Colorado Rancher With a Badstu
Describing Aspen, Colo., as probably the most interesting town in Colorado, the Denver Rocky Mountain News this fall began a series of articles about some of the people who have made it that way. Leading off the series was Henry L. Stein '30, president of the Aspen Chamber of Commerce for the past three years.
Stein used to live in Chicago and commute to his Aspen ranch as often as he could break away from his work as president of the Interstate Smelting and Refining Co. The return trip to Chicago was undertaken more and more reluctantly, and finally in 1952 the Steins switched things around and moved to Colorado. Now Stein, who heads the Henry L. Stein Sales Co., selling arm of the firm, commutes to Chicago only four times a year.
His home in Aspen is the Milliron-S Ranch, three miles out of town and one of the two Red Butte Ranches, totaling 2800 acres, that the Steins own. They run 300 head of cattle and raise grain and hay, but the biggest interest is taking "beat-up, used-out" land and building it up. In the actual work of clearing sagebrush and of irrigating and fencing in the land, the former Chicago business executive is as busy as any of his ranch hands.
As president of the Aspen Chamber of Commerce for three years, Stein also has been in the thick of the community and cultural activities of the town, which has launched other projects to make itself a mecca even when it is not a powder-snow paradise for skiers. He has taken part in the Aspen Institute's executive seminars and last fall he was busy with the campaign to raise funds for the 1956 Aspen Music Festival. He also found time to help promote a county zoning and planning law, and is chairman of the Pitkin County Board of Appeals. While all this has been going on, Mrs. Stein has been active in hospital, school, library and musical projects.
A unique spot for a lot of Henry Stein's community discussions is the Norwegian badstu, complete with imported steam stove and North Cape flint pebbles, that has been added to the Milliron-S Ranch. Sitting au naturel on polished hardwood slats and surrounded by clouds of steam, Stein and his cronies find it easy to come to decisions. As Stein puts it, "A man can't get very stuffy with his pants off. And all the lies you ever told and mean things you ever did come out in the steam."
Henry L. Stein '30 at his Milliron-S Ranch three miles out of Aspen.
