Time Machine: The Hewes Brothers

CEDAR RAPIDS - Eastern Iowa was home to a pair of brothers in the late 19th century who didn't seem particularly extraordinary.

Charles 'Charlie” and Stephen 'Brownie” Hewes, born in Boone, lost their father when they were about 9 and 5 years old. A report from a Nevada newspaper was published in the Jan. 8, 1879, Vinton Eagle: 'Another suicide is chronicled of one of the citizens of Boone last week. Mr. S.B. Hewes, a merchant tailor of that place for nearly ten years past, being the unfortunate victim. He started for Ogden on Friday morning last to collect some money due him, failed to get it, and while in the River Land office Mr. Browne shot himself with a pistol through the right temple. As far as any one has been able to learn yet, financial embarrassment seems to be the only thing to which the rash act can be attributed.'

In an effort to support her sons, Mary Palmer Hewes moved to Vinton to be near family and opened a millinery store.

The boys augmented the family's meager income by collecting bottles in the alley behind their home. The Vinton volunteer fire department hose house was next door, and the dances in the upstairs room of the hose house produced a lot of bottles for the boys to collect.

Even that was not always enough to buy coal during Iowa's cold winters. So Charlie and Brownie would pick up pieces of coal that fell over the fence of Frank Ray's coal yard across the alley from their house. When enough didn't fall, Charlie would climb the fence and 'help” some of the coal into the alley. When he got enough money, he would go to Ray, confess his transgression, and pay for the coal he had taken.

By age 15, Charlie was delivering Gazettes to his neighbors in Vinton. 'The Evening Gazette arrives every evening on time and is appreciated by our businessmen and politicians. Charles Hewes, the gentlemanly agent here, delivers all within thirty minutes after arrival,” the June 28, 1884, Gazette revealed.

By the time he was 19, Charlie was working for Fred Longhurst at the Adams Express Co. in Cedar Rapids. After a few years, he set out for adventure in the Northwest. When his mother and brother moved to Cedar Rapids, Charlie returned to his job at the express company.

Brownie, meanwhile, began a job with Ludy and Taylor, jewelers and silversmiths, in downtown Cedar Rapids. When Adams Express closed, Charlie moved on to the United States Express Co. Brownie soon joined him until the spirit of adventure struck and he headed out for Colorado.

On Valentine's Day 1899, Mary Hewes married Thomas J. Kirkwood, a tobacco salesman for Myers, Tice & Co. out of Dubuque. Kirkwood's hometown was Waterloo. An announcement of the wedding in The Waterloo Reporter included: 'The news comes as a complete surprise to Mr. Kirkwood's friends in Waterloo, whom he has left entirely in the dark in regard to his intentions. They nonetheless extend their sincere congratulations and best wishes to the happy couple.”

The newlyweds lived at 216 South Sixth St. (across the street from where the KCRG-TV9 parking ramp is now located). Within a year, the family followed Brownie to Colorado.

In 1903, friends in Cedar Rapids read in The Gazette that Stephen Brown Hewes and Miss Katheryn Sleanor Miller had married on Sept. 28 in Denver.

Enos Mills, a naturalist and author, lived in Estes Park, Colo. Charlie got a job in Mills' hotel in 1907 as a jack-of-all-trades. He washed dishes, tended the yard, and cleaned rooms.

After Thomas Kirkwood died in 1908, Mary and her sons began buying land at the foot of Long's Peak, near Estes Park, until they had amassed more than 900 acres. They built a log cabin there before Mary died in 1919.

When the Hewes brothers began opening their home to guests during the summer months, they soon needed to add more buildings to accommodate the increasing numbers of visitors, and the Hewes-Kirkwood Inn was born. By the 1920s, the inn had a central building made of virgin logs with huge fireplaces, a large log house for the dining room and a group of log cabins for guests.

Charlie stayed at the resort year-around caring for the inn and writing poetry and plays. Charlie was tireless in providing for his guests, but was especially liked because he treated everyone - guests and workers - with the same dignity and respect. 'You never know which is the greatest of them all,” he said. 'Sometimes you discover that the best is the man who comes and knocks at the back door.”

Steve, who dropped the name Brownie as an adult, garnered a reputation as an excellent guide. The Gazette's managing editor, Verne Marshall, in 1922 described him as a man who 'knows the Rockies like a music master knows his notes. He calls the flowers ‘God's smiles,' and the zephyrs to him are ‘Mother's kisses.' The history of this section of the state rolls from his tongue as readily as the mountain brooks ripple over the crags. To follow him up and down the trails, through canyon and pass and over precipitous cliffs, to know him as a mountaineer, one finds it hard to believe that nine months of the year he lives back east in Cleveland, where two years ago he gained a reputation as the biggest personal producer his company had anywhere in the United States.”

Charles Edwin Hewes died in 1947. Stephen Brown Hewes died in 1970.

The Hewes-Kirkwood Inn was purchased in 1951 by Beth Miller Harrod, who turned it into the Rocky Ridge Music Center.

It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.