YOUR AD HERE »

Saddle Sore: The story behind Lenny Thomas and his Aspen pool

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.
Tony Vagneur/Courtesy photo

Grabbed a bucket at the bottom of the gondola and who follows me in but Doug Kinsley, Aspen Mountain ambassador and sometimes raconteur, brother of Michael, and pleasant fellow to visit with. Good skier.

It’s cold — yeah, we know that — are you gonna watch the race? World Pro ski race! Well, we have to ski alongside it if we come down Little Nell or cut through at the Nell end of Tower 7 Road. Yeah, yeah, and then the conversation gets serious, suicide for a couple of moments, and then trivia makes itself known, as it generally seems to do between us.

The game “Trivial Pursuit” always comes to mind, but only instantaneously, for our game is much more intense than that. (My daughter’s final au pair, Josefin, entirely Swedish, except for her brief stay at our house, loved that game and was much better at it than my young daughter or me.)



“What was there before Belly Up?” asks Doug. “Paradise Theater,” replies the other guy, being me. “But before Paradise, what was there?” “OK, OK, the public swimming pool,” which fairly well puts a period on the conversation, but there’s more.

After the pool, in 1975, Le Cabaret opened in that space, where Buck Deane turned my wife Caroline and me on to such folks as Cheech & Chong, Steve Martin, Arlo Guthrie, great bands, and others. And then, along came Rick’s American Café, trying to make the night scene in Aspen come alive, which it did for a time, including acts by locals Suzi Sanderson and her friend, Wicker Allen. Then, around 1979, David Moss took over ownership of the place, labeling it Paradise Theater. Now, can we talk about the swimming pool and the man who owned it?




Leonard “Lenny” Thomas was, for many years, an Aspen icon, living in the original Red Mountain Ranch house, a pinkish, brick abode sitting on the first bench going up Red Mountain, located well back from the intersection of Red Mountain Road and Pitkin Green Road.

He was known to imbibe, sometimes more than a little, and was a member of all the fraternal clubs in town. At one time, the walls of the old Eagles Club (Prada today) were adorned with mounted deep-sea fish that he had caught on various vacations.  

According to legend, while sunbathing at the Hotel Jerome pool one day, he was asked to leave or become a member. Apparently, it was not the first time. It stirred him inside somehow, and in 1952, he went up to the south end of Galena Street and bought half the block on the east side, between Cooper and Durant, behind the Prince Albert. There he built the Aspen Swimming Pool. The swimming hole only took up about half that area, and the rest (to the east) became a well-manicured, emerald green croquet court.

Thomas was no slouch when it came to research; he lived at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a week, scoping out the pool each day and visiting with the manager, learning what would make the best community swimming pool for Aspen. It became a great place for kids — to that, this writer can attest.

In 1956, Thomas bought the Mike Marolt ranch, now preserved as open space as the Marolt/Thomas property. (For context, the Aspen Historical Society Mining and Ranching Museum is located on part of that property.) His original intent was to split the land up into small parcels, with roads, power, and water lines. Why it didn’t happen is our good luck, and it got turned into Open Space, although at present, highway engineers, professional and amateur, have their sights on it as a possible solution for the S-Curves slowdown.

At a later date, Thomas donated some of that land, where the current city reservoir and water plant sit, the area being named for him. He was an intriguing, interesting character in Aspen’s history who died while his Red Mountain house burned down around him, in 1968.

When the swimming pool closed, it’s difficult to say, but as late as 1973, it lay unused, cracked, and empty, reminiscent of a scene out of John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer.”