A lodge tucked into Colorado’s Front Range mountains was once a woodland Harlem Renaissance, attracting jazz musician Duke Ellington, poet Langston Hughes, writer Zora Neale Hurston and countless other Black Americans who sought refuge, joy and fresh air at a time when the great outdoors was not safe for everyone.
Generations of Morgan Ramsey’s family were among the Black Coloradans who drove 40 miles west of Denver into Coal Creek Canyon to bask in the sanctity of Lincoln Hills — 650 acres of serene, green leisure in Gilpin County where African Americans could fish, hike, vacation, buy property and exist in nature.
Founded in 1922 by two Black entrepreneurs from Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, Lincoln Hills was the first mountain resort west of the Mississippi created by and for Black Americans. The haven was indispensable as the Ku Klux Klan carved a foothold in Denver and surrounding towns in the 1920s, exerting economic and political control across the state…