ST. VINCENT (1970)

When the Colorado Midland Railroad construction crews reached the junction of the Frying Pan and Roaring Fork rivers in 1886, they established a town first called Aspen Junction. It was incorporated in 1901 as Basalt, a name inspired by the nearby mountain of basaltic lava.

Joseph P. Carrigan, pastor of St. Stephen's in Glenwood Springs, reported to Bishop Tihen in the 1920s that the faithful in Basalt had completed "an attractive little church with a steeple and a bell and a cement sidewalk in front of the lots on the main street." This church was a renovated three-room house, which was dedicated by Bishop Tihen in June 1924.

Father Carrigan, Patrick McSweeney, and other visiting priests said Mass for Catholic families in this haying, ranching, and resort area. In 1954, Joseph Bosch, pastor of St. Mary's in nearby Aspen, began saying evening Mass daily. Particularly on Sunday, Father Bosch found that all his Basalt parishioners could not squeeze into the church.

In 1956, parishioners raised $1,781 to build an addition that doubled the size of their chapel. In 1970, St. Vincent's was elevated to parish status by Archbishop Casey, who appointed Thomas Bradtke the first pastor. Father Bradtke also established and tended missions in Carbondale, Snowmass Village, and, until it closed in 1985, the Sacred Heart mission in Redstone.

Robert E. Hehn, the current pastor, tends these missions as well as St. Vincent's, which in 1989 has about seventy registered families. Since 1981, Sisters Clare Ahler and Janet Dielen, two Franciscans, have directed parish education, liturgy, and music programs. The growing parish built a new church and parish hall, which was first used for Mass in 1988, when the old church bell rang out the glad news.