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by T. Duren Jones
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Europe, Colorado |
What a find! And it was here all along—just undiscovered by me. |
 Chapel on the Rock
It’s hard to believe I’ve lived in Colorado over 22 years now, and that I am still discovering new things to do and see. You’d think with my destination travels to climb all 54 fourteeners, and with my 368-mile hike from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail, that I’d canvased the state pretty well by now.
Yet, here I was past Allenspark, just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, on my way to Estes Park (lots of parks) to see a sight recommended by my old friend Stan (he’s not old, but just a longtime friend) who had lived in the state as long as I had but had visited different parts. We had been comparing notes on outdoor places to see and experience—trails, waterfalls, lakes, ruins, ghost towns—and he told me about Chapel on the Rock (officially, Saint Catherine of Sierra Chapel). What a find! And it was here all along—just undiscovered by me. In 1916, Monsignor Joseph Bosetti—on a quest to find a falling star impact site in the mountains northwest of Boulder—came across a large rock formation, with Mount Meeker in the background. Inspired by Jesus’s words “Upon this rock I will build my church” (a reference to St. Peter, not a pile of boulders, but anyway …) he dreamed of building a chapel. With eventual funding, that dream was completed 20 years later—to me, a little piece of European alpine architectural splendor. If you Google images of the chapel, you will see amazing past photos of surrounding lush brush, thick pine groves, and the chapel reflected in a nearby pond. Unfortunately, due to rockslides in September 2013, even though the Chapel on the Rock survived, much of the terrain around it was destroyed. Still, it’s well worth the drive. In 1999 the chapel was designated a historic site. Go visit it. This church rocks! More adventures |