ALLENSPARK • Directly off the highway Colorado 7, amid the winding roads and vast mountain wilderness, sits a chapel in a meadow.
Emerging from a rock formation, the stone church blends with the earth — an architectural feat surrounded by a creek and sea of pines.
Within the chapel are wooden pews, a golden tabernacle and large crucifix. The smell of incense lingers in the sacred space.
Tall stands the iconic Chapel on the Rock, a picturesque stone cathedral that sits at the base of Mount Meeker, bordering Rocky Mountain National Park. Built about 90 years ago, this Colorado landmark is part of the larger Camp St. Malo campus, and has attracted believers and nonbelievers alike.
The grounds of the site, about 150 miles northwest of Colorado Springs, blend history, spirituality and nature to create a unique sense of place.
“This is one of the most beautiful properties that I’ve ever experienced. It has such a diversity from an ecological standpoint, and then it has such a power here, spiritually,” said Nathan Glassman, the executive director of Camp St. Malo and adjacent retreat Annunciation Heights.
Camp St. Malo
Every year, the site sees tens of thousands of visitors — some seeking a spiritual retreat, others there just by curiosity.
“People will not even plan to stop here. They’ll see it off the highway, they’ll be curious, they’ll turn in and they’ll end up spending five, six hours of their vacation just walking around the site, getting a coffee, praying in the chapel,” Glassman said. “Maybe they planned it, maybe they didn’t, but this place touched them and became a part of that vacation.”
The church isn’t just for show — it’s an active parish. The chapel hosts Mass every Friday morning year-round, as well as noon Mass each Sunday throughout the summer season (Memorial Day through Labor Day). This is the first year in a little more than a decade the church has hosted regular Mass on Sundays, Glassman said. The location is also (unsurprisingly) a popular spot for weddings.
Bringing the chapel back into operation has proved successful, said Father Ryan O’Neill, who serves as the chaplain at Camp St. Malo and Annunciation Heights.
“Instead of just turning it into a museum piece that’s attractive and fun for people’s photos, which is fine, I just wanted to have the original meaning it was built for,” O’Neill said. “That was what my motivation was, to just try to make it a piece of living architecture again.”
“I think that there’s a different feeling of the site. I’ve been told by many people that the site started to feel different when that happened, when He was back in the tabernacle,” Glassman added about the return to Sunday Mass.
There are two buildings open on the site: St. Catherine’s Chapel and St. Williams Lodge, which houses Tahosa Coffee House and a small gift shop. There are also a handful of trails throughout the property, and Glassman plans to open more.
The two primary footpaths include a perimeter trail and a Stations of the Cross Trail that opened in the fall of 2021. Along the Stations of the Cross Trail stand artistic bronze markers illustrating each station, ultimately leading to the crucifixion on top a rocky bluff.
“This place is so much about the experience of creation, and so that’s just another way that people can prayerfully move through the site,” Glassman said.
One thing you won’t find on the campus: Wi-Fi. And, that’s intentional.
“It’s a place of presence,” Glassman said. “We so often can hide in our technology and kind of be numb to the present moment, and so being disconnected from technology allows us an opportunity to connect on a deeper level.”
Tahosa Coffee House
Two years ago, Tahosa Coffee House opened in St. Williams Lodge, another stone building across from the chapel at Camp St. Malo. It might be the only coffee shop in Colorado without internet access.
“We wanted to have the coffee house to invite people in to just relax in the beauty of the place and just have a place to rest and also disconnect from the outside world,” said Ellen Seta, manager of Tahosa Coffee.
The shop serves OZO Coffee, a local brew from Boulder that uses ethically and sustainably sourced beans. The shop also bakes pastries, including their popular cinnamon rolls and scones.
But, the cafe was not created to solely sell cups of joe — even though it’s good, Glassman joked.
“It’s just a means to experience the place, and it’s really done that,” Glassman said. “I’ve heard of people who have come into their faith, or have healed old wounds because they have sat here with someone and they were able to get into a deep conversation that they wouldn’t normally.”
For Seta, she enjoys reflecting on a small map in the shop where people can place pins on locations where they’re from. The pins, she said, are scattered all over the map.
“I work in a coffee house where pretty much no one is grumpy — they’re not here because they just need their morning cup before going to work. They’re here because they stumbled upon it, or they’re local, and they really are happy that there’s a spot for them to come in such a beautiful place,” Seta said.
‘On this rock I will build my church’
Before building the iconic chapel, the property operated as a summer camp for boys, Camp St. Malo, which started hosting campers in 1915 and continued into the early 1980s, becoming co-ed during the ’70s.
The property at the time was owned by William McPhee, a parishioner of the Cathedral parish in Denver. During the early years, McPhee allowed the parish to take the kids hiking and camping on the land. While McPhee still owned the land, he allowed the parish to build St. William’s Lodge on the grounds in 1921.
It was during one of those summer camping trips, as the story goes, that campers saw a shooting star or meteorite that appeared to land close by. As the children ventured out to find it, they came upon a rock — the rock that would soon become the foundation of St. Catherine’s Chapel.
“It was decided that a chapel would be built here. You know, ‘Build my church upon a rock.’ It’s very literally taken here,” Glassman said.
The iconic chapel would not be completed until 1935, after the Malo family bought the property and donated it to the archdiocese following a land dispute between the church and McPhee’s nephew. That’s when the summer program became Camp St. Malo, a nod to the philanthropic family and in honor of the saint, a Welsh missionary who lived between 500-600 A.D.
St. Catherine’s Chapel was designed by prominent Denver architect Jacque Benedict, built with native stone in Romanesque Revival style. The chapel is named in honor of the patron saint of Malo’s mother, St. Catherine of Siena, who lived in the 1300s and was known for her influential writings, church reform work and mystical experiences in Italy.
The next structure to be built on the property was St. John’s Lodge, which would be demolished in the 1980s after the camp closed. In 1987, the property reopened as St. Malo Religious Retreat and Conference Center, which would be destroyed by a fire decades later.
Perhaps the most monumental moment for the archdiocese at the site was when Pope John Paul II visited and blessed the chapel while in Colorado for World Youth Day in 1993. The pope also hiked several trails on the campus, which were named after him.
“With the blessing of John Paul the II, that just took it to the next level of this property,” Glassman said, sitting across from the walking stick John Paul II used during his hikes, now enclosed in a glass case.
In 1999, Boulder County designated the chapel a historic site. In 2018, after some renovations to the two remaining buildings, the church acquired a property 2 miles north to be used for youth and family camps, called Annunciation Heights.
Tragedy at Camp St. Malo
Despite its serene appearance, the campus has seen its fair share of tragedies.
In August 1958, a 10-year-old boy named Bobby Bizup went missing while attending Camp St. Malo. Search efforts commenced for Bizup, who was deaf. Authorities at the time believed he might have gotten lost in the woods.
A year later, the young boy’s remains were discovered high on the east face of Mount Meeker, within the boundaries of Rocky Mountain National Park. While the death was originally classified as an accident, the National Park Service reopened the cold case in 2020, labeling the death as “suspicious.”
“This tragic incident occurred nearly 70 years ago, and while the Archdiocese of Denver would love for this mystery to be solved, we have not been presented with any concrete evidence of foul play. Therefore, and with respect to all those involved, the archdiocese is not able to respond to unfounded speculation and theories about what happened to Bobby Bizup in August of 1958,” the Denver Archdiocese wrote in a statement.
A 2019 report published by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office also recorded several instances of clergy sexual abuse on the grounds of Camp St. Malo in the 1950s and 1960s.
According to the report, the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie and the Rev. Harold Robert White perpetrated the abuse on overnight camping trips at the summer retreat.
Natural disasters have also struck the campus, just narrowly avoiding the Chapel of the Rock.
The campus’ 60,000-square-foot conference center burned to the ground from a fire in 2011. While located behind the chapel, the church remained unscathed.
Then, only two years later, torrential rains caused flooding and a 5-mile-long landslide that began atop Mount Meeker. While the flooding and mudslides caused significant damage to the property — including washing away the Pope St. John Paul II trail — the chapel was spared once again.
After the destruction from the flood, the archdiocese decided not to rebuild the conference center, instead opting to remodel St. William’s Lodge and St. Catherine’s Chapel. The property closed for 18 months.
“We’ve kind of been in a transition, but we’re back full force now, and we’re just waiting to see what the next chapter is here,” Glassman said.
Land stewardship
At Camp St. Malo, spirituality is tied to the experience of nature.
“God has given the urge to mankind to be stewards of (the Earth), not to take advantage of it, not to strip it of its resources, abuse it or misuse it,” O’Neill said. “One thing that we’re very conscious of up here is the gift of creation itself.”
Even natural disasters are part of creation, O’Neill said, and being a good steward means taking care of the land to minimize harm.
The church works with the Boulder Valley and Longmont Conservation District on their preservation projects, which include reducing the risk of wildfires, improving the health of trees, and protecting and enhancing wildlife habitat and water quality. Their restoration work also includes promoting the regeneration of meadows.
“When you start to understand how creation works together, you can also start to reflect on the genius behind it: Who made this forest? Who made these trees? Who made everything to work together the way it does?” O’Neill said.
Educating visitors is also at the forefront of the site’s mission, Glassman said.
“We’ll have signs out there hopefully in the fall that talk about the ecology, talk about stewardship,” Glassman said. “I think that’s something that people really love to hear about, is the Catholic stewardship of this property, how much we really do try to preserve and protect creation here and help it to be enhanced.”
As far as plans, Glassman hopes to start giving tours on the property that inform visitors on the site’s history and Catholic environmental stewardship. Glassman also plans to start hosting more seasonal events, including an Advent market.
“Last year was our very first Advent market, and I think we’ll just continue to find ways to bring people into the experience of this place,” Glassman said. “We just want people to be able to experience the goodness of this place, the beauty of this place. So we’re just trying to get creative on how to do that.”
Something that everyone seemed to agree on: There’s something special about this place.
“There are so many people that call Camp St. Malo home, and it’s played such a role in their lives, unlike any property I’ve ever heard of it,” Glassman said. “It does really create opportunities for a transformative encounter that people take with them for the rest of their life.”
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