At 7:00 this morning the Indian Hills Community Center opens for blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes made from scratch with organic ingredients. Coffee is free, and so is the food, because donations pay for it. Twelve hours later the same building at 5381 Parmalee Gulch Road holds a beginner's astronomy talk.
The building has carried much of Indian Hills' shared calendar for most of a century, and this fall most of that calendar falls on Thursdays. Seeing why starts with who owns the building and who pays its bills.
Twelve Hours at 5381 Parmalee Gulch Road
Here is Thursday, October 22, from start to finish.
7:00 to 11:00 AM. Community Coffee and Pancakes. It runs every Thursday morning except Thanksgiving, and blueberry and chocolate chip are the usual pancakes. Nobody pays at the door. Donations cover the cost.
7:00 PM. "Eyes to the Sky: A Beginners Guide to Astronomy," presented by the Community Applied Science Alliance. CU Denver Professor Randy Tagg hosts. Isabella Adolph, a recent graduate of CU Denver's Physics Program, is the speaker.
The astronomy flyer is posted in the Indian Hills Improvement Association's events folder. It lists the date, time, topic, host, speaker and the Community Center as the venue. It does not list an admission price. If you're deciding whether to bring the whole household, the flyer is the place to check.
The night before, Wednesday, October 21, was set aside for the association's History Night and Dessert Potluck at 6:00 PM. That put the building at the center of three community gatherings in about 25 hours.
A Building With No Tax Line Behind It
The Indian Hills Improvement Association, or IHIA, owns and maintains the Community Center, the Community Sign and the Community Park. It was set up in 1926 to arrange police, fire and health services and to build a sense of community. Today it is a volunteer-run 501(c)(3), and its own page states plainly that it is not an HOA.
The IHIA receives no tax money. Operating costs, maintenance and capital improvements are paid for with membership dues, merchandise sales, building rentals and tax-deductible donations. Dues are $15 for an individual, $25 for a family, $50 for a business and $250 for a lifetime membership.
So every Thursday pancake, every potluck and every rental that keeps the lights on goes through an organization that has to raise its own money. Volunteers run it, and the 2026 board includes Beth Matson, Ron Matson, Angela Oliver-Reed, Mike Patterson, Sandy Patterson, Angelee Rivera and Ray Todd. Those volunteers also handle the yearly Chili and Spaghetti Dinners, roadside and community cleanups, curbside slash collection, the annual barbecue, and the history and holiday potlucks.
For years the Thursday breakfast has been the building's most visible open door. When Indian Hills turned 100 in 2023, Colorado Community Media's centennial story, republished by Rocky Mountain PBS, described the Thursday morning pancake breakfasts as a place where everyone is welcome, "whether oldtimer or newcomer." Angie Oliver-Reed, who moved to Indian Hills in 1991, told that reporter:
"I would never leave. The whole place is magical."
The Schoolhouse That Outgrew Its Students
The building got its community role because the school it was built for ran out of room. It went up in 1923 as a one-room schoolhouse for Jefferson County District 38. An addition in the mid-1940s still couldn't keep up with enrollment, and the school closed in 1949.
The 1923 date lines up with the start of Indian Hills itself. The centennial story recounts that George Olinger began buying land in 1918 for summer cabins. He bought the 160-acre quarter-section at the mouth of Parmalee Gulch and named it Arrowhead Park, the first filing of Indian Hills, in 1923. The gulch takes its name from John D. Parmalee, one of the valley's earliest settlers, who ran the Denver and Turkey Creek Wagon Road Co.
Once the school closed, residents took over the building. A citizens group formed in 1952 and built the west wing. The building was deeded to the IHIA in 1958, listed on the Colorado Register of Historic Sites in 1997, and in 2023 it hosted the Indian Hills Centennial Celebration. The centennial weekend ran August 18 to 20 that year, with a barbecue, an open house at the community center and the sealing of a time capsule.
The west wing you sit in for a Thursday breakfast or an astronomy talk was built by a citizens group 45 years before the state's historic register recognized the building.
The Rest of the Fall, Mostly on Thursdays
The Thursday pattern holds well past this week. Here is what is on the IHIA calendar through the holidays, with the Thursdays in bold:
- Thursday, November 5. Clothing Swap. The IHIA events folder has a flyer for it.
- Thursday, November 12, 6:30 PM. IHIA Board of Directors meeting. The board meets on the second Thursday of each month.
- Thursday, November 26. Thanksgiving, the one Thursday with no pancake breakfast.
- Thursday, December 10, 6:30 PM. The year's last board meeting.
The non-Thursday dates:
- Monday, November 2, and Monday, December 7. Game Days, listed as a series that started October 5.
- Sunday, December 6, 5:00 PM. Annual Holiday Party and Potluck.
For times, costs and what to bring to the Clothing Swap and Game Days, go to the flyers linked from the IHIA events page. The volunteers post updates there first.
Add it up and November has three pancake mornings, since Thanksgiving takes the fourth, plus a clothing swap and a board meeting. Counting today, something besides breakfast happens in the old schoolhouse on four Thursdays between now and mid-December.
Between Breakfast and the Evening Talk
On a Thursday like today there's a long stretch between the last pancake at 11:00 and the 7:00 talk. The closest open space is the West Trailhead of Mount Falcon Park at 21074 Mount Falcon Road in Indian Hills.
The west side gets you to Mount Falcon's best-known history without much climbing. PLANJeffco describes the ruins of John Brisben Walker's castle, the cornerstone of a proposed presidential summer White House, and a wooden tower you can climb on Tower Trail. The Colorado Mountain Club's Mount Falcon route page lists a 2.4-mile Castle, Meadow and Tower Trails route from the West Trailhead, plus a 3.1-mile route it calls "Walter's Dream via Castle Trail."
Conditions change, so check Jefferson County's alert center before you drive up. Its most recent Open Space notices, dated late September 2026, were for Meyer Ranch Park, Deer Creek Canyon Park and Tiers of Zion. None mentioned Mount Falcon.
That makes for a full Indian Hills Thursday with a short drive at each end. Breakfast in a 1923 schoolhouse, the afternoon at Walker's castle ruins and the cornerstone of a summer White House that was only ever proposed, and back to the schoolhouse in the evening for a CU Denver physics graduate's guide to the night sky.
Places like the Community Center are part of what owning a home in Indian Hills means, and their history and care often matter as much to a property's story as its acreage does. If you're weighing a move within the foothills or just want to know where your Parmalee Gulch property stands this fall, Dawn Zalfa will give you a discreet, locally grounded view of its value. Request a Confidential Home Valuation.
