Sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, someone took the heavy bell out of the small tower over the Emma Schoolhouse door. About ten years later, the bell came back. Leroy Duroux told the Aspen Daily News that taking it down and putting it back "would have required a tractor with a loader." Nobody has explained either trip.
The bell is still up there. Tomorrow morning, the door below it opens for the 50th annual Emma Schoolhouse Christmas Bazaar. That makes it the longest-running regular reason anyone has to go inside a building that held its last class in spring 1948.
Friday and Saturday at the Schoolhouse
The Basalt Chamber calls the bazaar the unofficial start of holiday shopping in the midvalley. It sells only handmade food and gifts by local artists, and it is held each year two weekends before Thanksgiving. With Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, that makes it this weekend.
| Day | Date | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Friday | Nov. 13 | 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. |
| Saturday | Nov. 14 | 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. |
The Chamber points people to the official Emma Schoolhouse Bazaar page on Facebook for event details.
The Aspen Daily News covered the bazaar in 2019, its 43rd year. Fifteen local artists took part that year, among them Judy Nordhagen, Annie Burch, Denise York and Ondine Wilson. Their tables held scarves, cards, children's clothing, tea towels, reusable food bags, toddler bedding, beanies, and wood and glass ornaments. Prices ran from $5 to several hundred dollars, with many items close to $25, and each vendor brought cookies or cake to share. The cashier had just switched from handwritten receipts to a computerized checkout.
The 2019 story also pointed out that the building has no indoor plumbing, just a portable toilet outside. In 1912, the school had two outhouses and a shed for the horses some students rode to class.
Last year's bazaar ran Nov. 7 and 8, and its Aspen Public Radio listing said part of the proceeds would go to Lift-Up.
The 50th Year, Without the Organizer of the Last Twenty
For more than two decades, the bazaar was organized by D.D. Gerdin. A beadwork artist, she founded Pin Pals by Beady DD after moving to Aspen and taught art classes to local children through the Town of Basalt. In 2019 she told the Daily News she took over the bazaar after potter Betsy Bingham asked her to, and she described it as a social gathering as much as a sale.
Gerdin died on Oct. 21. Her obituary in the Aspen Times says she organized the bazaar "providing an opportunity for local artists to connect with their community." Her family's requests include one that fits this week: support local artists at the Emma Schoolhouse Bazaar on Nov. 13 and 14.
Fifty years is longer than the school itself was open. Classes ran from fall 1912 to spring 1948, about 36 years. The bazaar has now kept the building in use for longer than teaching did.
Seventy-Eight Years After the Last Class
The building's story is about who kept it open after the school district left. Janice Duroux, a midvalley native who helped found the Basalt Regional Heritage Society, has pieced it together from old records.
- 1909. Resident W.L. Phillips sells a parcel 180.07 feet on each side to Joint School District No. 3 for $1.
- 1910 to 1912. Construction starts, and classes begin in fall 1912. One teacher taught grades one through eight in a single room heated by a wood and coal stove, with no electricity. Ranching families supplied firewood and hay.
- Each October. School pauses for potato picking. Classes end early in spring so students can go back to ranch work.
- Spring 1948. Last classes. The next fall, students go to a new building in Basalt, and the schoolhouse and its land are deeded to the Emma Community Trust.
- 2009. Nine former students, aged 67 to 89, come back for a 100th-anniversary gathering.
- January 2024. Duroux and Larry Fite, who led the trust's care of the building, hand the keys to Pitkin County Open Space and Trails.
For the 76 years between the last class and the handoff, caring for the building was informal. Duroux found records of community work days for painting and yard cleanup. She summed it up for the Daily News:
"People have loved it. People have taken care of it."
When the county took over, it agreed to keep the existing uses. These include Sunday services held by a Latino congregation, and the bazaar. "We're not trying to displace anything," said Dale Will, the open space program's director of acquisitions and projects. The county had already been maintaining the yard for years in exchange for using the parking lot as a Rio Grande Trail trailhead. Will said an interior restoration was possible down the road.
The program's current work plan lists new siding and paint for the schoolhouse, done to historic-structure standards, as a summer project.
Across Highway 82, Buildings Still Looking for a Use
The schoolhouse has had its regular uses all along. The red brick buildings across the highway have not. Charles H. Mather came to Emma in the late 1880s, became its storekeeper and postmaster, and built the store and warehouse around 1898. Emma started as a stagecoach freight stop between Aspen and Glenwood Springs and then became a Denver & Rio Grande station. For a time it was the midvalley's commercial and social center, before Basalt took over that role.
The store buildings were listed as endangered in 2000. Pitkin County bought the 12.5-acre Emma Townsite in July 2008 for $2.65 million, using Town of Basalt funding, and put the store buildings on the county historic register in 2009. According to Colorado Preservation, Inc., the buildings were stabilized in 2008, the store's masonry and roof were repaired in 2010, and the accessory buildings were restored in 2012.
"We have essentially become the custodians of old Emma," Will told the Daily News. The program also owns the white Victorian Mather house and the farmland east of the schoolhouse, which it leases to Two Roots Farm.
The next step was on the agenda for a joint meeting of the Open Space and Trails Board and county commissioners on Sept. 1. A staff memo laid out options for 2027, based on 30% design estimates dated Aug. 26:
| Option | Scope | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Original package | Asphalt access and turnaround from Hook Spur Road, Emma Trail resurfacing, storefront barrier | $1,080,000 |
| Option 1 | Repave the Emma Trail only | $420,000 |
| Option 2 | Trail plus a gravel driveway to the rear of the store, no turnaround | $530,000 |
| Option 3 | Trail plus an asphalt driveway, no turnaround | $640,000 |
| Option 4 | Trail, driveway and turnaround, no barrier | $660,000 |
| Barrier add-on | Acrylic shield for the storefronts | $440,000 |
According to the memo, people have been asking for the trail repaving for at least two years, and the county held off so it could be done alongside the access work. The front of the store sits a few feet from Highway 82, and so far only temporary measures have protected it from snow thrown by plows. The barrier would block that snow and keep the buildings visible from the road.
The memo's biggest question is about use. The full asphalt access and turnaround were designed for a food security facility, which the memo says "may still be the use." Board members discussed whether to build access before knowing what the buildings will be used for. Staff offered to put out a request for ideas and proposals from the community, check them against the county's Future Use Recommendation, and report back. The memo asked the board how much improvement, if any, to take on in 2027.
Across the road, the schoolhouse has run for decades on a Sunday congregation and an annual November sale, and both are uses the county agreed to keep when it took the keys.
After Emma, the Rest of Basalt's Calendar
The bazaar starts a run of holiday events in Basalt that lasts into mid-December:
- Nov. 26, Thanksgiving. The Basalt Turkey Trot offers a 5K and a one-mile run or walk benefiting Basalt Public Schools.
- Sunday, Nov. 29. The third annual Basalt Holiday Market fills TACAW at 400 Robinson St. It's free, from noon to 5 p.m.
- Friday, Dec. 4. Light Up Willits runs 4 to 6 p.m. at Triangle Park, with a tree lighting, Santa, live entertainment, food and horse-drawn carriage rides.
- Friday, Dec. 11. Merry on Midland brings a tree lighting, Santa, live entertainment, food and drinks to Midland Avenue from 4 to 6 p.m.
- Dec. 11 and 12. Roaring Fork Fire & Rescue's Santa in the Neighborhood fire-truck rides cover Willits and El Jebel on Friday, then Historic Downtown and Southside on Saturday. Both leave the fire station at 5:30 p.m.
The Sopris Sun reported in May 2025 that Two Roots Farm, on the county land beside the schoolhouse, holds a long-term lease on Emma Open Space that is renewed every five years. The paper said the farm serves more than 200 CSA members and local restaurants and runs a Friday food stand, which it planned to reopen that May.
If the bazaar has you curious about the midvalley's historic places and the open land around Emma, I would be glad to talk about them with you. Let's Connect with Soffia Wardy.
