Gary Hall doesn’t mind saying he’s a pretty hot guitar player.
“Music’s 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. “Being in a small town, I get to play a fair amount. When I was in IT, I played 110 or 120 nights per year. Now it’s more like 20 to 25 per year.”
That’s party because of his busy new schedule as mayor of Estes Park. Like former Denver mayor and current U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, Hall projects a personality somewhere between crunchy-granola and business leader. He’s long filled his emotional cup by performing with his Grateful Dead cover band — currently titled Buster and the Boomers — and other acts, as well as hiking fourteeners with his wife (last weekend: Mt. Columbia). Between 2004 and 2012, he and his wife summited every 14er in the state, he said, which informs his environmental advocacy.
But lately he’s also handing out taffy and branded tote bags to people stuck in Estes Park’s infamous traffic, and meeting with nearly every citizen and group who desires his attention. It’s part of his drive to be open, accountable and pragmatic about fixing the town’s problems.
“We’ve had a lot of challenges with the police department, construction and many, many other things that have led to a lot of volatility in town,” Hall said. “I think I can bring a calming influence and guiding service to it.”
When former Estes Park mayor Wendy Koenig announced she wasn’t running for reelection late last year, Hall said he realized he had been prepping for the job his whole life. He’s spent decades building, fixing and maintaining complex structures. And as he put it, he knows everyone in the town.
The unusually accessible, 69-year-old Hall is now leading Estes Park through one of its biggest crunches in decades. Most people know the roughly 7,000-person town as the northern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park and the home of the “haunted” Stanley Hotel — the inspiration for Stephen King’s “The Shining.”
But boosters and businesses in the stunningly beautiful destination, which often swells to 40,000 people during the summer season, are grappling with decreased visitation, as well as a sour taste sown by a revolving-door of police leaders, and a lack of affordable housing for the town’s workers — about half of whom commute there, Hall said.
In particular, Rocky Mountain National Park saw 4.1 million visitors last year, according to the National Park Service, which represents a 4% decline over 2022, and a 7% drop compared to 2021. It was also 12% below the park’s record attendance in 2019 of 4,670,053, The Denver Post has reported. (Since then, park officials have imposed a timed-entry reservation system during peak periods which they say is needed to prevent overcrowding.)
Estes Park police officer Eric Rose died by suicide in 2021, according to the Larimer County Coroner’s Office, after authorities opened a domestic violence investigation into his conduct. In December, police chief David Hayes stepped down after complaints about his management and personnel matters. The town’s deputy police chief, Jim Hughes, had been placed on administrative leave three times as of March, for concerns related to conduct, the Estes Park Trail Gazette reported. He was fired in April, and the town announced new chief Ian Stewart in May.
Hall inherited these problems, but he takes full responsibility for fixing them and a host of other issues, he said. The job, which he started in April, braids his previous lives as an IT tech and software designer for a marketing company in Lincoln, Neb.; chief operating officer of Estes Park Health for 18 years (he moved to town 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 police-leadership troubles but also natural disasters, such as the 193,812-acre East Troublesome wildfire in 2020, and the much smaller Soul Shine wildfire in 2022, both of which prompted evacuations in the 7,522-foot elevation town.
Hall is also addressing ongoing woes and complaints stemming from the town’s construction of a 1.1-mile loop, a one-way route that’s meant to ease congestion into and out of Rocky Mountain National Park. But the Estes Park Loop Project, which started last year and is expected to be fully complete in January 2025, has snarled the main drag of Elkhorn Avenue and made it harder for pedestrians to access businesses.
Hall, who welcomes scrutiny and promotes civility, had an idea for that.
“I thought the mayor should go around town handing out bags with a dollar bill stuck to them, and filled with a bit of swag like stocking caps, credit card holders, and tote bags,” he said of his promotional stroll. “I’m greeting random tourists downtown and thanking them for being there.
“If I was in Denver, I’d be more careful about how many dollar bills I was flashing around,” he said with a laugh. “But for a small town it works pretty nicely. And I’m a friendly guy and a very good listener, so I don’t scare many people away.”
