A man's passion for Palmer Lake

As a kid growing up in Denver, Daniel Edwards spent idyllic summers at the family's vacation home, nestled in the woods in Palmer Lake's Glen Park.

Those visits didn't end with childhood; he has been back many times since. And several years ago, Edwards developed an interest - some might say an obsession - in Dr. William Finley Thompson, the founder of Palmer Lake. That passion pushed Edwards to spend more than a year and a half researching and writing a book, "Dr. William Finley Thompson: Dental Surgeon and Founder of Palmer Lake," which he recently selfpublished.

Thompson founded Palmer Lake, part of the Tri-Lakes area north of Colorado Springs, in the early 1880s. He had grand plans for Palmer Lake as a vacation

spot and health resort; his home, a Victorian mansion called the Estemere, still stands. But less than a decade after founding the town, he abandoned his vision of a gleaming jewel of the Rockies and fled his creditors, first to New York, then to Mexico. It was there that he died in 1892.

Much of his life - and death - was a mystery, from conflicting reports about his birthplace to rumors that Thompson didn't die in Mexico, that it was just a ruse to escape his crushing debt.

"I wanted to find out the facts about this man," Edwards says simply.

Edwards' day job is with the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., and the nation's capital ofiered ample resources to start his historical detective work, including The Library of Congress and The National Archives. He relied on references including newspaper articles and old court and land records to help him put together the pieces of Thompson's life.

Many factors made assembling a history of Thompson difficult. Previous histories on Palmer Lake had little information on Thompson. Edwards found no journals, no letters, no business records - though he did track down a book of lectures by Thompson, "Lectures on Operative Dental Surgery and Therapeutics," published in 1881.

It appears that Thompson has no living descendants. And Thompson rarely stayed in one place for long. In tracking Thompson's dental career, Edwards followed him from the start of his career in Ohio to Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Oregon (where Thompson was a founding member of the Oregon State Dental Society), California and London.

"The portrait drawn here is admittedly and regretfully incomplete," Edwards writes in his preface. Yet the amount of detail he was able to uncover in many instances is astonishing - reports of Thompson's involvement in an 1865 buggy crash in Leavenworth, Kan., for example, and his passport application from 1878.

One of Edwards' goals was to set the historical record straight. Many accounts, for example, say Thompson was originally from Baltimore - and one long-ago Gazette story even claimed that Thompson was a founder of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Edwards, depending on census and other records, concludes that Thompson was born in a small town in Ohio and the only Baltimore connection was that his wife was born there.

It has also been reported that Thompson commuted regularly from Palmer Park to a dental practice in Denver, traveling by train. Other stories said he lived in Denver.

Neither is accurate, Edwards believes. Thompson did have a home designed in Denver, but it doesn't appear to have been built, he says, and there's no evidence that Thompson had a regular dental practice in Denver.

More likely, Edwards says, Thompson's frequent trips to Denver were for his real estate deals.

Edwards also addresses the persistent rumors that Thompson didn't die in Mexico and that his body was moved to Palmer Lake. Edwards uncovered a death certificate showing Thompson died of typhoid fever on Nov. 16, 1892, in Durango, Mexico, and was buried there.

He finds it highly unlikely that anyone would have had the desire and resources to secretly dig up Thompson's body and spirit it back to the U.S.

"I'm 99.9 percent convinced that he is buried there in Durango, Mexico," Edwards says.

The answers to other questions are less clear - such as why Thompson left an apparently successful career in London to return to the United States and how he ended up in Palmer Lake. Edwards points to some Colorado connections, including Thompson's fatherin-law, who had a mining operation in Park County, and the fact that the Palmer Lake area had been one of interest to British capitalists.

Edwards' book fills huge gaps in the history of Palmer Lake, says Rogers Davis, a member of the Palmer Lake Historical Society and director of the Lucretia Vaile Museum in Palmer Lake.

"To have such a scholarly work done and to bring that much more knowledge to the founding of the town is what we live for," Davis says.

Roger Ward, who lives with his wife in Estemere, the Queen Anne-style mansion that Thompson built in 1887, wrote the introduction to Edwards' book.

"There was so much confusion about William Finley Thompson in the past, and he (Edwards) has done probably the definitive research on Thompson," Ward says.

The biggest surprise to him, Ward says, was learning of Thompson's prominent role in the dental world.

"I didn't have any idea that he had conducted so many seminars and had written so many papers, and even had a book published, and that he had his own set of dental instruments named after him."

Edwards says he developed a respect for Thompson in researching him, noting both his skill as a dental surgeon and his tireless efforts to promote Palmer Lake.

"He didn't have practical training as a businessman, so I think he got in a little over his head. But there's no doubt he was a very talented person."

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0272 or bill.radford@gazette.com  

DID YOU KNOW?

• The earliest known inhabitants of the Palmer Divide north of Colorado Springs were American Indian tribes such as the Mountain Ute and Arapahoe.

• An 1820 expedition headed by Stephen Long , an Army major, uncovered the Colorado state flower, the columbine, in the area of Palmer Lake.

• Before there was Palmer Lake the town, there was Palmer Lake the lake, named after Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Palmer. The lake, previously known as Summit Lake and then Divide Lake, was critical to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad started by Palmer, providing water for the steam engines.

• Dr. William Finley Thompson, a dental surgeon, purchased land and platted the town of Palmer Lake (initially he called it Loch Katrine) in 1882, intending it as a health resort and vacation community. Thompson became Palmer Lake's first mayor in 1889. A year later, unable to pay his creditors, he fled town with his wife and daughters.

• The Rocky Mountain Chautauqua, a summer camp that offered lectures, concerts and plays, was active in the area from 1887 to 1910.

• Industries in the area have included harvesting ice from Monument and Palmer lakes, fox farms, sawmills and dry-land potato and grain farming.

Sources: "Palmer Lake: A Historical Narrative" by Marion Savage Sabin; "Dr. William Finley Thompson: Dental Surgeon and Founder of Palmer Lake" by Daniel W. Edwards; Palmer Lake Historical Society. Photo of Thompson courtesy of the Lucretia Vaile Museum

DETAILS

To order "Dr. William Finley Thompson: Dental Surgeon and Founder of Palmer Lake," write Daniel Edwards, P.O. Box 7733, Woodbridge, Va., 22195. Cost is $21 post paid. For more information, e-mail Dolporaja@aol.com.