Estes Park historian John Meissner wasn’t looking to start a ruckus. He was looking up information about Metropolitan Opera singer Georgia Graves, who owned a home in Stanley Heights, carved from the estate of F.O. Stanley, the wealthy inventor and the most beloved historical figure in town.

But as he leafed through the pages of her deed in the Larimer County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, Meissner stumbled upon an unpleasant chapter from Colorado’s past:

“None of said buildings or any part thereof shall at any time be used or occupied by, or  sold, leased or given to any person or persons of any race other than the white race, but this restriction shall not prohibit any of the occupants from having employees who are not of the white race,” states the sixth of six rules.

Meissner was appalled, he told me. “This was the 1940s, not antebellum Colorado territory,” he said.

Stanley, or his people, reached the terms of the deal to sell the first 3-acre lot in the 215-acre subdivision to Graves and her husband on Aug. 31, 1940, according to the deed.  Stanley died about five weeks later at 91 years old in Massachusetts.

Meissner has found no record that rule was ever formally removed as a condition to live in Stanley Heights, something that would dictate a court filing. He said that’s no reflection on the values of the people who live there today, and the rule would be totally unenforceable under today’s laws. But that’s not the point. History needs a record of removing it.

Meissner has found no one at all interested in doing that or making the deed part of the town’s record of its most famous resident.

“It’s been difficult,” Meissner said. “I thought I could bring it to the public’s attention, and this would be something they would want to address as part of our history.”

As Estes Park celebrates its 100th year as a town this summer, Stanley is, rightfully, bigger than ever, Meissner said. Without him, the historic tourist town would not be what it is today, a mix of mountain culture and carnival kitsch, Hollywood and history.

Besides the steam car and the other inventions that made him rich, and besides his famous hotel that would later inspire Stephen King’s “The Shining” and stand in as Aspen for “Dumb and Dumber,” Stanley was a philanthropist who was good to his adopted community. The way Estes Park got electricity is because Stanley brought it there to power his hotel. He helped provide a road through Big Thompson Canyon. He provided the town with Stanley Park and its fairgrounds. He was the driver behind the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park.

He and his heirs lived in their times. That doesn’t make them unique. It makes them human, flawed in eyes of history.

Beyond even business documents, many states, cities and counties still have archaic, unenforced Jim Crow provisions on their books, though they are made moot by other laws.

Technically, the Alabama constitution still allows school segregation.

Most Coloradans, myself included, had no idea before last year that our state constitution, penned in 1876, still allows slavery – for those in prison. We more commonly call it inmate labor now.

A bill to ask voters last November to make slavery officially unconstitutional in Colorado passed the legislature unanimously, then died on Election Day. The reason, most likely, was because the wording on the ballot was so confusing many people, myself included, couldn’t tell for sure if we were voting for slavery or against it. Amendment T lost by16,409 votes out of nearly 2.6 million ballots. So slavery remains.

For that matter, it remains in the U.S. Constitution, too, in the 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

State Rep. Joe Salazar, a civil rights lawyer who is running for attorney general, helped fight the losing the cause on taking out slavery, surmised he lack of interest in Estes Park isn’t racism but unfortunate apathy.

“My family goes to Estes Park every year,” he said. “It’s a cool place, and we have never, ever felt disrespected or treated unpleasantly in any way. That kind of thinking doesn’t exist there anymore, I don’t believe.”

But writing a new chapter into history is about what this generation leaves behind, not what the older ones did,  Salazar said.

“We have an obligation to future generations to address these things, so they know who we were and what we stood for,” he said.