ESTES PARK — Richard Sipe was never supposed to be the last person left to oversee the Cascade Cottages, which sit on the largest remaining privately owned slice of land in Rocky Mountain National Park.

He’d visited briefly during the summer of 1987, then returned on vacation each of the following two years.

One night during his third stay, he walked into the Cascade office and struck up a conversation with Grace Davis, the woman behind the front desk, whose parents, L.V. and Hazel Davis, had purchased the land in 1941 and managed the cottages there.

“I said I was from Wichita. She was, too,” says Sipe, now 86. “She was single, and I was, too, because my wife had passed away.”

That conversation took place on a summer Thursday. On Saturday, they had dinner in Estes Park. Back in Wichita, they started dating, and on March 26, 1990, they were married.

For two dozen summers thereafter, the couple lived at Cascade — a 40-acre plot one mile east of the park’s Fall River Entrance Station — and maintained its 14 cabins.

Grace died last year, and now Sipe is the property’s last remaining link to the family that bought the Cascade property.

When L.V. and Hazel Davis made the purchase, they also struck a handshake deal with Rocky Mountain: When the family could no longer care for the land, they’d sell it to the park.

That day arrived this week at long last, with the Rocky Mountain Conservancy announcing plans to acquire the Cascade acreage for $3.6 million.

Vaughn Baker, park superintendent, said by phone Friday that if the sale goes through, the park won’t touch the 27 acres of wilderness at the north end of the plot but would be open to knocking down some or all of the cabins. It is possible the park would rededicate some of the existing structures on the 15-acre portion, possibly for a youth education center. The money from the sale would be spread among the Davis family.

In Sipe’s mind, whatever happens, happens.

“The park’s purpose is to preserve the natural state,” Sipe says from the very same couch he sat in the day he met Grace. “Her mother and father knew that. They knew things would go back to the original status someday.”

Today, Sipe mans the front desk where his wife once sat, and her father before that. This is the last weekend of the season for the Cascade Cottages, and next summer will be its last hurrah.

“It’s emotional,” Sipe says, “but I feel honored that I happened to be here.”

He takes a stroll through the cabin area, ignoring trails and taking bee-lines from place to place, even if that means navigating a rock scree or stepping over thrush.

Every inch of the property seems to tell a story.

Sipe points to Cabin 14, where a plaque reading “Jean-Pierre Huguet” has been nailed in by the front door. Huguet, he says, was a French exchange student who helped build the cabin in 1955.

Like a mountain goat, Sipe goes straight uphill, stepping from rock to rock, careful not to kick a chipmunk.

He’s used to living among wildlife up here.

“The turkeys are profuse,” he says. “And, unbeknownst to our guests, there are mountain lions around here. They see us, and we don’t see them.”

One lion, he claims, spent a few weeks sleeping undetected beneath Cabin 2.

“You see that big rock?” Sipe says, interrupting himself to point out a boulder in the middle of the cabin area, affectionately and aptly dubbed “The Big Rock” years ago.

“At one time, there was a tree growing out of one of the cracks in the rock, but all the kids would climb on it, and the tree isn’t there anymore.”

And, for the most part, neither are the kids. Cascade has its regulars, but they’re aging, and Sipe believes it’s because he and Grace never modernized the place with cell service or television.

He peeks into Cabin 2 — the former mountain lion shelter, he reiterates — where Glenda Lindteign, 62, is packing up after an 11th summer with her husband at Cascade. She says she’s trying hard not to think past next year, when the sale should be finalized.

“It’s an era — generation after generation, parents and children, children coming in with their kids,” she says, tossing clean sheets onto the cabin’s twin bed. “But it does run its course, and it’s hard to carry on to meet up with the standards of some of the younger generations.

“The people that have come here will find other places to go. But it’s sad to say goodbye.”

Like the cabins, the office where Sipe and Grace met also looks like it hasn’t changed much over the years. The walls are adorned with portraits of owls, moose, wildflowers and bighorn sheep. The bookshelf is stuffed with paperbacks, none published this century.

On a small side table there’s a photo of Grace, and an unlit candle.

“She’s here,” he says. “She’s here in spirit. Everything I know about Cascade — how to run it, some of the history — I learned from her.”

He thinks ahead to what he’ll be doing this time next year, as Cascade wraps up its final season.

“After this, they might put a plaque up for us,” he jokes. “Maybe in The Big Rock.”

Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, burnessa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/alex_burness