WALDEN • When Stacey Gollobith was presented with the idea of moving to the picturesque, yet remote community of Walden, she was skeptical, to say the least.

Gollobith was enjoying life just fine in Fort Collins, working as a banker at a credit union with her husband and newborn in the late 1980s. But when her husband was offered a job ranching in Walden, Gollobith knew that a move might be imminent, if not long-term.

“We drove up there (Walden), and I’m like, ‘You want me to move there?’” Gollobith said of her initial introduction to the remote Jackson County town in northwest Colorado. “I thought I’d give it a year. I even told my boss that I’m sure I’ll be back in a year. I said, ‘You guys have got to promise me that I can come back. I don’t know what I’m going to do in Walden, Colorado.’”

Turns out Gollobith has been able to do a lot in Walden — raise a family that includes two now-grown children and enjoy successful career ventures with both the Colorado State University Jackson County Extension Office and at the River Rock Cafe and Antlers Inn, where she works as a manager and has been employed for the past 24 years.

More importantly, Gollobith and her husband still happily reside in Walden nearly 38 years later.

“It’s one of those towns where it takes a village, and everyone here is willing to help one another out at any time,” Gollobith said.

Walden packs quite a punch for a community of around 900. It offers an endless array of outdoor recreational activities, breathtaking views, unrivaled wildlife and a community that continues to embody all the virtues and character of small-town America, providing all of this with majestic North Park serving as its backdrop.

“People live here because they love it,” said Samantha Martin, who serves as the administrator and emergency manager for Jackson County. “They love the rural lifestyle and the (agricultural) lifestyle.”

Walden residents also love their moose.

The Moose viewing capital of Colorado

The town has been designated the Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado, and it has the moose and signs to prove it.

“It’s a big source of pride for us,” Martin said of the designated title bestowed on Walden in 1995 by the Colorado state legislature. “We have signs coming into town on both sides that designate our title. I think it sets us apart because there are a lot of places in Colorado that have moose, but we’re the Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado, and it’s accurate. You can almost see a moose every day coming through Jackson County.”

If, by chance, luck doesn’t happen to be on your side when searching to see a moose in Walden, don’t worry, the locals have you covered. Walden residents are more than willing to share their captivating photos and are eager to tell their tales of moose encounters in and around the town.

“I’ve got two laptops filled with moose pictures,” Walden resident Jody Patterson said. “I saw 11 moose the other day. My dog is even named Moose.”

More often than not, however, people leave Walden satisfied with a successful moose-sighting experience.

“I’ll come into town and cross the (Illinois) river,” Martin said. “If I see a line of cars parked on the side of the road, I immediately know there’s a moose loose in the river. The people just pull over because everybody wants a picture. It’s a huge deal and a huge part of our tourism. We want to satisfy our visitors. If folks are coming into town and they want to see a moose, we can send them to a few spots. It’s pretty exciting for us when we can make that happen for them.”

Living with the moose

Moose were reintroduced into Colorado by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife in 1978, when “state wildlife experts transplanted 24 male and female moose from Wyoming and Utah to create a breeding population in North Park and provide hunting opportunities,” according to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website.

Martin and other Jackson County officials noted that today there are between 650 and 700 moose in and around the area. The target population number is 600, but officials and Walden locals don’t seem overly concerned with the slightly inflated numbers.

Martin indicated that to bring the numbers down, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) could bump up the amount of hunting tags given each season.

“One of the ways to try and control any big-game population is to increase the number of female hunting licenses,” said CPW assistant area wildlife manager Josh Dilley.

Moose hunting season in the area typically spans from September through mid-October. Dilley said that any increase in the number of hunting tags “would be incremental.”

For those not accustomed to being around moose, locals say it’s important to give them their space. The CPW website highlighted that moose can travel at speeds up to 35 miles per hour.

“Moose really help our economy and they provide great watchful opportunities,” Dilley said. “They are a fairly charismatic species.”

Walden residents seem quite comfortable with having moose living amongst them.

“Everybody usually gives them a pretty healthy respect in the community,” Martin said. “They’re beautiful and they are huge — so much bigger than people realize — but you need to give them a healthy respect. And if there’s a mama protecting a baby, you don’t ever want to get in between.”

Moose are so embedded within the Walden community that Martin said moose lockdowns are not uncommon at local schools and if there is a moose on a particular path to school, the moms will alert others through social media or text.

“They’ll get to chatting and tell others that there’s a moose in the park,” Martin said. “You know, make sure your kids don’t go that way or walk around the park and not through the park.”

While Walden residents are keen to having moose around, the subject of wolves is entirely different.

The wolves 

In the fall of 2020, Colorado voters passed Proposition 114, which directed Colorado Parks and Wildlife to develop a plan to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado. Ten wolves were reintroduced to the state in December of 2023, and North Park communities like Walden are feeling the effects.

Earlier this month, CPW confirmed that an uncollared wolf killed a cow in Jackson County. Though the “depredation is believed to have been committed by a wolf that is not part of the Colorado reintroduction effort and is not collared in the North Park area,” it was “at least the 18th reported killing of livestock in Jackson County since 2021,” the state wildlife agency said.

The wolf reintroduction program is a point of contention among many Walden residents, whose community is fueled by ranching and agriculture. Most residents agree the proposition was fueled by Front Range voters along the I-25 and I-70 corridors.

“It’s a very contentious subject,” Martin said. “Our peoples’ livelihoods depend on agriculture. They love their animals. Even if you’re not in agriculture, we all go to the grocery store. We all got to eat, and so we really need to think of the big picture and what our actions and our voting does to everybody — not just it would be cool to come up and see a wolf. There’s so much more to it.”

Walden resident Kathy Lawson vividly recounted her encounter with a wolf at her cabin.  

“I had to go to the outhouse because that’s what we have out there,” Lawson said while at work during a recent Friday shift at Corkle’s Mini Mart Gift Shop. “As soon as I got in there, I heard a bark, and there were no dogs out there — nothing. I mean, I was so scared. I’m thinking in there that I don’t have a gun. What am I going to do? I just got to talk to him. So, I took the outhouse stick. It’s a two-by-two oak stick with nails on the other end. I went outside with that and I hollered, ‘I am your friend, please don’t harm us.’”

Lawson said that, to her knowledge, the wolf she encountered has not returned and that the experience only added to her respect for wolves. She was then quick to pull up a photo she took on her phone of an elk that fell victim to a wolf.

“We were given a job by the voters,” said, Dilley, who has been with Colorado Parks and Wildlife for 27 years and has lived in Walden for the past 24. “We need to do our job and try and make it as best we can for agriculture and the wolves. We just have to work through it as best as we can.”

A tight-knit community

Spend a little time in Walden and it becomes apparent that the town has a way of bringing people back and keeping them together, insulated from much of the world’s outside noise and distractions.

“We came up here so much that we just decided to move here,” Jody Patterson said during a recent Friday afternoon stopover at local hangout Stockman Bar & Grill. “You can’t beat the people or the outdoor recreation. We have everything in our backyard.”

Walden offers virtually any activity one would want to pursue from hunting, hiking, ice-fishing, cross-country skiing to camping, and, of course, moose viewing.

Many area residents were gearing up for a snowmobiling poker run in nearby Gould that took place on a late February weekend.

“There’s something up here all year long. It just depends on what kind of event is going on and what you like,” Stacey Gollobith said from inside the River Rock Cafe at the Antlers Inn, which was sold out for the weekend. “If you don’t like the winter, you come on motorcycles here in the summer. You go do what you do during the day and at night, you go to the Stockman.”

Tony Johnson, who works as a senior ranger at State Forest State Park, echoed much of what Gollobith said.

“Once school gets out, we become the miniature Rocky Mountain National Park,” Johnson said. “Visitation is high in the summer, but we also get a large winter crowd that’s up here snowmobiling, skiing and that kind of stuff. We also get fall types during the hunting season. So, we’re never really slow.”

Johnson, who moved to Walden from Golden, feels right at home in both his job and living in the remote community.

“I love the community,” he said. “It has a little bit of everything. I love that it’s really a town where everybody helps everybody else out and everybody wears multiple hats. That’s what I really get a kick out of.”

Lawson lived in Walden for 20 years before moving away for a stint — only to return back 10 years ago.

“I appreciate that we’re small and that we all take care of each other when things arise,” Lawson said. “No one is petty around here. You can’t be. We’re a very tight-knit community.”

Added Gollobith: “Everything that makes Walden special is — well, you can’t duplicate it.”