Say Goodbye to the Morgul-Bismark: Colorado Growth Endangers Famous Cycling Course
Say goodbye to the Morgul-Bismark.
The Mogul what? Sink the Bismarck?
No, we’re not discussing ski slopes or World War II naval battles. We’re talking about the demise of Colorado’s famous Morgul-Bismark racecourse, once an all-important stage of the Red Zinger and Coors Classic bicycle races of the 1970s and 80s and site of the 1987 national championships.
Greg LeMond, America’s three-time Tour de France champion, raced here several times, winning the Coors in 1981 and 1985. Five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault, Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter, and Colorado’s Davis Phinney and Ron Kiefel — to drop just a few well-known cycling names — all labored up the imposing “Hump” and “Wall” of the Morgul-Bismark as well.
Cyclists and cycling fans across the country are familiar with the Morgul-Bismark, though they might not at first realize it. In the 1985 movie American Flyers, Kevin Costner and David Grant roared around the rolling 13-mile Morgul-Bismark loop in a fictitious event called the “Hell of the West.” The difficult climbs and barren landscape seen in the film show the Morgul-Bismark just as it existed for many years. Cyclists could easily access this isolated piece of real estate in order to train or simply ride in the wheel marks of their cycling heroes.
Now, however, this once unspoiled battleground of cycling champions — this historic landmark that nearly played host to the 1986 world championship road race — is in imminent danger of disappearing beneath Colorado’s population and development boom of the 1990s.
Nestled comfortably in the shadow of the Rockies just off the Boulder Turnpike, Superior, the small town in which the Hump and Wall portions of the Morgul-Bismark are located, has fallen prey to the wild growth that, as one Denver newspaper columnist put it, has made travel to Boulder along U.S. 36 a trip through a “lunar landscape of scraped, naked hills” awaiting development (O’Brien).
Early signs of change were a corporate office park and a hospital built near Superior in the late-1980s. But not until the early-90s did development begin to touch the Morgul-Bismark. An upscale housing project at the top of the Hump was the first of several residential developments to appear. These developments quickly grew together, covering vast amounts of open space.
Since then, sprawling apartment complexes, more residential development, high-rise office buildings, and a major highway interchange have further disfigured this once austere panorama.
More is yet to come. A 27-hole public golf course and hotel with conference center are close to completion, while a posh regional shopping mall is planned for an area nearby.
And though Superior proper at the base of the Hump presently boasts only a couple of gas station-convenience stores and a new city hall, several of the town’s longest dwelling residents were recently removed from their property in order to make way for extensive retail development. The town of Louisville, a stone’s throw away from Superior just across the Turnpike, has, however, quickly succumbed to a steady influx of retail establishments. Now home to a grocery store, two hardware superstores, three hotels, a 12-theater cinema, numerous fast-food restaurants, several strip malls, and a number of apartment building complexes, Louisville continues to also attract large companies and corporations to its own burgeoning business center.
Not surprisingly, all of this progress has brought with it the cyclist’s worst nightmare — a non-stop flow of automobiles.
For years, cars and cyclists existed peacefully side by side on the two-lane roads that connect Superior, Louisville, Boulder, and outlying rural areas. But growth has now placed more automobiles on the roads and forged a body of drivers who view cyclists as a nuisance. Heavy traffic and driver hostility are now commonplace in surroundings virtually bare just seven years ago.
“The main thing that’s happened in Colorado is we’ve had tremendous growth in population without commensurate changes in the roadways,” says Boulder resident Carpenter, the 1981 and 1982 Coors champion. “From a road biker’s standpoint, it’s a lot more dangerous.
“It used to be you could ride almost anywhere in [Boulder] county between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon and be very safe. People were kind of into what you were doing. That’s not the case anymore.”
Can the Morgul-Bismark and a growing Superior exist together?
While organized bicycle racing at the Morgul-Bismark appears to be yet another tradition lost to progress, the town of Superior has made an effort to keep its stretch of the loop cycling-friendly.
The wide shoulders on the resculpted Hump section of the Morgul-Bismark, according to Superior Assistant Town Manager Jason Stilwell, were put in for cyclists. The town plans to continue to install wide shoulders and upgrade roads in ways that will benefit bicycle riders as development moves south. “Beyond that,” says Stilwell, “we haven’t done anything to stifle or augment cycling in Superior.”
As for the immediate future, Superior’s growth plans involve, almost exclusively, the construction of new homes. The town, to its credit, has reduced initial planned home density figures by more than half, from 13,000 to 5,000 units; but residential development pushing southward is still expected to one day reach the legendary Wall, which, much to the chagrin of cyclists, is scheduled to suffer major reconstruction (Stilwell).
One welcome undertaking, however, is Boulder County’s acquisition of land near the Morgul-Bismark. Since 1989, the county has been buying land from Superior, and now most of the native soil inside the loop is designated open space (Stilwell).
What does the future hold for the Morgul-Bismark?
That is a question impossible to answer, because even with Superior’s attempts to make room for cyclists, existing development has significantly impacted the Morgul-Bismark. Present growth and increased automobile traffic have prompted race organizers to abandon the Morgul-Bismark after nearly two decades of bicycle racing in Superior; the same factors now keep many cyclists on the less-traveled portions of the loop and away from the Hump and Wall altogether.
“Things have changed so much,” said 1988 Coors winner Phinney to a Boulder newspaper. “A million more people live [in Colorado], and the Morgul-Bismark is unrideable” (qtd. in Harper).
Kiefel, one of the few riders to participate in all nine Coors Classics, knows the Morgul-Bismark as well as anyone. The Giro d’Italia stage winner and Tour de France veteran says, “The Morgul was the kind of course . . . where you didn’t necessarily have to be a hill climber to be great. You could be a very strong one-day rider and do real well there. It was unique in the sense that it included a lot of elements. You had the hills, you had the climbs, you had the potential for wind, the heat element, and the cold element. It was a constantly changing course.
“It’s sad to see growth like that come in and encroach on an area, change the dynamics of an area. It happens in the United States, it happens in Europe. Courses change when different roads come in. But you know, the Morgul-Bismark has such a strong history here as far as bike racing is concerned.
“When LeMond won the Coors Classic in 1981,” Kiefel recalls, “the Russians attacked going over the Hump — there was a train of four of them — and LeMond bridged across. He was the last guy to make it. I don’t know if [anyone remembers] the sprint between LeMond and [Yuri] Barinov. They took off and — it was an incredible finish at the top of the Wall.
We were trying to get the world championships there in 1986. Unfortunately, the politics of the situation didn’t allow it. I know Mike Aisner was really pushing for it, and I think it would have been a pretty incredible world championship race if they had held it at the Morgul-Bismark.”
Development took the “character away from what was known as the Hump,” adds Carpenter. “I haven’t been up there in about a year, but I know the backside of the Hump leading up to the Wall, the roadway has deteriorated. There’s a lot of truck traffic . . . . The Morgul’s not on my recommended list [of places to ride], except that it does have a lot of historical significance to anyone who follows cycling.”
While nothing stays the same forever, one thing is certain: If development in and around Superior continues at its present pace, the Morgul-Bismark of Coors Classic and movie fame will be unrecognizable in just a few short years. What it once was, along with its rich and colorful past, will be buried and forgotten beneath Colorado’s newfound prosperity. Surviving only as a memory, the Morgul-Bismark will live on in the hearts and minds of racers, cyclists, and fans — those who knew it best and appreciated it the most.
Above piece written in 1997 for Tail Winds magazine.
