ELEANOR J. BLISS PAPERS

Eleanor Bliss was born June 25th, 1900 on Long Island, New York. She attended Jamaica Normal School and the Hathaway-Brown School in Cleveland, Ohio, where she developed an interest in creative writing and dance. In 1919, Bliss returned east to attend Vassar College and Bradford Academy of Boston until deciding to finish her studies in the English Department of Smith College. In the fall of 1925, Bliss traveled to Cleveland to assist her aunt, Eleanor Flinn, who ran a dancing school. Her first visit to Colorado was to teach at the Perry-Mansfield Dance Camp in Steamboat Springs. At the camp, she met her lifelong friend Marjorie Perry, whose influence later brought Bliss to Colorado. Bliss visited the camp for several years until deciding to return to New York in 1930, and take over her father’s ailing real estate and insurance business. After many trips abroad and throughout the United States, she began a real estate and insurance business that she maintained in New York until her parents’ death in 1948.

Bliss moved to Colorado in March of 1948. She opened a real estate business located in Denver and began a hobby of raising, training, and showing Appaloosa horses at the ranch house she and Marjorie Perry shared in Littleton. After a successful start in the real estate market, Bliss could afford to spend summers in Steamboat Springs and winters working in Denver. She relocated to Steamboat Springs in 1969 and became actively involved in the local Arts community. In 1971, Bliss founded the Steamboat Springs Council of the Arts and Humanities. Five years later she won the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for her work in that organization. Her impact as a promoter of Arts in the Steamboat Springs community won her a dedicated park bench in the town and the date of June 5th, beginning in 1988, as Eleanor Bliss Day. She died on October 4th, 1994 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.