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.”

    This website belongs to Alan Kania, author of several books about John Otto and the Colorado National Monument. He can be reached at ajk.colorado@gmail.com.