JOHN OTTO

~Trailing Otto~ Colorado National Monument
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 Who was John Otto-
PBS Documentary about The Colorado National Monument and John Otto < Click to watch the Full Episode
 
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 Documentary Producer wins Emmys for film on CNM

On Saturday July 23rd the Rocky Mountain PBS producer Greg Mikolai won two Emmys for his work on the documentary

“The Colorado National Monument: Celebrating 100 Years of John Otto’s Dream.”

He received the awards at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) 2011 Heartland Emmy Awards in Denver. Mikolai received the Emmys in the following categories: program editor and program photography.

Congratulations Greg for this monumentuos work!

 
 Articles by Alan J. Kania, author of the following books:
* The Colorado National Monument   a lot of history on John Otto
     
 
 

The pioneer spirit of the West has produced its share of strange and colorful characters. In the early years of the last century, a lonely vagabond named John Otto waged a single-handed battle to set aside a maze of rock amphitheaters and monoliths that loom five hundred feet out of the canyons for the benefit of the entire nation. He did so at a time when the national park idea was just coming into focus. Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Mount Rainier were established as federally protected lands, but there was as yet no national park service to manage them with any consistent philosophy. Park custodians were hired for token salaries, usually a dollar a month. Among those custodians, John Otto was, without question, the most eccentric and flamboyant.

    His peculiar behavior often upset the Victorian values of turn-of-the-century America. Between 1902 and 1907, he was locked up three times for “acute mania” in order to protect government officials from his irascible and odd—but never violent—behavior. Although his patriotism was scarcely questioned, his manner of expressing it was considered eccentric, if not downright insane. His manner of dress further aroused suspicion. Often he wore a green shirt with different colored stars for buttons, each star presumably symbolic of something significant in the depths of his creative imagination. At other times, he wore the blue coveralls of the mining trade, calling himself “Blue Boy” in his early correspondence with political leaders.

     But he was, above all, a gentle soul who simply wanted Americans to appreciate their sublime geography. He was, in his own words, ‘The world’s greatest radical of the safe kind.'

 

On Colorado’s magnificent Western Slope lies one of the supreme landscapes of the West, the monoliths and canyons of Colorado National Monument. Almost as legendary as this Mars-like setting, however, is the memory of John Otto, Colorado National Monument’s founding father and truly one of the more eccentric characters to have found employment with the National Park Service.

    Tried three times for insanity (and found sane on each occasion), accused of attempting to assassinate the Governor of Colorado (and later exonerated), and often dressed in a green shirt with colored stars for buttons, John Otto became the Monument’s first custodian and most ardent booster. His crankish sense of humor once prompted him to propose naming the Monument “Smith National Park” (the commercial possibilities were “stupendous,” he wrote), a ludicrous suggestion made even more so by the fact that the local newspaper took it seriously and endorsed it. An early women’s rights advocate, he was married briefly and later awarded alimony from the bride who deserted him. For the residents of turn-of-the-century Grand Junction, John Otto -- “the world’s greatest radical of the safe kind,” as he called himself -- might as well have been from another planet. Nevertheless, his legend lives on as one who almost single-handedly built the trails that now traverse Colorado National Monument.

    Alan J. Kania writes an entertaining and informative book of really two biographies: that of John Otto and also that of his domain, Colorado National Monument. Illustrated with many previously unpublished early photos of Colorado National Monument

 
 Information provided by author and historian Alan J. Kania