A narrowly enclosed staircase on the side of Simpkin's Store leads to a small, rustic Masonic lodge room. The room is a replica of the Grand Lodge of Colorado in the late 1800s. The lodge hall was added to the general store when it was reconstructed at South Park City sometime between 1957 and 1959.
On June 6, 1959, the lodge room was dedicated to Lawrence N. Greenleaf, a Past Grand Master of Colorado and poet. Greenleaf was an early pioneer of Colorado. He was an entrepreneur, newspaper correspondent, comedian, poet, publisher, and Past Grand Master of Colorado Masons. He has been called "poet laureate of Freemasonry." The lodge room is still used for meetings and is known as "The Lodge Room over Simpkin's Store," as immortalized in Lawrence N. Greenleaf's poem written in 1898.
The restoration work was done by Fred C. VanMeter of Las Animas, a Mason of the Royal Arch Chapter No. 49. The Master's chair is a replica of the one used in the original organization of the Grand Lodge of Colorado in 1861. Enclosed in a glass case is a block of wood from the first Masonic Lodge in Colorado established in Aurora in 1859. On the stairwell, the names Leon H. Snyder, Richard H. Eshe, and Edward L. Snell are cut into rustic pieces of wood as a memorial to the men who helped create South Park City. They were members of the Board of Trustees of the South Park Historical Foundation Inc. Fraternal organizations played an important part in the life of the early pioneers.
