Settling Routt County was never easy or safe. Fugitives used the undeveloped landscape as an “outlaw trail” to evade authorities. The inexorable Harry Tracy managed three jailbreaks before being killed by a posse. Conversely, many of the first families left entrepreneurial legacies. Widowed Alice Bartz sold the family homestead to start the Bartz Hotel in her Steamboat Springs' bakery and house, serving three meals a day to locals and guests. Others families, like the Nays and the Laughlins, were able to cut hay and raise enough livestock to pass the land down to future generations. Native author Rita Herold preserves oral histories and nearly forgotten episodes of the county's past.
