone who joins between October and December is covered through the following year as well.

The society has 86 memberships, and all of this is the work of 10 of those members, its active volunteers; docents and board members must renew their membership every year. They serve as its officers and directors, staff the museum as docents, organize the collections, put on the monthly programs and produce the yearly Tri-Lakes history calendar. Patricia Atkins, the society’s secretary, wrote on behalf of its museum committee that what it most needs from the community follows from that number: volunteers first, then members, donations, people at its monthly programs and visitors to the museum.

Its aims for its 75th year are to keep collecting, preserving, displaying and interpreting the area’s objects and papers. A longer-term goal is more display and working space in the museum building. “We are proud to preserve the irreplaceable historical heritage of our area,” Atkins wrote. It is a fair claim for a society that set out to print one book and ended up keeping a town’s memory, mountain lion included.

The anniversary evening

The celebration takes the place of the society’s regular October program. Board members will present the society’s beginnings and founders, its mission and goals, major accomplishments, publications, the history of the town flag and the museum’s collections. There will be an anniversary cake and refreshments. The society marked its 60th the same way, with cake at its October program in 2016.

The society is also using the evening to promote its November program, on the history of the Yule Log, and its January potluck.

The flag has its own anniversary. It was made in 1976, the society says, for the celebration Monument and Palmer Lake held together that year of the nation’s bicentennial and Colorado’s centennial. Each town made one. Palmer Lake’s came out of a design contest won by Matie Tribble. Patricia Schmidt, who also painted the museum’s portrait of Vaile, and June Beachy sewed it, with supplies from the Palmer Lake Little Art Group. Monument’s is in its town office building. Palmer Lake’s will go on display in Town Hall once the evening’s presentation is over.

Join the society

The Palmer Lake Historical Society runs on its members. Membership is $20 a year for an individual, $30 for a family and $10 for a student, and anyone who joins before the end of December is covered through 2027 as well.

Become a member

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Historical Society Hosts Palmer Divide History Day in Palmer Lake on Saturday, the society’s July 2026 program, with a short account of the museum.

The founding, in The Columbine Herald (Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection): Historical Society Studied (July 20, 1956) · Palmer Lake to Have Historical Society (Sept. 14, 1956) · Bulletin (Sept. 28, 1956) · Marian McDonough Heads Historical Society, Seven Board Members Also Chosen (Oct. 26, 1956) · Palmer Lake Historical Society To Publish History (Dec. 7, 1956) · Palmer Lake History Pamphlet Due June 1 (May 3, 1957) · History of the Divide Country Published (June 14, 1957)

The society’s first 15 years, in the same collection: The Falconews, Pioneer Cemetery To Be Dedicated Sat. By Historians (July 28, 1961) · The Douglas County News, Public Auction at Palmer Lake, Aug. 17 (Aug. 16, 1962) · Palmer Lake-Monument News: Food and Bake Sale (March 5, 1965) · News From Jean Evans (April 21, 1966) · art exhibit report (Aug. 3, 1967) · Vaile Hill Art Gallery Dedicated (May 1, 1969) · Palmer Lake Historical Society (April 29, 1971) · Apple Tree Festival (Aug. 26, 1971)

The society’s own record: Emails from Patricia Atkins, secretary, Oct. 1 and Oct. 3, 2026 · emails and family papers from Roger Davis, museum director, Oct. 3, 2026, including his 2026 booklet for the museum, America’s 250th Anniversary & Colorado’s 150th, and an undated society history sheet · About the Historical Society · Lucretia Vaile Museum history · Lucretia Vaile · William John Crawford · The Palmer Lake Star · Chautauqua Assembly · Board members · Membership · Bookstore · Newsletters, 2007–2022 · 70th anniversary event page

Others: One Nation Walking Together, history of the powwow · Pikes Peak Library District, Palmer Lake Library · History Colorado, State Register of Historic Properties

Recent reporting: Our Community News (Marlene Brown): Jan. 16, 2025 annual meeting · Jan. 15, 2026 annual meeting · March 19, 2026 program

Photographs: Palmer Lake Historical Society and Lucretia Vaile Museum, published with the society’s permission; the portrait of Marian McIntyre McDonough is from the Davis family.

Methodology

The account of the society’s founding and of its first 15 years comes from The Columbine Herald and three other local papers, read as digitized text in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection; that text is machine-read from scanned pages and misreads names and figures, so every name, date and figure taken from it here was checked against the image of the printed page. The Independent found no comparable public record for the years from 1972 to the late 1990s; the society’s own archive would be the place to look. Later history comes from the society’s website, its bookstore listings, the 46 newsletters it has archived from 2007 to 2022, One Nation Walking Together’s history of the powwow, and Our Community News. Six of the newsletters survive only as scanned images and were read by machine; the one fact taken from those, the museum’s 2022 reopening, was checked against the page itself. Where the society’s own pages disagree on a date, the article gives the date its newsletters reported at the time, or leaves the date out. The society answered written questions from the Independent by email on Oct. 1 and Oct. 3, 2026, through its secretary, Patricia Atkins, the first time after a meeting of its museum committee. Roger Davis, the museum’s director and McDonough’s grandson, supplied the family photograph and the booklet on the Young family.