The Summer White House
Colorado has earned the reputation as the land of big mountains, big wilderness, big rivers and long ago, big dinosaurs. In the midst of all these Colorado virtues lived a man who became known as one of America’s biggest dreamers.
John Brisben Walker, born in 1847 in Pittsburgh, Pa., lived a fascinating life that featured as much variety, adventure, fortunes won and fortunes lost as almost anyone in America’s history. Highlights of his resume included serving in the Chinese army, running for Congress, earning a fortune in the iron business, earning more in real estate, and then losing it. In West Virginia, he began rebuilding his fortune editing newspapers before purchasing the failing magazine Cosmopolitan. Yes, that Cosmopolitan. He built it into a huge success, then sold it to the Hearst Corporation for more than $400,000. Walker took to manufacturing automobiles, founding a company called Locomobile, and moved to Colorado for the second time shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Whew! We’re not done yet. He bought and developed land in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, building an amusement park and opening a casino. Walker built a cog railway up Mt. Morrison. He also developed Red Rocks Amphitheater in 1906, staging musical concerts there for enthusiastic audiences.
With his second wife, Ethel, he desired a mountain home like no other. He built a mansion in 1909 near the summit of Mt. Falcon with views of the growing city of Denver to the northeast, and snow-capped mountains to the west. Inspired by the beautiful vistas from his mountaintop castle, Walker embarked on his biggest dream yet.
He set out to build a “Summer White House” on a neighboring peak. It would be a glorious 27-room mansion built into the side of Mt. Falcon patterned after European castles in Bavaria. Walker built the foundaton and set a cornerstone in 1911. A pre-WWI recession wiped out some of his fortune and halted construction. Walker devised a plan to collect pennies from schoolchildren to complete the project, but it never reached fruition.
His own mansion met a horrible fate. The beautiful stone-walled mansion stood until 1918, when it was struck by lightning and claimed by the fire.
Mt. Falcon is now part of a scenic park system that Walker proposed to the City of Denver in 1912. A short hike on the Castle Trail takes nature lovers to the ruins of the Walker house. Further on, Walker’s Dream Trail leads to the site of what would have been the Western White House. Round trip from the western parking area, it’s 3.7 miles.
Late in life, Walker lost most of his fortune, and he died in Brooklyn in the care of his son in 1937. The legacy of the greatest dreamer of the Western states lives on in the stone ruins near the summit of Mt. Falcon.
