Red Rocks
Who wouldn’t want to share a first kiss in front of a 300-foot red rock formation that looks like the stern of a ship? In The Book of Promises, the protagonist gets to do just that. Shiprock stands 6,450 feet above sea level and is part of an 868-acre park. It is one of two of the largest rocks in a group of monolithic sandstone walls that rose up from a prehistoric ocean floor millions of years ago.
Like Spencer, I grew up loving Red Rocks. I spend many hours relaxing on a flat red rock, the heat from its interior radiating out and into my body. Even now, the mountains are where I find my peace.
I am not alone. Human occupation of this Red Rocks site dates back thousands of years, to when the Paleo-Indians were here in the last Ice Age. Since this time, there have been many caretakers of this beautiful area including the Clovis people, Woodland Indians, and the Ute Mountain Tribe. The park, purchased by Denver in 1928, has a long and varied history. If you are interested in learning more, Red Rocks History is a great place to start.
In the late nineteenth century, bones of dinosaurs that roamed the area in the Cretaceous period were found at Dinosaur Ridge, just northeast of Red Rocks. This fascinating piece of our history also plays a part in my protagonist’s love story.
Dinosaur Ridge
My dad was my hero. I still remember his hands on the big round steering wheel of his ’57 Buick Regal as we weaved around hairpin turns that lead up into the mountains of Colorado. I loved those days. We packed snacks and sodas into a cooler and off we would go on a new adventure. Some of my favorite memories involve visiting Dinosaur Ridge and touching ancient footprints of a triceratops. This amazing site is a paved section of a parkway that is only open to pedestrians and bicyclists, and I never tired of our hikes along the trail. When I was researching for Book of Promises, I was shocked to learn that the round-trip tour takes between one and two hours. It sure didn’t feel like it when I was a kid!
The summer camp that Spencer mentions in Book of Promises started in 1995, so I never had the pleasure of spending a week in wonder and awe of these enormous beasts who lived, played, and died, 100 million years before I lived, but my dad made sure I knew how close we lived to proof of an ancient environment. The area houses somewhere in the area of 330 tracks. Think about the Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus dinosaurs roaming the earth 100 million years ago.
The land wasn’t high in the Rocky Mountains back then. It was actually a beach! These huge animals walked along the coast. The wet sediment dried out, becoming hard like concrete, and then got filled in with more sediment, keeping them well-preserved for millions of years.
You can see a timeline of this area’s dinosaur history and learn more about climate change, evolution, and extinction by visiting the Dinosaur Ridge history and discovery page.
1393 South Washington
Spencer and Molly live on South Washington Street in Denver, Co. The house that stands between them is 1393 South Washington. This is modeled after my childhood home, described as I remember it (minus the cats, as we were a one dog family).
Fun fact: I actually lived at 1391 South Washington, but it was the corner lot, and I needed the house in the book to be between two other houses. To make that happen, I changed the address to 1393. In real life, 1393 was that of one of my childhood friends. In the book, the two houses swapped lots.
My dad loved to garden, so there was always a multitude of flowers and fresh vegetables to be had. I remember the false indigos because, like Spencer, the name made me giggle.
The furniture described in the novel is furniture my father had in our living room fifty years ago. He was quite the mix-match king. I remember tracing the silky green design of his rocking chair with my own little-girl fingers against the rough blue background and pushing off with my tippytoes to rock back and forth. I liked his chair the best, but when he settled in to watch his favorite show, I would happily take my place in the burgundy chair instead.
The pictures are from left to right: Me and my sister outside the house, 1978; My mom holding a grandchild, 1980; My dad with the same grandbaby, 1980, and my dad standing right inside the front door, date unknown, included to show the real blue of the curtains. Growing up, I loved this house and never once thought about the crazy furniture.
During the year I wrote Promises, my wife and I traveled to Colorado to revisit the home of my youth. My sister and I sold it years ago when my father passed away, so I was shocked to find that it still looked eerily the same as it did when I was a child.
Decker Library
The library where Spencer learns more about herself, first with her father and later alone, is real, as well. The Decker Library was my favorite hide-away. In fact, I once needed the comfort so badly that I ran there in the pouring rain immediately after school. We didn’t have easy access to phones in the seventies, and my nine-year-old brain was filled with angst from the bullying of the day, so I forgot to call my mom. An hour later, the police and many other adults were searching for me. It was not my best day.
The Decker Library was originally opened on June 17, 1913. It is the second of the first four Carnegie branches and is named after Sarah Platt Decker, a leader of the woman’s suffrage movement. Her occupations include charity worker, child welfare activist, humanitarian, public speaker, social welfare activist, and volunteer. When she died in 1912, she was the first woman to lie in state at the Colorado State Capitol.
The building itself was designed by architects Marean and Norton in the English cottage style and built of tapestry brick. According to denverlibrary.org, the style is a departure from the normal library structures of the time with its L-shape at the intersection of two streets.
This is a picture I took in 2018. Other than the black railings and a little more wear, it looks exactly as it did when I first pushed through these doors in the early seventies. Back then, the wooden doors seemed large and heavy. Pushing through the doors, I was always met with the almost pungent smell of old wood rafters and books with dates back at least one hundred years. Second to the wonderful smell of safety, was the librarian. She was old and round and jolly, and I loved her as much as I loved anyone back then. Deeper inside, there were and still are early twentieth century murals. One of these, the one of the Pied Piper, is in The Book of Promises. As an adult, the six by eight feet picture of a man followed by a swarm of little children still seemed to dominate the room.
Walking in when I was researching for The Book of Promises, I immediately felt a connection with the timber roof, heavy oak beams, and great fireplace and built-in seats. It was like being reintroduced to an old friend.