Last Call for the Pahaska Tepee and Buffalo Bill Gift Shop

From the top of Lookout Mountain, you can see metro Denver spreading out below the foothills, sprawling onto the plains. What you can't see is the future.

The view is so stunning that William F. Cody wanted to be buried here. And so from this perch, the past is all around you: the grave of the man known as Buffalo Bill (unless you believe a certain myth perpetuated by Cody, Wyoming); the City of Denver-owned museum dedicated to the Wild West showman and adopted son of the Queen City of the Plains; and the circa 1921 Pahaska Tepee, a structure built by Johnny Baker, Cody's adopted son, that held the original museum and is now home to Colorado's best tourist gift shop.

Until the close of day on December 31, when Bill Carle will have to pack up all the trinkets and dismantle the cafe and leave the building for good, after decades of operating his family business there. According to the city, "This temporary closure will facilitate operational changes, reduce lodes impacting the building’s mechanical systems, and will provide access for historic preservation efforts." According to Carle, the closure will disappoint a lot of visitors and cost the city close to $200,000 a year, when the structure is doing just fine as is. And according to still others, it's an opportunity to reconsider not just the condition of the structure devoted to the greatest marketing man of the nineteenth century, but to reconsider his entire legacy, as well.

The city already booted H.R. Stewart, the Carle family's tourism business that once ran shops at the top of Pikes Peak and at Red Rocks, too, from Echo Lake Lodge after 57 years there in 2022, reportedly to take care of structural issues. That space has not yet reopened to the public; if the city has a plan, it's not sharing the details.

There's no timeline for the Buffalo Bill project, either, though the city promises that the gravesite and circa 1970s museum building will remain open...but for the first time in 103 years, you'll have to pay to get to a bathroom.
They were free at the Pahaska Tepee, and Carle, who lived upstairs, even cleaned them for the tourists who visited from around the world, checking out the view and the Wild West stories and the old-timey souvenirs.

Carle is packing up what's left today, preparing to leave this historic spot for the even older Masonville Mercantile, which opened in the then brand-spanking-new Larimer County town of Masonville back in 1896. The building closed in October; Carle and his new, non-city partner plan to reopen it as soon as they can.

As for the historic building he's leaving behind? From here, you can't see the future.