Inside Robert Redford's house in Sundance, Utah, as the legendary actor passes away

This feature was originally published in House & Garden in November 1974.

The world-famous star of 'Butch Cassidy', 'The Sting' and 'The Great Gatsby', has put down some roots in a remote area of-need we add--Sundance, which is in Utah. Here, Kit Le Page tells the story of this remarkable experiment in conservation and, also, human relations.

In Sundance, Utah, USA, 6,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, Robert Redford has set up a new community, in which many of the qualities which were so evident in the early pioneering days of America have been revived.

Sundance is only thirteen miles from the nearest town, yet the environmental difference between the two places could scarcely be greater. No cars are allowed beyond the lodge at the entrance to the 4,300. acre property, and the fifteen or so cabins are accessible only by foot-slogging, ski, horse or a rough-riding caterpillar-tractor for really heavy loads. Most of the cabins are without telephones or television. Neither is there a nearby hotel, handy supermarket, hotdog stand or any of the other supposedly high-priority amenities of American urban life.

The away-from-it-all residents of Sundance share the wish to live quiet outdoor lives with respect for nature and close contact with their children. They all acknowledge that coping with rugged conditions, as did the pioneers, gives them a special kind of life with a deeper feeling for nature.

Robert Redford's own cabin rises to a cluster of shingled peaks as sharp as the snow-capped peaks around. ‘Sometimes,' he says, 'I feel so great here that I just go out on the deck and yell. I feel that the answer to our future may be in our past. Those simple pioneer communities worked so well. Now may be the time to put our heels on the ring a little and say hold it. There's a great deal we can absorb that would help us improve the quality of life today if we look back into our history’.

The new pioneers of Sundance have built their simple cabins from materials close to hand; mainly local timber and rock slabs. When it came to structural chores they set to with their own hands. Some have used old abandoned log cabins. Artist, Frank Magelby, friend of the Redfords, did this, trading a painting for an abandoned cabin some way off, which he took apart, log by log, and rebuilt, with additions, for his family of five children. The Magelbys, like the Redfords, found tremendous satisfaction in being personally involved in planning and putting up their house at Sundance and want to live there as much as they possibly can.

Another cabin, this time wood, was planned by Sydney and Clair Pollack, who both worked with Lola Redford's brother, Wayne Van Wagenen, building the cabin from standard cut lengths of timber. All the support beams were lifted into position by hand as there was no way to get a crane up. The main living-area-kitchen floor swings around a great brick fireplace. Mr Pollack designed, built and upholstered a curved seating unit in front, which has storage for ski things, suitcases, games, books and so on in the base.

In the Redfords’ own cabin, huge triangular windows bring sunlight and a picture-book snow scene into the living-room, filled with Indian handcrafts. The cabin is on three levels. The master bedroom is upstairs. Children’s bedroom and playroom (which doubles as a guest room with pull-down beds) is beneath the living-room floor. The western saddle on the banisters was given to Robert Redford by people of nearby Lake St George where part of the Jeremiah Johnson movie was made, although most of the film was made at Sundance. Not only film-making; Redford says ‘I sometimes do the best work here in preparation for a film. It’s a good place to get alone and think things out’.

The living-room of their cabin with its great central fireplace built stone by stone by Redford himself, is filled with Indian rugs, pottery and baskets, for this is Indian country and the Redfords are intimately connected with many of their activities, helping with fundraising and supporting talented crafts people. Intense interest in local affairs, the kind of neighbourliness that benefits all, is very much part of the Sundance life and extends to many things - improving the soil; stocking the local trout stream; protecting wildlife; seeing that for every tree cut down two go in; giving students access to the Sundance Summer Theatre; abating noise.

The community is currently trying to stop a four-lane motorway cutting across the cannon. "You’d think it would be easier to keep an area in its natural form, but it is almost harder than if you went all out and developed it,' says Redford. 'It's incredible that so much politics has to go into preserving the earth.' But everyone in Sundance works hard to this end in order to sustain this special way of life through the years to come. Inevitably, Sundance offers an environment that helps children develop their capabilities and special talents, their senses and emotions, to generate their own action and entertainment on their own initiative.

'They have to do things for themselves,' Redford explains. 'If they want a horse they've got to bridle it, saddle it, groom it, clean it, catch it, let it go, feed it. If they're not prepared to do that, they can't have a horse. If they want to go waterskiing they have to do their share on the boat.'

The Redfords' three children, Shauna, 13, Jamie 11, and the baby Amy Hart, 3, spend at least four months of the year at Sundance. The elder two join survival camps organized for local groups of youngsters in summer, hiking, riding and canoeing in the wilderness. 'Some of it's been a little hard for them to take. They have a split upbringing living in New York the rest of the year, but by the end of the summer they're very hardy. Their sensitivity is developed in the raw environment. ‘I feel this is the life they should see, going out to build a tree house, exercising their imagination, digging a hole and getting gold out of it. Learning how to survive in tough situations.'

The Redford family is currently restoring an 88-acre meadow into pasture land, free of weeds, groundhogs, and foreign wildlife. They grow their own vegetables, catch their own fish. The business of daily living never comes canned, bottled, prepacked, precooked or deep frozen; Lola Redford, who launched Consumer Action Now, an organization devoted to better standards on every level-from clean air and garbage disposal to chemically free food sees to that.

This, then, is Sundance. An experimental retreat, and because of the spirit and effort that has gone into it, a very successful one. The Redfords contend that the project could be duplicated anywhere. 'We stress great emphasis on the family unit, being together, doing things together. All the people around here share our feelings. It's a very satisfying way of life'.