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Red Rocks

Legend of the Hatchet Lady

Hatchet Lady Rides

The Legend of the Hatchet Lady: The Ghost Story That Wasn’t

I was about five years old when my brother first told me about the Hatchet Lady. He was twelve years older than I was, and he told the story with all the certainty of someone passing along a secret every kid in Golden seemed to know about Morrison and Red Rocks.

Later that same summer, my parents asked him to babysit me. He wasn’t thrilled. He and his friends planned to sneak into a concert at Red Rocks, then climb the rocks behind the stage afterward. I was expected to tag along.

Standing at the bottom of those towering rocks as dusk settled in, I looked up and decided there was no way I was climbing them. They looked impossible. But if I’m honest, it wasn’t the climb that scared me most.

It was the Hatchet Lady.

They said a woman had been murdered one night at Red Rocks, her head severed by a hatchet. Now her ghost rode through the park on a black horse, cloaked in black and carrying a hatchet, emerging from the Morrison Cemetery as she searched endlessly for her missing head.

Teenagers whispered that if you happened to be sitting in the 13th Row, 13th Seat, especially on Friday the 13th, she was coming for your head to replace her own.

Whether the tale was meant to discourage young couples from parking along the roads at night or simply to frighten children, it worked. The Hatchet Lady became one of Colorado’s enduring ghost stories.

As I grew older, I filed it away as just another campfire tale.

Then, in the fall of 1981, something unexpected happened.

After a vehicle rolled off the sharp curve near the upper entrance to Red Rocks, I was walking a nearby trail when a flash of sunlight caught my eye. Lying in the grass was a MasterCard that had apparently been thrown from the vehicle during the accident. Wanting to return it to its owner, I called the Denver Mountain Parks Police.

Officer Gruninger answered.

After explaining where I had found the card, he asked where I lived so an officer could stop by and pick it up.

When I gave him my address, there was a pause.

“Oh,” he said.

“You live in the Hatchet Lady’s house.”

I honestly thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

Officer Gruninger explained that he and other Parks Police officers knew the woman who lived there—Mrs. Rockefeller (no relation to the famous family). According to him, she admitted that she sometimes rode her black mare at night wearing a cape pulled high around her shoulders and carrying a hatchet. Her purpose, he said, was to frighten people away from the ranch property she watched over. At the time, the ranch remained agricultural land, and she wanted to discourage late-night visitors from wandering onto the property.

As Officer Gruninger told it, the Parks Police had received enough reports over the years that they eventually connected the stories with the woman on horseback. As he jokingly put it, they had “put two and two together and came up with five.”

Whether every telling of the Hatchet Lady legend can be traced to those nighttime rides, I cannot say. Legends have a way of growing beyond their beginnings. Every storyteller adds another detail. Every generation reshapes the tale.

Years later, word spread that I knew another side of the Hatchet Lady story. A member of a local paranormal society even invited me to breakfast, hoping to hear what I knew. I suspect he was expecting a ghost story. Instead, I told him about Officer Gruninger, Mrs. Rockefeller, a black mare, and one unforgettable telephone conversation.

It wasn’t quite the ending he had hoped for.

Personally…

I like the story even better this way.

Ghosts are common.

Real people who inspire legends are rare.

Whether you believe the Hatchet Lady still rides the roads of Red Rocks is entirely up to you.

As for me, I’ve always found the true stories behind our local legends every bit as fascinating as the legends themselves.

Author’s Note

This account is based on my childhood memories, a conversation with Denver Mountain Parks Police Officer Gruninger in 1981, and my later experiences living in the house associated with Mrs. Rockefeller. Like many local legends, the Hatchet Lady story exists in several versions. This article presents a remembered account of how the legend may have grown from real events.

— Timothy Q. Johnson

entomology

Hemiptera

Class: Insecta

Order: Hemiptera

Family: Cicadidae (cicadas)

Who hits those real high ear-piercing notes that’s a true bug performer and rock and roll star? It’s the Cicada’s rhythmically magical riffs ringing in the day’s hot times. Always a local favorite musical performer here as the boys of Dog-Days Summer. When Large groups of males congregate together to call a Female Mate it’s called, “Chorusing Centers.” The males can sing almost as loud as a concert here at the Red Rocks Amphitheater; well, almost- like between 80 and 100 decibels, where a rock concert can easily exceed 120 decibels.

Cicadas are a family of insects in the Order Hemiptera. Hemipterans are considered the “true bugs”, those with sucking mouthparts.

According to the Colorado State University Extension website, there are several species of cicadas that occur in Colorado. These include the dog day cicadas (Megatibicen species), Putnam’s cicada (Platypedia putnami), the cactus dodger (Cacama valvata), and the mountain cicada (Okanagana bella). In North America, on the Eastern seaboard there are the famous periodical cicadas which are among the longest living insects known and date back to the Jurassic Period. Scientists still don’t know why the timing is so accurate to the 17th yr. and 13 yr. exactly, except that they are all prime numbers. There are six species of periodical cicadas: three 17 yr. and three 13 yr. types. In North America these insects are among the largest reaching lengths of 5 cm with the smallest about half that in size.

Along Bear Creek in Morrison, Colorado and Mt. Vernon Creek next to the Red Rocks appear these Dog-day cicadas every annual Spring and Summer.  Except the life cycles of the so-called annual cicada are not really annual. The emergence of the adult nymph can take between 2 and 5 yrs. All other cicadas from all other biographic regions produce annual broods.

Some Trillion Periodical Cicadas swarmed in this rare 2 Century emergence event in the Spring and Summer of 2024. Any two specific broods of different life cycles dual-emerge only every 221 years: including both these specific broods of the 13 yr. and 17 yr. cycle type. This will occur both in the Northeast with the Northern Illinois and Southeast Great Sothern Brood.

Cicadas will fly up and crawl out to the tips of branches to lay eggs in the end twigs of trees and shrubs thus damaging that small area beyond the point of no return causing its demise and then fall to the ground. The egg develops for around a month before hatching into a larva. When the damaged twig falls onto the ground the hatching nymph crawls under the ground and buries itself. Underground the larvae will find a root (mostly perennials) and using its sucking mouth parts (proboscis) attach itself to the root.

The sole food of the insect nymph comes from liquids flowing in the “plumbing” of a Tree Root and plants living in improved organic soil and can go a long way in explaining why the developmental time is so long for the 17-year variety. Beside a few trace minerals there is very little nutrition in a Tree Root and other plants including the rhizoid on root hairs.

Before the last molt to adulthood, the cicada will climb out of the ground opening little holes too, they crawl up into the natural grass or other plants for cover to shed its final protective casing. Newly emerged cicadas climb up trees and molt into their adult stage, now equipped with wings. In the summer these holes and casings seen (below) are readily observable. The adults live about a month or so around here until the cycle starts all over again.

 

Cicada nymph molt.

While you may not have seen one of these magnificent insects you certainly have heard then. The often-deafening sound that is so high pitched that its ringing becomes a familiar ‘Rock’ tune in the “dog days of summer.” Sometimes leading to crescendos of ear-piercing length seemly inescapable at times when produced by hundreds of cicadas, in the dog-day afternoon, of Tibicen pruinosa (see above).

These high-pitched ringing sounds are produced by the males to woe a Mate by what are called tymbals on the underside of the first abdominal segment. These tymbals are composed of rib like bands that contract and snap due to muscle control. A majority of space in the insect (last thoracic segment and first 5 segments of the abdomen) is a large air sac that acts as a resonator for the sound produced from the tymbals.

Tymbal Photo Courtesy of Colorado State University

Not all cicadas produce sound this way. A few species perform stridulating or wing-banging to produce sounds.

Class: Insecta

Order: Hemiptera

Family: Phymatidae (ambush bugs)

Hard to follow the Cicadas act…then, which ‘true’ bug has the sexy bad boy reputation with the big guns to back it up?

These predacious bugs were once classified with the family Reduviidae (assassin bugs) but recently given family status. Both assassin and ambush bugs, as their name suggests, are voracious predators feeding on all types of arthropods. Reduviidae in the genus Triatoma are vectors of disease (sleeping sickness) among humans.

The Phymatidae (shown above) feeds mainly on bees, wasps (Hymenoptera), flies (Diptera) and of course a miller moth or two. They are stouter than the assassin bugs with enlarged fore limbs for grasping onto their prey. These brightly colored insects prefer flowers of similar or equal color value, such as this “Blazing Star” or Gayfeather (Liatris punctata) to hide in camouflage for an ambush position grasping onto prey as it approaches to feed.

Key Traits:

  • Camouflaged body for hiding among flowers that are the same color value and shape, meaning too look at a Black and White photo next to the yellow camouflage on the bug and the violet Gayfeather flower as it appears close to the same gray scale value or the same one as Bees have trichromatic vision; and don’t see red colors but more on the Ultraviolet side and recognizing a flowers shapes and the Ambush Bug is even positioned to look like the point physically of the blossom also positioned to grab at head or abdominal area of the prey instantly when it lands on the flower
  • Raptorial forelegs built for grasping prey
  • Piercing-sucking mouthparts, like all Hemipterans
  • Known to feed on pollinators, sometimes twice their size

This was written in collaboration with Professor Clark Pearson, PhD. Entomology and Biology, Nevada State University

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Entomology

Hymenoptera

Class: Insecta

Order: Hymenoptera

Family: Vespidae (Paper Wasps, Yellow Jackets, Hornets etc:)

These stories of ancient rock are only part of Red Rocks’ ecological richness. The park is also home to vibrant modern-day life, including members of Class Insecta, Order Hymenoptera, and Family Vespidae—commonly known as paper wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets.

The buzzing sound of a wasp’s wings evokes an instinctive reaction—an ancient signal of alertness embedded deep in our biology. Their bright coloration serves as a warning: respect their presence or risk the sting. This evolutionary trait, called aposematism, is a powerful survival mechanism shared by many insects.

At Red Rocks, one might observe a solitary wasp feasting on a One-Sided Penstemon, one of many native wildflowers. These plants serve as both a feeding ground and supply depot for local insect architects. Oblivious to a camera’s flash, these wasps continue their essential work of pollination and nest-building, providing a window into the balance of nature.

Red_Rocks_Wasp_One-Sided_Penstemon

In North America, there are approximately 325 species of Vespidae. Some are solitary, while others are social—with queens, workers, and males dividing labor in intricate colonies. Social wasps build paper nests from chewed plant fibers, often mixing in mud or wood pulp. These nests are typically seasonal in temperate climates, with only the queen surviving winter to start the next generation.

Red_Rocks_Wasp_One-Sided_Penstemon2

Whether through ancient stone or living insect, Red Rocks Park offers an extraordinary view into the interconnectedness of life and land. From billion-year-old metamorphic rock to the hum of a modern wasp’s wing, the park stands as a dynamic classroom for scientists, naturalists, and curious visitors alike.

Entomology

Mantodea

Class: Insecta

Order: Mantodea

Family: Mantidae

Mantodea: Praying Mantids (Family Mantidae)

Among the most iconic and enigmatic insect predators found at Red Rocks is the Garden Praying Mantis. Belonging to Order Mantodea, mantids are instantly recognizable by their elongated bodies and powerful, raptorial front legs—specialized for grasping prey. The first leg segment, the coxa, is unusually long compared to most insects, enhancing their reach and precision.

Mantids are visual hunters, with large, forward-facing compound eyes capable of detecting motion from considerable distances. Remarkably, their triangular heads can rotate nearly 180 degrees, allowing them to “look over their shoulders”—a rare trait in the insect world.

Their mating behavior is infamous: females are known to sometimes consume males during or after copulation—a dramatic evolutionary strategy tied to nutrition and reproductive success. Despite this, mating can persist even after decapitation due to reflexive nerve activity, lasting for hours in some cases.

As autumn nears, female mantids seek shelter among fallen branches and vegetation to lay their eggs. They produce a foam-like ootheca, which hardens into a protective casing reminiscent of Styrofoam. This structure houses multiple developing embryos that will emerge in spring.

There are roughly 1,800 mantid species worldwide, mostly in tropical climates. Fossil evidence dates mantids back to the Cretaceous Period, around 130 million years ago, making them a long-standing player in the insect world.

From billion-year-old metamorphic rock to the predatory gaze of a mantis, the park stands as a dynamic classroom for scientists, naturalists, and curious visitors alike.

Entomology

Lepidoptera

Class: Insecta

Order: Lepidoptera

Family: Lycaenidae (Gossamer-winged Butterflies)

The Lycaenidae family includes some of the smallest and most delicate butterflies in North America, with approximately 160 known species across the continent. These butterflies are renowned for their vivid coloration—ranging from iridescent blues to fiery coppers—and intricate wing patterns that often shimmer in sunlight.

Red_Rocks_Park-Lycaenidae01

A distinguishing feature of Lycaenids is the presence of narrow white bands of scales that ring their antennae and eyes—an identifying trait useful in the field. Despite their delicate appearance, these butterflies are highly adapted to their environments.

This particular specimen is perched atop a Senecio flower, facing into the wind and bracing itself against the afternoon’s turbulent breeze—a typical behavior for many butterflies seeking stability and warmth in exposed, open habitats.

Red_Rocks_Park-Lycaenidae02

Concerts

The Beatles Concert in 1964

From Screams too Young: Remembering the Beatles at Red Rocks

And how concert culture has changed since 1964

What Was Your First Concert?

I attended the Beatles concert at Red Rocks, over half a century ago, with my older cousins and a few friends. My father was one of the lawyers for Coors, and it was the Coors family—then the wealthiest in the state—who pulled the strings to get the Beatles to play Red Rocks. Who else could have made that happen? That’s how a seven-year-old like me ended up at a concert people would’ve done anything to get into.

It should’ve been the most exciting moment of my young life. And in many ways, it was—but not for the reasons you’d think.

To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the concert that much.

It wasn’t the Beatles—I loved (and still do love) the Fab Four. It was outrageous screaming. Thousands upon thousands of girls—and a surprising number of grown women—screaming at the top of their lungs. Behind me. Beside me. In front of me. Every direction. Nonstop.

The sound was so deafening I had to hold my hands over my ears. At seven, I was genuinely afraid I’d lose my hearing. (To be fair, it came back a few days later—though it wasn’t Ringo that left that ringing in my ears.)

Cotton balls would’ve been smarter than bare hands, but who thinks of that at age seven? Nobody thought of earplugs back then—not even at Woodstock. When the Beatles finally stepped on stage, a tidal wave of fans surged forward. You could barely hear a single note over the shrill, chaotic devotion. Then, just like that, they were gone. Twenty minutes, maybe. “Let it Be,” indeed.

That surreal, noisy night set a strange benchmark for every concert I’ve seen since—good, bad, and unforgettable.

I’ve been lucky to catch more than a few unforgettable ones. Pink Floyd at Mile High Stadium! Legendary. And now, you’ll find cover bands trying to recapture that sound. At Red Rocks, I’ve watched classic acts like U2 on that sacred stage.  With newer, otherworldly performances like Heilung—their proving that musical magic still happens under the stars. Today’s European sensations bring more melody than mania, and thankfully, no endless screaming.

But concerts have changed. Now we have Global Dance Festivals, DJs like Destroid, and a generation raised on beats instead of lyrics. I’ll admit—it’s not my scene. Or maybe I’m no longer the target demographic. These are events where the bass never stops and the music never breathes. You either join the movement—or you realize, like me, that you’ve become the guy quietly walking away, feeling a little out of place.

Younger festivalgoers in glow gear, bikini tops, and glitter face paint—bless ‘em. But for someone a few decades in, the line between “cool older fan” and “creepy old guy at the ticket booth” gets blurry fast. That’s usually when I retreat to the comfort of familiar voices. Give me Neil Young on the Rocks, if he’s still wandering out there in the summer haze.

Music evolves. And so, do we.
But Red Rocks? It stays the same. Towering, sacred, and open to all generations. Speaking of being off in the clouds… I was there.