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Feature article Lyons Renaissance No longer a ‘wide spot in the road,’ the former stone town is the place to go for music, brews and fun by Lisa Marshall It’s happy hour on a Friday in Lyons, and as we set out for my girlfriend’s fortysomething birthday celebration, the question at hand is: “Where do we start?” We could pop in for a cup of sake and a plate of fresh octopus at the hip new sushi restaurant, Sushi Matsuri, or sit down for a cold pint at Ma’s, a bustling pizzeria at the heart of the newly renovated downtown. For dinner, there’s Cilantro Mary, which boasts a new Caribbean-influenced menu created by chefs lured from the upscale Q’s restaurant in Boulder. Or we could opt for downhome cooking at the new On the Rocks Southern Bistro.
Late night, we could try our luck at the Classic Pinball joint, humiliate ourselves in a game of group Twister or karaoke at the Outlaw Saloon, or hit the dance floor at Oskar Blues, where nationally known blues acts rock the house most weekends. All this in a square-mile town that was, not so long ago, seen as merely a wide spot in the road on the way to Rocky Mountain National Park. “Lyons is going through a real renaissance right now,” explains Mayor Julie VanDomelen. “It has always tried to capture the attention of people who are on their way to Estes Park, but now we are also becoming a great day-trip destination ourselves.” It wasn’t always so. In the 1970s, the funky burg at the northwest corner of Boulder County was known best for its rumbling stone quarries and carpet outlet stores. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, its town center consisted mostly of a lumber yard turned junked-out vacant lot, a few antique shops and a rowdy biker bar.
“This used to be a redneck, broken-beer-bottles-all-over-the-place kind of town,” recalls resident and downtown merchant Michael Clark, who has lived in Lyons, making hand-made bamboo fly rods, since 1971. Adds former mayor Nick Angelo, a rare-book seller with a long beard and colorful character: “Lyons was known as a place you wouldn’t want to go because you might get beat up. It was a rough-and-tumble place back then.” From stone town to music town Fast forward to summer 2010 and Lyons is fast becoming known not only as a foodies’ paradise (with several new or renovated restaurants), but also for an eclectic blend of bluegrass and folk music, award-winning beer, a flourishing arts scene, endless outdoor recreation opportunities, and a well-preserved history that somehow manages to coexist alongside a host of modern improvements. “There are still a lot of old-time families around,” says LaVern Johnson, who moved to Lyons with her family in the 1930s. She never left, and has spent the past few decades working to preserve its history through a local museum, a 15-site historic district, Saturday night square dances, and the town’s annual Good Old Days Celebration. “It’s still the kind of place where you go to the post office and you know everyone. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
Many point to the 1994 arrival of Planet Bluegrass on a 19-acre parcel just west of downtown as a turning point for Lyons. The lush cliff-side venue now hosts two three-day festivals, RockyGrass and Folks, which draw roughly 3,500 people daily to hula hoop barefoot and dance in the sun, play in the river, and revel in the round-the-clock music on the stage and in the campgrounds around town. It also hosts roughly a dozen smaller concerts year-round in its intimate 300-seat Wildflower Pavilion. Soon after came Oskar Blues Grill and Brewery, at the site of the old lumber yard. Today it too is nationally known, not only for its musical acts but also for its beers. They’ve been featured in everything from Penthouse to the New York Times to Rolling Stone, which once called Oskar’s “the hottest place to be on a Saturday night” in Colorado. “Lyons went from being a funky stone-mining town to a music town and a brewery town,” says Angelo. Sports crowd joins the mix In the past decade, the mountain-biking and whitewater crowd have joined the local mix, lured by the opening of new trails at Hall Ranch and Heil Ranch, a new downtown whitewater park, a dirt-jump skills park for BMX bikers, and the Lyons Outdoor Games, which launched in 2002 and now draws roughly 2,000 spectators and hundreds of competitors to kayak and mountain bike in Lyons June 11-13.
This summer, the town will also land on the radar screen of the national cycling community July 17-18, when thousands of road riders converge for the inaugural Centurion Cycling event, a road ride that features 25-mile, 50-mile, and 100-mile racers for riders of all ability levels. “Lyons has always been a bit of an afterthought—a place that you ride through,” says Len Pettyjohn, a Boulder cyclist who is coordinating the Centurion ride. “We are going to revolutionize that.” Visitors to Lyons this summer may also notice a new shine on its Main Street downtown area, which—thanks to an ambitious $1.5 million facelift—now hosts wide sandstone sidewalks and benches, quaint streetlights and glorious flower beds. So how do the old-timers feel about this influx of musicians and jocks, foodies and beer connoisseurs descending on their once-sleepy little quarry town? Sure, there are growing pains, they say. “But they are all nice people,” says Angelo. “If you look around, everybody’s smiling.” After all, where else can you find spandex-clad cyclists sipping coffee alongside dreadlocked musicians playing bluegrass? Or an old-timey soda fountain in the same block as a sleek sushi joint and two medical marijuana dispensaries? And don’t forget about the pinball, and the karaoke games, and the late-night Twister… I know I won’t. Lisa Marshall is a freelance writer, road cyclist, runner, and avid beer and bluegrass fan. She lives in the mountains west of Lyons and ventures into town every chance she gets.
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