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Welcome to the Rainy Day rabbit Holes Podcast. Your escape
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from the mundane.
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Dive into the rich history of the Pacific Northwest with us,
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and let your mind wander down the rabbit hole.
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Because in the Northwest it's always raining something weird.
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I'm Shay and I'm Jody. Let's fall down the rabbit hole.
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Let's take a journey. I want you to imagine that
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you are perched on the back of a giant golden eagle.
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It's smooth feathers gleaming in the sunlight as you soar
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high above the majestic rocky mountains. The rugged peaks stretch
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out beneath you. There's snow capped summits glistening in the sunlight.
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Oh my goodness.
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The dense forests and pristine lakes create a breath taking
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tapestry of natural beauty. A serene wilderness that seems untouched
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by time, the ancestral home of the ute and a
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rapa hoe peoples. Amidst this stunning landscape, nestled in a
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lush valley, you spot a gleaming white building standing sentinel
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above the small town of Estes Park, Colorado.
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I forgot to mention we're in Colorado.
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I actually don't think I said the word Colorado and
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this entire story, you guess were as far because we
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are not going to tell you.
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I love that view you gave me, because you know
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what's funny is I often think what would it be
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like to be an eagle and have that view? So
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when you took me on the journey, I was like
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I was there with you, because I do it all
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the time anyway.
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It's grand colonial architecture, with its red roof and white facade,
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contrasts strikingly against the backdrop of the towering mountains. As
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your majestic ride sets you down gently on the pristine
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emerald green lawns that rolled gently down from the grand
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front porch, you stand in awe of this phenomenal structure.
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You begin to walk up the wide walkway, past the
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waist high hedge maze, up the front porch stairs, framed
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by austere white columns, and into the grand lobby. There
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you were greeted by rich, warm woodwork, a lavish carpet, and.
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Strangely, a car. A car.
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This nineteen ten Stanley steam car was at one time
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the fastest automobile in the world. With a mind blowing
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for the time top speed of one hundred and twenty
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seven miles per hour.
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Whoa steam car like out of like a train kind
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of technology? Right? That? What did it look like? Was
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it a Sedayan? Was it?
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So? It was very similar to what you would see
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like a model te oh okay, but it had a
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steam powered engine and so it burnt gasoline that basically
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like fired a boiler.
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That was the ending. Okay, so you did still need gasoline?
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Yeah yeah? And walk yeah? Okay, very interesting.
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This gleaming remnant of the progressive era was the brainchild
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of American inventor and entrepreneur Freelan Oscar Stanley, known as f. O. Stanley,
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who spent the end of the eighteen hundreds putting his
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name on multiple inventions like photographic plates and one of
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the first steam powered motor cars in eighteen ninety seven.
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What about Stanley steamers? Is that where this comes from? Yes?
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The cleaners for real? Yes, I jumped ahead, look at me.
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This is what put FO Stanley on the map. And
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he even at one time gave President McKinley a tour
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of Washington, DC in one of his Stanley steam cars,
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the first time a sitting US President had ridden in
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a car. What yep, for real? It was in a
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steam car.
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Yep, so cool. Stanley steamcar. Stanley steamcar.
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Stanley was respected and rich, with an adventurous and supportive wife, Flora.
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He was on top of the world. However, because life
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is an all candy and rides in a steam car, No,
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it's not. Their life took a terrible turn in nineteen
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oh three. Stanley, who had struggled with symptoms of tuberculosis
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for years, had a terrible resurgence of the disease. Sick
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and dying, he decided to die in paradise. He and
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Flora packed up some belongings and headed out to spend
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his last days in Esses Park, Colorado, surrounded by the
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vast and mysterious rocky mountains.
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It's gorgeous. Oh, it's gorgeous. It's breathtaking. Heartbreakings, it makes
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you small. Yeah.
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Flora went ahead of her husband by train and stagecoach
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to make sure that the summer cabin was ready for
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her sick love, and when Stanley arrived, he weighed only
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one hundred and eighteen pounds. His doctors gave him three
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to six months to live. His doctor promised to visit
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him in September, in all likelihood to take his lifeless
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corpse back to Massachusetts. But to the doctor's great surprise,
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when he came for the corpse, he found it happy,
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healthy and hiking five miles per day.
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Oh wow, So Estes Park is the cure to tuberculos.
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Absolutely apparently. F O.
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Stanley decided that summers and the Rockies were the best
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thing for his health, so he and Flora set out
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to build a home worthy of their status. First they
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built a grand home, and then they decided they wanted
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to entertain their friends, so they purchased a plot of land.
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This is my favorite part from the fourth Earl of
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Dunraven and Mount Earl, an Irish nobleman who had you'll
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love this claimed fifteen thousand acres of the Estes Valley
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under the Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two.
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Oh my goodness. Wait, he wasn't the railroad. He was
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an Irish nobleman, right, I thought the railroad had to
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do that. He'd be part of this. But no, you
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can land fraud anywhere. He had intended to turn.
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It into a private hunting reserve, but it was pretty
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unpopular with the local settlers.
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Can you imagine just taking yourself from today where it's
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almost impossible to buy yourself just a rambler on a dhhortenome, Yeah,
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a lot. No, those are expensive, like I mean, you know,
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and back in that day, you're like, here's fifteen hinder
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eggers of the most prestigious beautiful well he was the
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fourth Earl of Dunraven and Mount Earle. I mean he's
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special exactly.
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So, after two years of construction, the Stanley Hotel opened
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its glittering yellow doors to adventure seekers in nineteen oh nine.
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The first guests to arrive in the Mountain Wilderness in
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their Stanley steam cars were astonished at what they found.
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Expecting a rustic log lodge, they instead found a gleaming
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colonial revival gem painted in yellow ochre with white trim,
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with Tuscan columns, oval ochre, yellow ochre yeap oval oxye
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windows and elaborately turned balusters. Upon opening in nineteen oh nine,
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the hotel was alleged to be one of the first
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in the country to be fully electrified, although many of
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the pictures were dual powered with electricity or gas in
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case of a power outage, To power the hotel, Stanley
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built the Fall River hydroplant, which brought electricity to the
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town of Estes Park for the first time. Every room
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had a telephone, and each pair of rooms shared a
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bathroom with running water. WHOA, this is luxury absolutely. I
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mean even today.
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Going in a remote areas you can have to often
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share a bathroom or whatever.
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You know, all the mcminimons you still share a bathroom
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like this place was high and to start. The hotel
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was reported to have cost five hundred thousand dollars to
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construct a little over seventeen millions a day. Okay, that's
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huge h nineteen oh nine. That's a ton of money.
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As the nearest train depot was around twenty miles away
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in Lions, Stanley had his company produce a fleet of
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specially designed steam powered automobiles called Mountain wagons that could
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seat twelve passengers at a time to bring his guests
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to the hotel. He also built the road from Lyons
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to estes Park.
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Wow.
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The Stanley Hotel was only open during summer months, with
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a caretaker in residence during the harsh winter months. In
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nineteen eleven, a gas explosion did about ten thousand dollars
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worth of damage to the dining room and the rooms above.
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A chambermaid who was in the room directly above the
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dining room, was in the act of lighting a gas
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lamp when the match she held ignited gas that had
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escaped from a leaky pipe. The resulting explosion tore a
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massive hole on the floor, and plaster and timbers rained
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into the dining room below. The chambermaid, Lizzie Lettenberger, was
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thrown into the hole and had both ankles broken, but
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she didn't fall all the way to the floor, but
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instead was caught up by the ruined timbers and was
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held there until rescued.
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Whoa.
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At least ten glass plate windows were shattered, as well
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as several doors which were blown from their hinges.
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I can't believe she survives this, Yeah, Litttenberg. By the way, lighton.
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Well quick aside. Many modern sources claim the woman's name
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was elizabeon Well Elizabeth Wilson, but the name Lizzie Lettenberger
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comes directly from the Fort Collins Express article about the
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explosion on June twenty ninth, nineteen eleven. Wow, so I'm
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going with Lizzie Lettenberger. Yeah, I mean Lizzie is just
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short for Elizabeth. Maybe Wilson was a married name. Oh right, true,
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so maybe Lizzie could be Yeah, I mean Lettenberger may
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have been her maiden name and Wilson, but she survived.
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Stanley eventually sold the hotel to a private company who
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ran it into the ground, and then he repurchased it
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out of foreclosure and sold it again. Nice job, buddy,
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That's amazing to me.
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This guy's got some sort of good karma going on,
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Like I'm gonna dive tuberculosis. Oh wait, I'm just gonna
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be a.
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He didn't die till nineteen forty, that's crazy. And he
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is responsible for for ESS's Park being what it is today.
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Not only did he build a hydroplant, but he also
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helped fund banks and all sorts of different public work.
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That's insane because he was kind of dived tuberculos.
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He had a vision of turning this into a resort town,
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like that's what he wanted.
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I mean, it's Estes Park is one of those places
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where you think about it and you know you better
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show up with some don't know. It doesn't feel it's
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not your low class place.
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No, it's pretty, it's pretty expensive to stay there, but
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it's gorgious, oh man, so gorgeous. So by the nineteen seventies,
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long after Stanley's death, the hotel had fallen on hard times.
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There was even talk of demolishing it, and it might
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have eventually succumbed to the wrecking ball if not for
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fortuitous visit by someone special. In nineteen seventy four, American
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horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha were summering
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and Boulder. While King Stephen King, oh my god, dding
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you're being a Jersey in this movie. I've not read
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the book, though it's huge. Whilst King worked on a
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new book with the working title Dark Shine, which was
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set in an amusement park, he just wasn't satisfied with
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the setting, and locals in Boulder suggested that the couple
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visit as this park for inspiration. And I also suspect
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that he was suffering from writer's block at the time.
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He's written about it. Yeah, struggles with writer.
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It feels like some one of those like extremes, like
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a writer's block, can't do anything. Here is a seventy
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five thousand page in novel. Right, I'm never it doesn't
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seem to ever have an in between plays. I don't know.
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As Stephen and Tabitha were checking into the Stanley Hotel,
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the rest of the guests were checking out, and the
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Kings were the only guests at the hotel as the
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next day they were closing up for the winter. They
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stayed in Room two seventeen, which many stars to say
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was the room that was damaged by the nineteen eleven
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gas explosion, and Stephen wondered the lonely corridor with their
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peeling paint and flickering lights. He felt inspiration creeping back
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in and thought it was the perfect setting for a
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ghost story. That night, he dreamed that his three year
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old son was running through the corridors, looking back over
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his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming he was being chased by
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a fire hose. King jerked awake in terror, lit a
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cigarette and looked out the windows at the Rockies, and
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by the time the cigarette was finished, he had the
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bones of the book The Shining firmly set in his mind.
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Oh, that's insane.
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In this story, Jack Torrence, who was looking for a
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fresh start after a series of events caused by his
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alcohol abuse had left him jobless and he brought his
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family to the Overlook Hotel in the vast Rocky Mountains
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to work as the winter caretaker and work on his play.
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As he had been suffering from writer's block. He thought
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that the isolation of the job and location would help
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him find inspiration. As the Tail unfolds, ghosts and an
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evil power in the hotel drive Jack to madness and
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amplify his young son Danny's burgeoning psychic power. If you're
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a fan of Stanley Kubrick's version of the movie, you
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won't recognize the exterior of the Stanley Hotel as it
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wasn't used.
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For the movie. And here's how we tie.
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The Grand Colinal Revival architecture was deemed by Kubrick to
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be too pretty and light for the dark atmosphere he wanted. Instead,
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interior shots were on a sound stage built in London,
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and exterior shots were the Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Oregon,
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which I spent a summer exploring because my dad did
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redid all the plumbing. What one, you're well, Well, we
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didn't spend the summer at Timberline Lodge. We spent the