OUR LADY OF THE LAKES (1957)

The summer resort of Red Feather Lakes, developed during the 1920s on what had been called Mitchell Lakes, witnessed its first Catholic Mass in 1956 in the Community Building. Norma Folda of the Red Feather Lakes Improvement Club, furniture dealer Edward E. Lilly of Greeley, and other Catholics worked with Archbishop Vehr to establish Our Lady of the Lakes as a summer mission the following year.

Parishioners persuaded various priests to offer summer Sunday Masses until St. Peter's in Greeley accepted the parish as a mission in 1958. That year, a church site was purchased from R.V. Barker, and parishioners set about building a foundation onto which they placed an old chapel moved down from Fort Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. In November 1959, a windstorm destroyed the church, which was rebuilt with slab log siding the following year and furnished with second hand pews from St. John Church in Longmont. Subsequently, this mission was transferred to St. Joseph parish in Fort Collins, which provides a priest for Saturday afternoon Masses between Memorial and Labor days, when summer residents and vacationers flock to Red Feather Lakes.