“I feel like the historical society has a place in the community, but I have this feeling of a personal responsibility to maintain it, and I want there to be the capacity to turn people over."”

Emmit Hoyl

NEDERLAND - Nederland may be a town encompassed by natural beauty, but its true splendor lies in its community. All the hearts that beat for Nederland collectively beat together to pump lifeblood through the town’s veins, revitalizing it. But as the town’s population fluctuates, almost at a yearly cycle, so does its heartbeat.

The ebb and flow of volunteerism can be felt as strongly as the change of seasons. Just as tourism’s rise and fall causes a shift in local businesses revenues, a fluctuation in volunteerism and other communal and philanthropic activities can cause strain on another of Nederland’s major organs, the non-profit sector. 

And now, on the crest of one of these oscillating waves, two dedicated volunteers are ending their service on the Nederland Area Historical Society’s (NAHS) Board of Directors—but not before putting out a call to the community for more committed hearts to join the mission.

“I feel like the historical society has a place in the community, but I have this feeling of a personal responsibility to maintain it, and I want there to be the capacity to turn people over,” Emmit Hoyl confessed to The Mountain-Ear. He described how, at the end of nearly a decade of volunteerism with NAHS, he hopes to find likeminded people to carry the baton.

“We would love new membership and new individuals who would want to pursue projects on recent history and who have the willingness to make it happen.” 

Jessie Ansari is another longtime volunteer with NAHS who, after more than seven years serving on the board, is ready to pour herself into other endeavors.

“I like the stories, writing articles, doing research, and leading educational events; I’d like to focus more on that,” Ansari told The Mountain-Ear. 

“And my interest has always been more in the living history side of things: the demonstrations, Miners’ Days, and that kind of stuff,” Hoyl followed up. 

While Ansari and Hoyl each discussed plans to still be involved with NAHS in some capacity, they professed being ready to move on from their positions on the board, as administrative and executive work takes an entirely different dedication than the hands-on, “boots to the ground” world of volunteering. 

“It’s hard trying to balance making plans for the future for the museum while also just trying to get volunteers for the summer; it’s one or the other,” Ansari told The Mountain-Ear.

NAHS has experienced many changes over its five decades of operation: some disappointments, including selling off some of its physical assets back in 2013, but also some major improvements, including the history-making acquisition and rescue of the beloved Bucyrus Model 50-B steam shovel.

“The Town was very adversarial when the steam shovel was being moved in,” Ansari mentioned. “There was a huge controversy because they did not want it.”

“It’s interesting to look at the history of the historical society and think of the shoes they filled as they evolved,” Hoyl said. “In 1974, they were trying to preserve physical artifacts, they were building a collection, and they accomplished that. They built their museum and filled it full of stuff, but then they fell off and lost the ability to manage it.” 

“They shot for the moon and went too high,” Ansari said.  

“Then in 2013 they made the decision to sell the mining museum to Boulder County Open Space because they knew that they had the taxpayer funding to support it and staff it and continue it moving forward. But the Historical Society had lost its home base, and now it’s just kind of nebulous in a way.”  

Ansari and Hoyl have championed several endeavors for NAHS over the years, working towards the organization’s goals of historic preservation. This has included curating a physical collection of historic items, including digitizing historic records and photographs; They have also maintained the society’s physical assets, such as the Gillaspie House Museum. They have been involved in organizing annual fundraisers, creating an original line of merchandise, and restoring both of the historic Nederland and Caribou cemeteries.

NAHS is unique among Nederland’s other non-profit organizations as its dedication to the preservation of local history represents both a physical reality, one that you can see and learn about, as well as an existential one, as Nederland’s history informs its identity. 

But while Town officials have focused on major initiatives that tout either preserving or outright visually representing Nederland’s identity, from the Downtown Subarea Plan, the Comprehensive Plan, and the recent Town logo redesign, there hasn’t been much traction made on supporting historical preservation.

“People appreciate the history and they say they value it, but then there’s no movement,” Ansari admitted. “There are always ideas, but it all takes manpower.” 

The Town of Nederland has to rely on Boulder County in order to take any action on certain historic assets, including making improvements to either the Mining or Gillaspie House museums.

Meanwhile, other actively dilapidating assets, like the Bryant House behind the RTD parking lot, have been neglected despite Ansari and Hoyl making many presentations to all of the Town’s advisory boards and commissions over the years.

Though there have been individual members of these boards, from the Nederland Downtown Development Authority to the Planning Commission, who have expressed interest in championing these causes, these boards ultimately chose not to commit resources to such efforts.

And while the Town’s plans for suggested downtown redevelopment highlight Wolf Tongue Court as a possible historic district, the code changes actually being made at a municipal level involve allowing other uses, including residential use, on Industrial-zoned property.

“The people of Nederland need to decide whether they value it enough to put their money towards historic preservation and potentially creating a historic district, because right now there are no historic protections that exist in the town of Nederland,” Hoyl said. 

In these times of financial uncertainty, local non-profits are all struggling to creatively navigate narrowed grant opportunities while seemingly competing for the same ever-shrinking pool of donors and volunteers.

And while each revolution of new residents to the area may bring a few new interested parties, local organizers feel with each cycle that the limited availability of new “unicorns” is not enough to replace those dedicated volunteers who are aging out.

“It’s a pretty small community of people who are interested, and there’s a lot less commitment from our generation,” Hoyl said, who is a young father of two.

“Part of the issue at hand is that we’re very spread out all over the place; we have some members who may step up to keep the entity going, but the part of the main mission here is we need more people to turn out, we need more volunteerism in order for it to be sustainable as an entity.”

Both Ansari and Hoyl believe that the future of the NAHS relies on creative partnerships, and believe that the preservation of Nederland’s history should be a municipal priority.

“Most historical societies have a formal tie to a government entity, and we don’t, so in some degree we lack purview,” Hoyl explained. “With a lot of other historical societies, they receive government funding as a part of the district or as a line item in the city’s budget, and we don’t get any of that; we fundraise on our own.”

“There are some things that would make a huge difference, like paying for the insurance and overseeing the volunteers at the museum,” Ansari noted, referring to the insurance policy regarding the steam shovel.

“We’re spending a large percentage of our budget on insurance policies, including this general liability policy for a public asset—maybe the second largest tourist attraction in town to the carousel,” Hoyl said about the steam shovel. He added that the Town won’t take the responsibility because they do not own the asset. 

Ansari and Hoyl hypothesize that NAHS would thrive under a taxpayer-subsidized system, such as funding through mill levies, with the Town of Nederland taking on the administrative responsibilities of running a program focused on historical preservation and heritage tourism.  

However, it was also noted during the interview that the town itself also suffers from the fluctuation in volunteerism, and just like many of the area non-profits, has issues with high turnover rates on Town boards, as well as with finding interested parties willing to join. 

With the number of applicants to vacant seats dwindling, and with tenured board members and those dedicated community members deciding to finally step down from their positions, these boards and commissions risk becoming ineffectual if they don’t have the attendance to make quorum. 

Ansari and Hoyl workshopped several ideas for sustainability of the society during their interview with The Mountain-Ear, bouncing around ideas of NDDA funding, the possible creation of a Recreation District as a funding source, and the potential acquisition of Eldora.

Overall, they both believe that municipal engagement will breed more community engagement and give the NAHS the shot in the arm it needs to become a real commodity. 

They both dream of making the steam shovel a true Nederland asset, of having the Town’s support mold the steam shovel into an icon and a symbol, with the resources it needs in order to come alive and to hopefully let loose its loud whistle every weekend of the summer. 

But beyond mining equipment, Ansari and Hoyl believe there are more in-depth facets of local history that deserve attention.

“One of the things we’ve been talking about is getting a stakeholder meeting together,” Ansari said. “To get all the interested parties together in one room, I think we’d get some really good solutions.”  

“We’ve got two completely different communities here now,” Hoyl explained. “There’s the group of old timers and what brought them here and what they enjoy doing. And then you’ve got a younger population that gravitate around bicycles, and they’re a very big community. So how do we tap into that history? That’s part of what the historical society is—it’s not just mining; we want to embrace all history.” 

Ansari added: “there’s a lot of different histories to be told.”