When Barbara and her husband the late Richard Carlsberg bought Brooks Lake lodge in 1987, its entryway and lobby were still propped up on jacks from an abandoned 1983-84 restoration.
To get to the lodge in the first place, the couple had to first break their own trail through fresh powder on a 5-mile road that has a 1,000-foot increase in elevation.
The road typically gets 5 to 6 feet of snowpack in a given winter season, which made their October trip to see the lodge a rough go, Barbara told Cowboy State Daily, but it’s one that she still remembers as if it were yesterday, even though she no longer owns the lodge.
She sold it in 2000 to Max Chapman, who’s owned it for the last 24 years as it’s continued to grow a reputation as a truly one-of-a-kind Wyoming experience.
“Dr. Hoppe, the Minnesota dentist we purchased the lodge from, must have just run out of money,” Barbara said. “That’s the only thing we could figure out.”
When Barbara and her husband toured it, the lodge itself was just a shell of what it had once been. The only thing Hoppe had completed was the bar and a restroom connecting to the bar.
The lodge was just one step away from complete ruin, Carlsberg said, with its entry way floating on jacks and other structural issues. Roofs on some of the cabins, meanwhile, had already given way to time and the elements.
The Carlsberg’s knew next to nothing about running a lodge of this nature.
Despite all those challenges, the couple bought the lodge anyway.
They saw beyond the run-down and neglected property. Because along with that was a shining gemstone of a lake in the backyard set in a ring of mountains — the same lake that had once caught the eye of its namesake, Bryant B. Brooks, Wyoming’s seventh governor.
It was love at first sight, Barbara told Cowboy State Daily.
“We were smitten,” she said. “Absolutely.”
After The Honeymoon, The Real Work Begins
The lodge took an entire year of sweat equity — and millions of dollars — to get to anything like a functional state so it could open again.
“We had to put rooms and bathrooms in — everything,” she said. “It had been gutted.”
The couple did find some serviceable lodgepole pine furniture, built by hand once upon a time, but they had to buy all new beds for the cabins, as well as many other furnishings.
Barbara found a Wyoming artisan to craft new light fixtures for the lodge using discarded pipes.
“We had to build up staff housing, too,” she said. “Because that was kind of nonexistent. So, we probably ended up with as much staff as we had guests that first season.”
They opened for winter 1988, Carlsberg recalled, and then faced a steep learning curve after that.
It took about five years for the lodge to break even, but the couple never stopped working to return the lodge to its former glory. They just kept adding something to it every year, restoring one or another lost piece of history.
Eventually, they even found one of the Yellowstone busses that used to take guests from Lander to Brooks Lake Lodge and then on to Yellowstone National Park, Carlsberg said.
“That took us three years to restore,” she said. “And it was a labor of love, too.”
Putting up the Brooks Lake Lodge sign the opening of the 1988 season. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg) 
Moving the trademark Brooks Lake Lodge elk into the Great Room in 1988. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg) 
The Great Room elk got a first-class ride to Brooks Lake Lodge. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg) 
A dedication ceremony at Brooks Lake Lodge around 1989 or 1990. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg) 
There's a reason Brooks Lake Lodge is famous for world-class snowmobiling — its prolific winter snow. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg) 
Barbara Carlsberg with her Labrador on a snowmobile. (Courtesy Barbara Carlsberg)
Celebrating Wyoming
One of the things that surprised the Carlsbergs once they got Brooks Lake Lodge open is just how much the lodge seems to mean to the rest of Wyoming.
“People were so grateful that we had brought the lodge back into existence,” Barbara said. “We didn’t find out until after we bought it that it was much-loved by Wyoming people.”
In fact, when the couple held a grand reopening ceremony, they planned a big reception not knowing at all what to expect. It attracted dignitaries from across the Cowboy State, including then-Gov. Mike Sullivan.
“He came up and did some speeches and it was a big party,” Barbara recalled.
Barbara added that she also believes, as was expressed in a previous Cowboy State Daily article about the lodge’s history, that the lodge is not something that people buy because they want to make a lot of money.
It’s just a special piece of history, and its owners are stewards of that. They restored that stewardship, which has been carried on and expanded under Chapman’s watch.
“You want it to break even, you want it to pay for itself,” she said. “And we realized at the time that we probably could get it to that, but as far as making any large profits out of it, we knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“The benefit of it is just owning that gorgeous place and having a staff,” she added. “I do miss the staff — and all the snowmobiling.”
Figuring It All Out
Just after the Carlsbergs bought Brooks Lake Lodge in summer 1988, a third of Yellowstone National Park was wiped out by a devastating wildfire.
“That’s how I can remember all these dates so well,” she said.
Richard was one of the guides who led people on trails in the Shoshone National Forest and Bridger Teton Forest that are accessible from Brooks Lake Lodge year-round.
“He really challenged people on those rides,” she said. “People got to do things they never thought they could ever do. And it was just a wonderful time in our lives.”
Barbara, meanwhile, focused on running the lodge. One of the decisions she made was to open the lodge to the public for lunches — an idea she drew from the couple’s many trips to Europe over the years.
“My husband loved to hunt, and he’d been hunting in Spain,” Barbara recalled. “And, believe it or not, we stayed with our hosts in their home. So we just thought, you know, what a lovely way to entertain, and so that is how we entertained at the lodge.”
The public lunch became something of a command appearance for the snowmobiling public, with as many as 150 people coming to it on any given day.
“We couldn’t believe how popular it was,” Barbara said.
During Wyoming's legendary winters, Brooks Lake Lodge is a natural playground. But the only way to get there is in a snowcat or on a snowmobile. (Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa) 
Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa (Courtesy Photo) 
Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa (Courtesy Photo) 
Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa (Courtesy Photo) 
Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa (Courtesy Photo) 
Courtesy Brooks Lake Lodge and Spa (Courtesy Photo) 
The bar is a popular gathering spot at Brooks Lake Lodge. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The governor's tea room brings guests together for a social every day. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The lodge has many cozy nooks to sit and look outside at the view. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Mortimer the Moose's view of a busy dining hall on most any day during snowmobiling season at Brooks Lake Lodge. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Even The KGB Loved It
Wranglers and other workers came from all over the world to work at Brooks Lake Lodge, Barbara recalled, and so did guests.
The most unusual guest Barbara recalled was the time the head of the former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s KGB came to Brooks Lake Lodge.
“We had some attorneys from the Los Angeles area, which was where we were from, who were trying to work with the Russians on the rule of law,” Barbara said. “And they had become friends with this man, and I kept thinking, the head of the KGB!? But guess what, he ended up at Brooks Lake Lodge.”
That was a week when all sorts of interesting people showed up wanting rooms at the same time, Barbara said — some of whom she concluded must have been bodyguards for the KGB director.
Regardless of how strange it all seemed at the time, hospitality at Brooks Lake Lodge is non-negotiable, then as now.
“We gave him a cowboy hat and we had campfires and did singalongs with him,” Barbara said. “You know, we gave him the whole Western story and he loved it.”
Barbara has many other precious memories of the lodge from the dozen years the couple owned it, including the lodge hosting her own daughter’s wedding.
“I probably never would have sold it if my husband hadn’t died,” she said. “But I didn’t want that to just be my whole life, and it would have had to have been.”
Today, Barbara lives on a ranch in nearby Moran, but she remains smitten by the beauty of Brooks Lake Lodge, and she’ll never forget the memories made with her husband in a place ringed by mountains, set with a beautiful gemstone of a lake in the backyard.
Renee Jean can be reached at: Renee@CowboyStateDaily.com
