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Esther Burnell Mills

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Esther Burnell Mills (August 1889–April 8, 1964) was an American pioneer and homesteader in Estes Park, Colorado. Esther Burnell and her sister became the National Park Service's first certified nature guides.[1] She married Enos Mills, who led the establishment of the Rocky Mountain National Park. They ran the Longs Peak Inn, and after her husband's death, Mills continued to operate the inn.[1] She edited and published three post-humous volumes and additional works by Enos Mills. With Hildegarde Hawthorne, she co-authored Enos Mills of the Rockies.

Esther Burnell Mills
Image of Esther Burnell, homesteading woman and wife of Enos Mills
Born
Esther Burnell

(1889-08-00)August , 1889
Eureka, Kansas
DiedApril 8, 1964(1964-04-08) (aged 74)
Englewood, Colorado
Occupation(s)Decorator consultant, writer, editor, naturalist, inn operator
Notable workCo-authored Enos Mills of the Rockies and edited and published three volumes and additional writing by Mills
SpouseEnos Mills
ChildrenEnda Mills Kiley
Parent(s)Mary A. (née Frayer) and Arthur Tappan Burnell

Early life and education

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Esther A. Burnell, born in August 1889 in Eureka, Kansas,[2][3][a] was the daughter of Mary A. (née Frayer) and Arthur Tappan Burnell,[2][4] a professor and school principal with positions in the states of Washington, Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oregon.[4] Arthur was also a minister.[5]

Her siblings, born about every two years, were older brother Eugene, older sister Elizabeth (Bessie), and younger sister Bernice.[2] Burnell studied at Lake Erie College in Cleveland, Ohio, and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.[3][6][7] Her sister Elizabeth graduated from the University of Michigan with master's degrees in mathematics and physics. Lake Erie College employed her as the head of the mathematics and physics department.[6] Burnell worked at the Sherwin Williams Paint Company as a consulting decorator.[6] Before moving to Colorado, she lived in Cleveland and then Des Moines, Iowa.[8] She had been overworked at her job[6] and had a nervous breakdown.[9] In 1915, Burnell and Elizabeth Enos Mills the prior year during his speaking engagement in Cleveland, Ohio. Like other attendees, Mills invited them to visit Rocky Mountain National Park and Mills' nature study center at the inn. Dedicated in 1916,[6][7] the park is located near Estes Park, Colorado.[10]

Homesteading

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Burnell and her sister Elizabeth vacationed at Longs Peak Inn in Estes Park, Colorado, in the summer of 1916. Burnell took walks in the area to observe nature,[6][7] wearing knickerbockers for hiking and climbing rather than wearing city-appropriate dresses and high shoes. Her health improved in the mountain environment.[11] Her friend, Katherine Garetson, met Burnell when she arrived in Estes Park. Concerned about her health, Garetson decided that Burnell was a frail city slicker, but after some time in the mountains she said her friend "looked wonderfully pretty animation transforming her into a beauty".[10]

 
Horseshoe Park in Rocky Mountain National Park, along which Burnell began the process to homestead and built a cabin

Burnell extended her vacation to remain in Colorado. She homesteaded 120 acres near MacGregor Pass alongside Horseshoe Park.[6] Burnell designed a five-room cabin and worked on the construction of her home, which she named Keewaydin.[6][12][b] She built some of the furniture for her home and established a garden. Deer, mountain sheep, and birds visited her property.[6][14]

Burnell's closest neighbors were the Fall River Lodge and Horseshoe Inn, about 1 mile (1.6 km) from her land. Fellow homesteaders lived two or more miles away. Burnell walked 4 miles (6.4 km) east to town to visit friends, pick up her mail, and purchase groceries and supplies that she carried back to her cabin.[6][14] She embraced the outdoor life, hiking in the day or night.[9] She made long treks, wearing snowshoes in the winter, up to 30 miles (48 km) away on the Ute and North Inlet trails. Sometimes, she camped outdoors, like when she met at a midway point of the 16 miles (26 km) distance between her cabin and Katherine Garetson's cabin.[15][16] Katherine Garetson began homesteading two years before Burnell.[17]

Burnell wrote poems and stories that Mills reviewed for her, and she typed pages for Your National Parks that he was writing.[15][18] She made presentations about wildflowers at Long Peak Inn. Elizabeth visited in the summer of 1917 and took a sabbatical to spend a year in 1918[15][c] when they were trained by Enos to be nature guides for Rocky Mountain National Park.[10] Burnell was the basis for the homesteader that Mills wrote about in his publication The Development of a Woman Nature Guide.[19] Burnell and Mills developed a close relationship through conversations about conservation and education, hikes, and shared values. Interested in making her his wife, Mills courted her.[20] He shared a copy of Your National Park that she had helped him with to show the fruition of their work together.[21] Burnell appreciated Mills' work, like his publications and speaking tours.[5]

Marriage and child

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Enos A. Mills, ca. 1915
 
Enos Mills at the door of the homesteading cabin he built in 1885 as a teen on Longs Peak. It is now a museum about Enos Mills.

Burnell married Enos Mills on August 12, 1918, becoming Esther Burnell Mills. The simple and private ceremony was held at Mills' homestead cabin near Long Peak Inn.[5][15] Mills enlarged his log home, separate from the homestead cabin, for Burnell and their forthcoming child.[5] Their daughter Enda was born April 27, 1919.[15] She was later known as Enda Kiley.[3]

Enos Mills wrote about his wife and child in Development of a Woman Guide and Burnell published A Baby's Life in the Rocky Mountains about Enda.[22]

Enos Mills had been sick, complicated by stress, for months in the summer and early fall of 1922. He then had an abscess that required surgery in his mouth and jaw, the infection brought on blood poisoning that stopped his heart in the early morning of September 21, 1922.[23][d] Enos was engaged in disputes with the Rocky Mountain National Park about access to the park. Mills took on the fight after her husband's death.[10]

Having married Enos, Mills never finalized her homesteading claim (that required five years of farming to get title to the land).[15]

Businesswoman

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Enos and Esther Burnell Mills ran the Long Peak Inn after their marriage and Mills ran the inn until 1946 after her husband's death.[3][15] Her sister Elizabeth spent the summers with her sister from 1917 until 1930. During that time, she led groups up Longs Peak and gave guided nature walks.[25]

By the 1960s, Mills lived in Ohio during the summers; she ran the Red Bird Book Store. In the winters, she lived in Estes Park.[3]

Writer, editor, and speaker

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Enos' brusque manner and inability to effectively communicate with people who disagreed with him damaged his reputation. As a result, he lived a "self-imposed and self-righteous isolation" from all but a few friends and his wife.[26] Mills improved her husband's reputation by publishing some of his writings and co-authoring a book about him.[3][27]

When Enos died, he had some nearly finished works, which she edited and published. She also published more material for three[27] or four books in or after 1922.[28] In 1935, Burnell and Hildegarde Hawthorne co-authored Enos Mills of the Rockies. Hildegarde was Nathaniel Hawthorne's granddaughter.[29] Eleanor Roosevelt recommended the book.[30] Mills spoke before "countless lecture audiences".[7]

Biographer Alexander Drummond states of Burnell's work on Enos Mills of the Rockies,

The political batterings that Mills took and dealt in his last years left his reputation in need of repair, and to that task Esther set herself with a widow's devotion and perspective... [Through the book,] Mills is scrubbed clean to reveal only his most endearing qualities — and there were many of those, too. The book is readable, and, though factually flawed, it is reliable in its devout loyalty to preserving the image of the famous man whom Esther won and lost in so brief a span.[27]

Mills' efforts added to a growing appreciation of Enos Mills as a conservationist and naturalist after his death, who was called the "Father of the Rocky Mountain National Park."[31] Mills prepared a series of scrapbooks of his life, with his papers and articles written about him that is in the collection of the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library.[32]

Death

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Esther Burnell Mills died four hours after a fall on April 8, 1964, in Englewood, Colorado.[3]

See also

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Some articles about 19th-century women in Colorado
Inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame
  • Clara Brown (c. 1800–1885), former enslaved woman, first black settler in Colorado, entrepreneur, community leader, and philanthropist
  • Julia Archibald Holmes (1838–1887), first woman to climb
  • Martha Maxwell (1831–1881), self-educated naturalist and artist who helped found modern taxidermy
  • Owl Woman (1828–1847), Cheyenne princess who managed relations between Native American tribes and Anglo American men
  • Elizabeth Hickok Robbins Stone (1801–1895), pioneer hotel owner and operator, financial backer for local business, and miller
  • Augusta Tabor (1833–1905), entrepreneur, first wife of silver king Horace Tabor
  • Baby Doe Tabor (1854–1935), second wife of Colorado businessman Horace Tabor and inspiration for the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe

Notes

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  1. ^ The obituary spelled her birthplace Ureka, Kansas.[3]
  2. ^ Keewaydin is mentioned in The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "I will share my kingdom with you; / Ruler shall you be thenceforward / Of the Northwest-Wind, / Keewaydin, / Of the home-wind, / the Keewaydin.[13]
  3. ^ Brulliard states that Burnell became a nature guide in the summer of 1917.[10]
  4. ^ There are individual reports of his cause of death which was in fact a combinations of causes.[23] For instance, he is reported to have died of an infected tooth[15] and a heart attack.[24]

References

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  1. ^ a b Bradley, Kari (2023-09-01). "Celebrate the Women of Estes Park!". Estes Park. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
  2. ^ a b c "Esther A. Burnell, Mobile Ward 8, Mobile, Alabama", Twelfth Census of the United States, United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900 – via ancestry.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h "Mrs. Esther B. Mills Widow of Enos Mills, Dies After Fall". The Estes Park Trail. April 10, 1964. Retrieved 2024-03-08 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
  4. ^ a b Oberlin College Phi Delta Literary Society (1901). Register of the Members Both Graduate and Non-graduate of Phi Delta Literary Society, Oberlin College. Oberlin, Ohio: News Printing Company. pp. 53–54.
  5. ^ a b c d Drummond 1995, p. 302.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Robertson 1990, p. 26.
  7. ^ a b c d Drummond 1995, p. 291.
  8. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 417.
  9. ^ a b Drummond 1995, p. 292.
  10. ^ a b c d e Brulliard, Nicholas (Fall 2017). "Esther of the Rockies" (PDF). National Parks Magazine. Vol. 9, no. 4. pp. 58–59. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
  11. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 291, 295.
  12. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 294–295.
  13. ^ "Keewaydin Club". News-Press. December 20, 1991. p. 67. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
  14. ^ a b Drummond 1995, p. 294.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Robertson 1990, p. 27.
  16. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 295.
  17. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 292–293.
  18. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 292, 295.
  19. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 296.
  20. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 295–297, 302.
  21. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 297.
  22. ^ Enos A. Mills (2001-04-01). Adventures of a Nature Guide. Temporal Mechanical Press. ISBN 978-1-928878-18-6.
  23. ^ a b Drummond 1995, pp. 311.
  24. ^ Walsh, Steve (2011). Enos Mills : Rocky Mountain Conservationist = Enos Mills : un ecologista de las Montañas Rocosas. Palmer Lake, Colorado : Filter Press LLC. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-86541-122-7.
  25. ^ Robertson 1990, p. 28.
  26. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 5.
  27. ^ a b c Drummond 1995, p. 6.
  28. ^ Mills 1990, p. xxxi.
  29. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 6, 397.
  30. ^ Drummond 1995, p. 369.
  31. ^ Drummond 1995, pp. 6–7, 278–279.
  32. ^ Mills 1990, p. xxx.

Sources

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Further reading

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  • Hensley, Marcia Meredith (2008). Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West. High Plains Press. ISBN 978-0-931271-90-8.
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