The phone rings at Bob Scott’s Authentic Indian Jewelry. So goes the greeting from the shop owner, his voice a silky, Southern twang recalling his Texas youth:

“It’s a beautiful day in Grand Lake, Colorado, don’t you wish you were?”

Scott just got done visiting with a friend inquiring about rhubarb (many more not-so-secret recipes in binders behind the counter). Now Scott’s on the line with another friend.

It’s a beautiful day, because to Grand Lake’s Mister Rogers, it’s always a beautiful day in the neighborhood. But at the moment, it’s raining.

“It’s cooling things off,” Scott tells his caller, “and it just feels great.”

Scott is the kindred spirit of Grand Lake, its greatest evangelist, the man about town on just about every board there is, devoted to the historical society, the chamber of commerce, the theater and his church. This is his 51st summer here.

He ends the call: “OK, I love you, big guy.” Then he turns to greet me with a warm smile, ever the charmer with round-rim glasses and a bolo tie to go with a vest and plaid shirt.

I’ve come to ask Scott about his favorite topic: Grand Lake.

“Grand Lake is like Xanadu,” he says, referring to the fantasy place. “It’s a mountain kingdom that’s protected by a ring of mountains. We are protected from the outside world.”

Some argue that. Across from Scott’s shop is a sporting goods store run by Marilou Randall, a native who sounds nostalgic about the old days.

“Honestly, people were a lot more respectful,” she tells me. She attributes the change to social media, “where people can say nasty things about each other behind their phones or screens. That’s the unfortunate part about it. They’re bringing that with them here instead of respecting us town folk.”

“Regular folk,” I’m told by another longtime local, “work their behinds off” to afford life here — tougher with the influx of wealthy outsiders ratcheting up real estate. Folks who’ve been here all along pick up seasonal work where they can; Grand Lake hibernates when Winter Park Resort awakens down the highway.

On this summer day, tourists and second homeowners occupy just about every parking spot on Grand Avenue, the shops connected by boardwalks you’d expect in a beach town. Space is even harder to find a block over on the shores of Colorado’s largest natural lake.

The coniferous slopes of Shadow Mountain frame one side of the water, rolling out to the domelike promontory known as Mount Craig. William Newton Byers, founder and editor of The Rocky Mountain News, described the scene best in 1868: “Imagine a great mirror, a mile wide and two miles long, bordered all round with thick timber, and beyond that with stupendous mountains …”

I find Elin Capps taking in the scenery from the deck of the Kauffman House, the Victorian dwelling-turned-museum standing 127 years later.

“The best view in the county!” Capps remarks, the historical society leader’s arms spread wide.

Driving into town earlier, I’d told Capps over the phone that she had “a cute little town.” I felt I pinched a nerve.

“Well, it’s real, you know,” she responded. “It’s real.”

So real as to call itself “the Soul of the Rockies.” And like all souls, Grand Lake has known troubles. Joseph Wescott, considered the town’s first white settler, recounts one in a poem. “The Legend of Grand Lake” spread as a retelling of a battle here between warring tribes. “White man, pause and gaze around,” Wescott started. “For we tread now on haunted ground!”

He wrote of “carnage and death,” of the sky as “one sea of pure blood red,” of souls “borne away from this merciless shore.” This was the tragedy told by a Ute chief Wescott supposedly met upon his arrival.

He came as a ragged Civil War veteran, homesteading 160 acres on the lake’s west end. Here he went about building “a city” that never came to be despite the mining bustle.

But cabins of Wescott’s vision remain, including one with a weblike design known as the Spider House — the site of another grim tale. In 1904, a tormented woman took a gun to four of her children and then killed herself. Beside the house, “the tall pines moan their mournful song,” reads the historical society’s narrative.

At the time, Grand Lake was recovering from a previous event that scared away visitors. That was the deadly shootout of July 4, 1883, waged over the town’s claim to the county seat.

Eventually, Grand Lake broke its wild reputation with hospitality heralded far and wide. People came especially after 1915, when the surrounding grandeur was designated part of Rocky Mountain National Park. Around then, the Cottage Court opened, a series of cabins with car ports. Capps is pleased to show me the preserved structures, believed to be the earliest precursor to today’s motels.

And she’s pleased to show me other signs of the past. “You can see the mix,” she says, pointing to homes with the dark, weathered wood of 100 years compared with the lighter, fresher wood of a neighbor. The rustic imitation isn’t attempted by all newcomers. Million-dollar edifices made of cobblestone and glass stand near shanties without plumbing.

The starkness is seen on the main drag: The barbecue joint has the walls of the 1881 town hall, while down the street drywall rises high, higher than all roofs, interrupting the view. Capps sighs. “They’re building a god-awful condo building.”

But no one denies the need for housing if it’s affordable. Without that, how can there ever be a school here? Young families have steadily been driven out, resulting in the elementary’s closure in 2011.

The silver lining is the medical center now housed there, along with the pickleball courts — symbols indeed of a community, a “real” community, as Capps puts it. “It’s still a community,” the former teacher insists.

Just look to the regular bingo nights and pancake breakfasts. Look to all of the volunteers. “Volunteers make it go,” Capps says. Even the mayor, a house painter, is a volunteer.

And look to the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater. Actors from metros around the nation move here for the summer and “get to be celebrities walking down the street,” says Michael Querio, the executive artistic director. Locals host them for dinner, lend them their kayaks.

Those are the gracious ones, such as Bob Scott, undeterred by Grand Lake’s changes.

“I’ve only seen it improve,” he says in his shop.

So, too, goes the weather. Scott looks out the window to see the rain letting up, the sun breaking through the clouds. He smiles. “Soon we’ll have a rainbow.”