John Coplen

The Colorado Museum Association and The Coplen Petrified Forest

Following statehood for Colorado in 1876, prominent citizens of the new state began to grow concerned about the movement of the state’s scientific treasures to the universities and museums of the east. The public watched as dinosaur fossils, insect and plant fossils,
petrified wood, and other scientific treasures were collected andshipped eastward. One Denver newspaper wrote that the people of the West should not have to travel to the East to view their very own treasures.

Unfortunately, despite public support for conservation, state and local governments had neither the resources nor the funding to save the state’s scientific wonders from legal plunder. Any efforts to establish a state sanctuary or museum for Colorado’s scientific and natural treasures, including the fossils of the Florissant Valley, would have to come from the private sector.

The effort came in 1883. The Colorado Museum Association, a consortium of Denver businessmen, was formed to buy the Petrified Stump Ranch of Florissant—a haven of world-class fossils and rare petrified redwood tree stumps. The association was one of the first
organizations in Colorado to recognize the scientific value, as well as the potential commercial value of the fossils as a public attraction, and the importance of keeping the treasures within the state.

 

John  Coplen, leader of the Colorado Museum Association

NPS Photo

The group was led by entrepreneur John D. Coplen, a well- known Denver businessman.
As the brother of naturalist Charlotte Hill, who along with her husband, Adam, had operated the ranch as a tourist and scientific site from 1874 to 1883, Coplen was personally familiar
with the fossil beds and the importance of conserving the giant petrified redwood stumps and the acres of fossil shale.

For the next 20 years, the association would own and operate the ranch as a quasi-conservatory, allowing visitors and scientists access by special permission only. Unfortunately, the plan for a state museum never materialized as the Association dissolved in 1903. Coplen by then was a very wealthy man with mining holdings in Arizona, New Mexico , and Colorado. He easily bought out the remaining investors from the 1883 Association and acquired full ownership of the ranch along with its petrified wood and fossil
specimens. The plan for the fossil beds was about to change and the Petrified Stump Ranch was soon to be renamed the Coplen Petrified Forest Hotel and Resort of Florissant.

 

Inspiration Copper Mine, Globe, Arizona

University of Arizona Special Collections

A western historian once called John Coplen one of the most prominent businessmen in the West. He was born in Indiana in 1844 and immigrated with the Coplen family to the pioneer settlement of Colorado City in Colorado Territory when he was 16. Later, he attended the Denver Seminary (now Denver University), and established himself in mining and business in Colorado. He moved from Denver to Globe, Arizona, in 1904 to oversee one of his most ambitious mining ventures—The Inspiration Copper Mine Company of Arizona. As a self-trained-mining engineer, he developed a less costly method of extracting copper from low-grade ore, helping the Inspiration Mine become one of the largest producers of copper in the United States.

 

After years of a successful career in mining and business, Coplen, 75, retired to a large ranch near Riverside, California. At that time, his business holdings still included numerous mining interests, ownership of a large dairy farm in New Mexico, and the Petrified Stump Ranch in Colorado.

 

Coplen's Petrified Forest Ranch

NPS Photo

Coplen had generally overseen the unoccupied Colorado ranch for almost 35 years. Fortunately, his vision for the famous scientific site had never changed. He believed that with improvements to the fossil beds and the addition of a hotel, the public would pay to experience the complete fossil story—an early version of a geological theme park.

From 1922-1924, Coplen, with his wife and sister, returned each summer to Florissant to manage the construction of a hotel on the ranch. The hotel was built around the old Florissant train station that was moved to the ranch, and situated near the petrified stumps and an outcropping of fossil shale. He laid out a road to the hotel and opened it in the spring of 1923 with himself and his wife giving tours. The resort was a success with over 2900 visitors the first summer.

 

A year before John Coplen died in 1928, he sold his 160 acre resort that over forty years later became the principal part of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Today, over 80,000 people each year visit the National Monument and experience the geological story of the giant redwood tree stumps and Eocene era fossils, just as John D. Coplen, the capitalist, conservationist, and dreamer, envisioned over 150 years ago.

Researched and written by Lloyd Lacy