Pieter Hondius

Estes Park has lost one of its most respected citizens. Pieter Hondius passed away comfortably on May 9, 2023, on the birthday of his beloved wife, Helen, three months after his own 100th birthday. That event was celebrated by a gathering of his many friends and admirers at the Estes Park Museum, where as a tribute of gratitude and affection he was presented with some 150 birthday cards. A proclamation in his honor followed, presented by Mayor Wendy Koenig at a meeting of the Estes Park Board of Trustees at Town Hall, an event that Pieter also attended.

Pieter Hondius was born in Denver on February 10, 1923, the only child of Estes Park pioneers Pieter Hondius, Sr. and Eleanor Estes James. His father, a direct descendant of the famous Dutch map maker Jodocus Hondius, had come to America from the Netherlands in 1895, seeking relief from chronic asthma. Settling in Estes Park to ranch and farm, he purchased property in Horseshoe Park and Beaver Meadows to become the largest private property owner in what in 1915 became Rocky Mountain National Park. He also came to own property along the High Drive which he developed for cottage sites, creating the subdivision known as Woodland Heights by building an ingenious pipe-line that brought water from Upper Beaver Meadows and Buck Creek.

Pieter's mother was no less accomplished. Her father, William E. James, was the founder of historic Elkhorn Lodge, for a time the largest resort in the Estes Valley. At his death in 1895, Eleanor stepped in to help operate the Lodge: first with her mother, Ella James and her older brother, Dr. Homer James, and, later, for many years, with her younger brother, Howard. Eleanor Hondius' contributions to the life of Estes Park were many, beginning in 1913 with the creation of the Estes Park Woman's Club and, later, the Estes Park Library. In 2021 the Estes Park community recognized her many accomplishments by commissioning her statue and making it the centerpiece of the Women's Monument Project, recognizing the historic contributions of women to the life of Estes Park.

Pieter Hondius, Jr. grew up in Estes Park, spending much of his youth at and around Elkhorn Lodge, while living in the Hondius family home directly across the street. He graduated from Estes Park High School in 1942, in a class of 18, then attended the University of Colorado Boulder for a year before entering the United States Navy during World War II. With the Navy he saw five years of active service as a radio technician and electronics engineer while stationed in Chicago and later in the Central Pacific near Hawaii, a place that he had visited with his parents in 1927 at age 4, during their trip around the world. Following his discharge, Hondius returned to the University of Colorado where he graduated in 1949 with a degree in finance, having been elected to Delta Sigma Pi, a professional business fraternity.

After college, Pieter Hondius left Estes Park for Denver and joined L. C. Fullenwider, one of the city's oldest realty companies, for some 35 years specializing in mountain and resort properties. While in Denver he courted and married Helen Ricker a native of Minnesota and graduate of Hamline University, an accomplished medical social worker who served on the staffs of Presbyterian Hospital, the National Jewish Hospital, and Children's hospital. They had met through mutual friends, who encouraged Pieter to pursue her. “Don’t be an idiot,” Pieter recalled them saying. “And," he added, "they were right.” Pieter and Helen, who died in late 2020, were married for 47 years. As distinguished in her world as Pieter was in his, for her many years of work preventing child abuse Colorado Governor Richard Lamm proclaimed April 30, 1985 as Helen Hondius Day.

Pieter Hondius' world was an equally large one. Like his mother and father before him, he took civic life and its responsibilities seriously and willingly served: for a number of years with the National Ski Patrol at Dillon's Arapahoe Basin, on an advisory council of the U.S. Forest Service, as a member of the Colorado Open Space Council, and as President of the historic Colorado Mountain Club, an organization whose early members played a key role in establishing Rocky Mountain National Park. With the CMC he threw the weight of the Club behind a grassroots letter-writing effort to persuade Congress to appropriate $4 million to purchase a conservation easement to help preserve MacGregor Ranch, one of the historic treasurers of the Estes Valley. “This is one of those motherhood and flag things that shouldn’t have taken so long to get done,” Hondius said at the time, as usual downplaying the role that he himself had played. During this same period, Pieter Hondius became an active proponent for gaining federal protection for the much-used Indian Peaks area west of Boulder, a mountain wilderness that Enos Mills had originally wanted included in Rocky Mountain National Park. For this and other preservation efforts in 1975 Pieter Hondius was awarded the Oak Leaf Service Awarded by the Nature Conservancy of Arlington, Virginia, an organization with some 23,000 members nationwide.

In retirement Pieter and Helen returned to Estes Park, making their home in the Uplands. Once again both Pieter and Helen continued to serve. Pieter as a member of the boards of the Library Foundation, the Estes Park Urban Renewal Authority (EPURA), where he was an on-going advocate for the preservation of open space, the Rocky Mountain Nature Association (now the Rocky Mountain Conservancy), the Estes Valley Land Trust, and the Estes Park Museum. Over the years Hondius made the collections of the Museum the recipient of James and Hondius family memorabilia, including, most importantly, James family photograph albums and the Elkhorn Lodge's guest registers. For such contributions he was recognized in 2012 with the Estes Park Museum's Pioneer Award, given to those who have widened the community's knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the history of the Estes Valley.

For all his many accomplishments Pieter Hondius remained a modest and self-effacing man, with a gentle and engaging wit and sense of humor. Embodying as he did so much of Estes Park's history, he ever took the long view of things. Though often asked to speak about the "early days" of Estes Park, the world of his parents, grandparents, and various members of the James family, he refused to romanticize them. "The Old West was a mess," he once said, suggesting that to see it otherwise was to underappreciate the realities of everyday life and the down-to-earth hardscrabble accomplishments of pioneers like his father, who to earn a living in the Estes Valley each year took upwards of 350 head of cattle back and forth between Horseshoe Park and Loveland using the old Bald Mountain-Pole Hill Road.

Though Pieter and Helen Hondius had no children, they have left all of us with much to remember and much to celebrate. Perhaps most of all as models of civic responsibility and public service, cheerfully given. For that a grateful community will always honor them.

A graveside service for Pieter Hondius at Estes Park Memorial Gardens will be on June 16th, 2023 at 11:00 AM. It is suggested that those who wish to make a gift to honor Pieter's memory consider either the Estes Valley Library (https://www.coloradogives.org/donate/EstesValleyLibrary) or the Estes Park Museum (c/o Allnutt Funeral Service 1302 Graves Avenue Estes Park, CO 80517), two organizations particularly important over the years to both Helen and Pieter, and to which both were major contributors.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.allnuttestespark.com for the Hondius family.