Stuart and Isabel Mace built their log cabin near Castle Creek in 1948 and cared for the property as a home, a guest lodge, a health-food restaurant, an art gallery, and a dog-sledding kennel during their family’s six-decade tenure in the ghost town of Ashcroft.

They were “tenacious, dedicated, authentic, hardworking,” says the property’s longtime caretaker, Trevor Washko. “Purpose driven,” too, the Maces were fierce environmentalists who instilled those values in their children, grandchildren, and generations of guests.

“There was a right way, a wrong way, and a Mace way,” Washko says. And here, surrounded by towering mountains and sprawling fields, it’s not just about caring for the natural world. It’s about fighting for it. 

“You can’t appreciate your fellow man until you have the respect of all the other living things which have made it possible for him to be here,” Stuart Mace says in a 1976 episode of Bill Moyers Journal. “Most people don’t realize what they belong to.”

That philosophy now drives the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies’(ACES) management of the Catto Center at Toklat, as the Mace heritage site is now known. The nonprofit acquired the property in 2005 with a grant from the Catto family and reopened the facility this winter after a three-year, $9 million restoration.

Stuart Mace was a founding trustee of ACES, a botanist by training and a musher by trade. According to Washko, Mace dreamed of one day transforming the property into a hub for nature studies. Washko has spent nearly three decades living and learning “the Mace way,” and he feels a responsibility to share those philosophies today.

“I feel like my role is partly to carry the bridge between the past and the future...to bring forward the legacy of what built the place and made the stories behind it,” he says.

The original log cabin is still standing, with its warm gathering spaces and hodgepodge additions. But now it also boasts an all-electric kitchen and modern retreat facility, along with updated staff housing and clean-energy systems. A residency program will launch later this year, welcoming scientists, artists, and other luminaries to find inspiration in an ecological haven.

Jim Kravitz, the naturalist programs director at ACES, says there’s a “give and take” that is imbued in the spirit of Toklat, a respect for the land and its abundant gifts. So, a boozy retreat for the sales force won’t be welcome at the Catto Center.

But if a corporation wants to meet to discuss its sustainability policy, Kravitz says Toklat could be just the place for executives to learn about the importance of environmentalism. There’s an education component to these retreats, exploring both the natural sciences and the humanities, because in Kravitz’s view, “a lot of these changes we need come from the heart.”

“People, forever, have been disarmed and opened up when they come here,” he says. “Their whole mind explodes.”     

Forever Wild

Hikers journey to the craggy peaks, alpine lakes, and grassy fields of the Castle Creek Valley to experience the natural beauty and seclusion of these places. But unlike the popular Maroon Bells next door, most of this landscape isn’t a designated wilderness area.

The Gunnison Outdoor Resources Protection Act could change that. Introduced last fall by Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and known as the GORP Act—a cheeky reference to trail mix—the proposal includes new wilderness designations for acreage near Ashcroft and an area surrounding nearby Star Peak.

“Earth is being urbanized,” with fragmented habitats, says ACES CEO Chris Lane. Protecting this landscape as wilderness? That would be “just the best thing ever for us.”