Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/513510
photography CoUrtESy oF thE aSpEn hiStoriCal SoCiEty, CaSSatt CollECtion Mary Eshbaugh Hayes surrounded herself with people who valued stories as much as she, such as Historical Society cofounder and fellow Aspen émigré Fred Glidden, a writer of popular Westerns under his nom de plume, Luke Short. The two are seen here in 1974, on Glidden's front porch. Once upon a time there lived a little wisp of an elf who wandered the streets of Fat City with pad, pen, and camera, quietly recording its day-to-day hap- penings, recordings that, once accumulated, came together to form a panoramic portrait of a little mountain town. Undaunted by celebrity, this little lady padded in and out of local events with quiet, unassuming focus, drilling into the heart of the community and sharing what she found with the rest of us through her stories, photos, and memoir-style books. Mary Eshbaugh Hayes left us this year, at the age of 86, but the legacy of her time in the valley will live on firmly in the form of the 60,000 photo- graphs she bequeathed to the Aspen Historical Society. If only half of her phenomenally rich documentation of the past 50 -plus years were to be ulti- mately preserved in the archive, it would still double the organization's current collection. At her core, Hayes, a New York State native and mother to five, under- stood and believed in the power of stories. As a writer, editor, photographer, and former chairwoman of the Historical Society's board of trustees, she spent her lifetime committed to storytelling. She was a mentor to many in local media and the chief chronicler of Aspen's evolution from mining town to mountain metropolis via her weekly social column, "Around Aspen," in The Aspen Times , which she penned since 1956. In her column, she covered events both small and large, from festivals and speakers of national or international import to local birthday celebrations in public parks. Hayes understood that stories are essential to our well-being, falling somewhere after nourishment but before love and even shelter as a prerequisite for humanity. She championed those of us who felt the call to follow a literary muse and steadfastly provided encouragement and advice that often inf luenced career paths and lives. Not all of her photos were the most iconic, but that was hardly the point. Through her lens, the mundane became exciting, even essential, because it showed us as we were, and so showed us at our best. AP Through The Looking gLass for nearly 60 years, The laTe Mary Eshbaugh hayEs ChroniCled The evoluTion of aspen. here, her longTime friend and former hisToriCal soCieTy direCTor gEorgia hanson Turns The lens baCk on The woman who was so ofT behind iT. 8 aspenpeak-magazine.com FRONT RUNNER