NOEL: Pilot gets great view of Conifer's history

By Tom Noel, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 8, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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Anyone who's traveled U.S. 285 to Conifer has seen an airplane in the garage ("Watch your language, son. That's a hangar!") facing the highway next to Norm Meyer's ranch house.

"I am older than God's dog," Meyer admitted when I visited recently. "But I am still flying."

His runway is a few tire tracks through his hay meadow, ending on a forested slope of Berrian Mountain. He offered to take me up in his old propeller plane, a 1968 Cessna 180 taildragger.

What would you say to a 90-year-old man who offered to take you up in his antique airplane? If the pilot is Meyer, just say "yes." He's never even scratched a plane in 68 years - more than 30,000 hours of flying. He's taught aviation, done stunt flying and piloted 35 years for Continental Airlines. And he still flies out of his ranch meadow - to the astonishment of motorists whizzing by on U.S. 285.

Norman Franklin Meyer is a third-generation Colorado cowboy, born in 1917 and raised on the family's 6,000-acre cattle and sheep ranch at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo range, in southern Colorado. From Walsenburg High School, he went to the University of Colorado, where he majored in journalism.

"But I loved ranching and the outdoor life and began worrying about spending my whole life cooped up in a newspaper office. I took a $1 flying lesson at Boulder Airport in 1938 and fell in love with flying."

He took a job teaching aviation at Park Hill Airport (now the northeast corner of Interstate 70 and Colorado Boulevard) and trained pilots for World War II at Stapleton Airfield.

"I started with Continental Airlines in 1942, but as a break from flying, I wanted to get back to ranching and the outdoor life. So I bought this 1889 house, the 1870 barn and 330 acres in 1950 for $34,000. It had been homesteaded back in 1870 by the Duncan MacIntyre family. We've added another 300 acres or so."

Meyer, his wife and four children have raised hay, Herefords and horses on their ranch and watched Conifer grow.

It was named for its cone-bearing trees, says Conifer historian Paula Hutman. Still an unincorporated town without official bound- aries, Conifer's boom began in the 1960s, and it's now a conglomeration of about 15,000 residents.

As Conifer grew, the Meyers donated their ranch milk house as its first public library. In 2004, Meyer helped to erect the handsome new "Welcome to Conifer" sign that greets travelers along U.S. 285.

"We got so tired of Realtors pestering us," Meyer says, "that I called up Ray Printz, the first head of Jeffco Open Space. My wife, Ethel (aka Blondie), and I arranged to create Meyer Ranch Park."

This 397-acre open space in- cludes the remains of the 1940s Mount LeGault (aka Lugo) Ski Hill, where locals took skiers up- hill in a horse-drawn sleigh. Hik- ing and horseback trails take day trippers into a scenic mix of meadowland and conifer-clad hillsides.

The historic ranch and the open space make a picturesque grand entrance to an area of pro- liferating subdivisions and strip malls. The tiny, stone Field's Trading Post "was always open," Meyer says, "because Mrs. Field slept in the back." Torn down in 1975, Field's has been replaced by a huge shopping center.

Meyer, a longtime member of the Jefferson County Historical Commission, is using the old Bradford Toll Wagon Road, which bisects his ranch, as the starting point for a historical trail system being planned for Conifer.

The 1870 hay and stock barn is a post-and-beam wonder, made of hand-hewn beams secured with wooden pegs. Meyer also has preserved his 1889 clapboard, two-story ranch house constructed with square nails and rough-sawn lumber milled on the property.

The house is a National Register of Historic Places landmark and a tribute to one of Colorado's human landmarks. For Meyer, who spent his life soaring through open skies and riding ranches, this picture-perfect ranch and the adjacent open space are fitting monuments.

Reach Tom Noel at Coloradowebsites.com/dr-colorado.

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