Estes Park’s new mayor plays in a Grateful Dead cover band, climbs the 14ers and works to calm the city’s unrest

Estes Park Mayor Gary Hall outside City Hall in Estes Park, Colorado on June 11, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Gary Hall doesn’t mind saying he’s a pretty good guitarist.

“Music has been in my blood since my dad woke us up to watch The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964,” Hall said last week as he walked to Estes Park’s Rock Cut Brewery, where he was playing in an acoustic folk trio. “Because I live in a small town, I get to play pretty often. When I was in IT, I played 110 or 120 nights a year. Now it’s more like 20 to 25 a year.”

That’s thanks to his busy new schedule as mayor of Estes Park. Like former Denver Mayor and current U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, Hall projects a persona somewhere between crunchy granola and business leader. He’s long since filled his emotional cup by performing with his Grateful Dead cover band — now called Buster and the Boomers — and other acts, and by climbing Mount 14 with his wife (last weekend: Mt. Columbia). Between 2004 and 2012, he and his wife climbed every 14er in the state, he said, which informs his environmental activism.

But lately he’s also been handing out toffee and branded bags to people stuck in Estes Park’s notorious traffic, and meeting with nearly every citizen and group that wants his attention. It’s part of his drive to be open, responsible and pragmatic about solving the city’s problems.

“We’ve had a lot of challenges with the police, the construction and many, many other things that have caused a lot of unrest in the city,” Hall said. “I think I can provide a calming influence and a guiding service.”

When former Estes Park Mayor Wendy Koenig announced late last year that she would not seek re-election, Hall said he realized he had spent his entire life preparing for the job. He had spent decades building, repairing and maintaining complex structures. And as he puts it, he knows everyone in town.

The unusually approachable, 69-year-old Hall is now leading Estes Park through one of its biggest crises in decades. Most people know the town of about 7,000 as the northern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park and home to the “haunted” Stanley Hotel — the inspiration for Stephen King’s “The Shining.”

But advocates and businesses in this breathtakingly beautiful destination, often drawing 40,000 people in the summer, are grappling with a decline in visitors, a bad taste left by a revolving door of police leaders and a lack of affordable housing for the city’s workforce — about half of whom commute there, Hall said.

According to the National Park Service, Rocky Mountain National Park attracted 4.1 million visitors last year, a 4% decline from 2022 and a 7% decline from 2021. It was also down 12% from the park’s record 4,670,053 visitors in 2019, The Denver Post reported. (Park officials have since instituted a timed reservation system during peak times, which they say is necessary to prevent overcrowding.)

According to the Larimer County coroner’s office, Estes Park police officer Eric Rose committed suicide in 2021 after authorities launched a domestic violence investigation into his behavior. In December, Police Chief David Hayes resigned amid complaints about his management and personnel practices. The city’s deputy police chief, Jim Hughes, had been placed on administrative leave three times through March amid concerns about his behavior, the Estes Park Trail Gazette reported. He was fired in April, and the city announced new chief Ian Stewart in May.

Hall inherited those problems, but he’s taking full responsibility for fixing them and a host of others, he said. The job, which he started in April, ties together his past lives as an IT technician and software designer for a marketing firm in Lincoln, Nebraska; chief operating officer of Estes Park Health for 18 years (he moved to the city in 2003 but had been visiting since 1974); dogged safety advocate and lifelong backpacker.

His vision for Estes Park’s future takes into account the city’s policing woes, as well as natural disasters like the 470,000-acre East Troublesome wildfire in 2020 and the much smaller Soul Shine wildfire in 2022. Both disasters prompted evacuations in the 7,500-foot-high town.

Hall also addresses ongoing issues and complaints stemming from the construction of a 1.1-mile loop through the city, a one-way route that is intended to ease congestion in and out of Rocky Mountain National Park. But the Estes Park Loop Project, which began last year and is expected to be fully completed in January 2025, has blocked the main drag of Elkhorn Avenue and made it harder for pedestrians to reach businesses.

Hall, who welcomes critical inquiry and promotes civility, had an idea for that.

“I thought the mayor should go around the city handing out bags with a dollar bill taped to them and filled with some swag like hats, credit card holders and tote bags,” he said of his promotional walk. “I greet random tourists downtown and thank them for coming.

“If I was in Denver, I’d be more careful about how many dollar bills I waved around,” he said, laughing. “But for a small town, it works out pretty well. And I’m a friendly guy and a good listener, so I don’t scare a lot of people away.”

See more at Estes Park Trail-Gazette