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Steamboat Springs — Denise Roach had mixed emotions Monday as she watched excavators tear through the wood and brick that made up Monson Hall on Colorado Mountain College’s Alpine Campus.

Roach, assistant to the CEO of the campus, will have worked at the college for 30 years this fall. During the 1991-92 school year, her office was in Monson Hall.

“These buildings are really funky, but I loved my office,” she said about the octagon-shaped, flat-roofed Bogue, Monson and Willett halls. “I had a gorgeous view that overlooked the valley, ski mountain and Howelsen Hill. It’s kind of sad to see history being torn down, the original buildings on campus. But I’m so excited about the new building.”

Bogue, Monson and Willett are being razed to accommodate a 60,000-square-foot administrative and classroom building that will use geoexchange heating and cooling technology. Monson was the first to go. The timetable for the demolition of Bogue and Willett hasn’t been determined, but it will take place during the construction of the new building.

Birth of a college

Lucille Bogue, a local teacher, began dreaming in the early 1950s of a four-year liberal arts school in Steamboat that would emphasize international studies. Yampa Valley College’s first class of students began its education Sept. 23, 1962.

In the early days of the college, there was no campus. Students attended class in local churches and on Lincoln Avenue. They lived in hotels and inns unoccupied during the winter before Steamboat Springs became a tourist destination.

George Tolles, who joined the college’s faculty in 1964, taught social sciences classes in the basement of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, which he recalled didn’t have heat. He called the college a “boot-strap operation” where everyone pitched in.

In her book, “Miracle on a Mountain,” Bogue wrote that in the third year in 1964, the college needed a campus.

“The town was swarming with students, running over with them, lively, good-looking youngsters who needed a place to call their own, a gathering place where they could get together and relax and talk and play,” she wrote. “The dorms segregated the sexes, and the cafeteria was not sufficient, or even appropriate. With over a hundred students, a campus was essential.”

The campus on the hill

The college previously had bought 70 acres on Woodchuck Hill (the site of the current campus) after former Steamboat Mayor Claude Leukens offered it to Bogue for a “song” with the condition that it couldn’t be used for anything but a college, she recalled in her book.

Construction of the first campus buildings, Bogue, Monson and Willett halls — the existing Gleason house at the base of the property was the first official building — began in summer 1966. Former Alpine Campus CEO George Bagwell, who still teaches at the college, said in an email that Monson broke ground May 6, 1966.

Monson was named for Ray Monson, the district attorney in the early 1900s at Hahn’s Peak when the mining community was the Routt County seat, former college ski coach Van Card said. Monson was Card’s great-uncle. Card, who coached skiing from 1966 to 1970, said Monson was an early financial contributor to the college and was honored to have a building named for him.

The buildings were completed later that summer. Gary Hertzog, a member of the first class in 1962 and a 1967 graduate of the college, said having a campus gave it a “more cohesive atmosphere.”

“With the school being scattered all over town, once it was all in one place it felt a little more how a school should feel, at least to me,” he said. “I think the teachers were more happy with it. It gave us a chance for more interaction.”

Ushering in a new era

With the construction of the three buildings, Yampa Valley College became Colorado Alpine College. It folded in 1969, and San Diego-based United States International University bought the campus, which it operated until 1975, when the college was closed.

After residents living in the Steamboat Springs and South Routt school districts voted to tax themselves to establish a district in 1981, the college was reborn as part of Colorado Mountain College and became the Alpine Campus, according to Bogue’s book.

Once again, the three campus buildings were home to students. And now, 30 years later, they’re starting to come down in favor of a new facility intended to usher the college into the future.

Bogue, Monson and Willett halls were designed as live-work buildings in which dorms were located on the outside of the buildings surrounding the classrooms in the middle.

Reactions to the buildings’ functionality is mixed.

“We hated them,” said Tolles, who said their design was unsuccessful and compared teaching in the interior classrooms to being in a cave. “They’re no great loss.”

But Tim Widmer, who lived in Monson during the 1994-95 school year and has taught and had an office there as a ski business instructor, said he loved the old buildings.

He called them “pretty quirky and kind of funky.” Widmer said they were a rat maze where people always got lost. But he thought they were cool because they gave the school character.

“I was definitely bummed that they were tearing down Monson just because it was the first place I ever lived in Steamboat Springs,” Widmer said. “I think the new building is going to be great. Obviously it’s going to be a great improvement. … I was definitely saddened by the loss. I think those buildings are fixtures. They may not be the most attractive buildings, but they’re pretty cool.”

The Alpine Campus broke ground on the new building and started preliminary site work in May. CEO Peter Perhac has said expansion of the Crawford Avenue spur, the required secondary access to the campus, was delayed until spring 2012. He said completion of the building is expected in July 2012 with occupation that fall.

To reach Jack Weinstein, call 970-871-4203 or email jweinstein@SteamboatToday.com