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Mar 18, 2023

7th generation Basalt student does his family proud

Basalt High School senior Connor Hoffman is leaving a legacy at the school. He

Basalt High School senior Connor Hoffman is leaving a legacy at the school. He and his dad installed the infrastructure for an EV charging station.

As a seventh generation Roaring Fork Valley resident, Connor Hoffman has some big shoes to fill.

His ancestors’ list of accomplishments since the mid-1870s include establishing sawmills in Aspen, owning and operating a store at Catherine, ranching in Brush Creek Valley, homesteading in Missouri Heights and helping settle the Crystal River Valley.

Connor, a senior graduating from Basalt High School this week, wants to keep the lineage in the valley going, assuming he can meld it with his interest in pursuing a career in high-tech industries.

Hoffman is graduating as the valedictorian of his class. He will attend Stanford University this fall, with his initial intent focused on electrical engineering.

Connor Hoffman receives a Settler's Scholarship earlier this spring from Janice Duroux, president of the Basalt Regional Heritage Society.

He earned a Settler's Scholarship from the Basalt Regional Heritage Society this spring. The scholarship is awarded to graduates who are at least the fourth generation of their family in the Basalt region. The recipients write an essay on their family tree, which are archived in the historical society's museum.

Hoffman said he gleaned information about his ancestors from exhaustive research his grandmother and aunt undertook as a project during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's pretty cool," he said of his paternal family roots. "Honestly, I didn't know a lot about my family history until somewhat recently. I’ve known I had many generations here for quite some time. I didn't realize the extent of it until the actual (scholarship awards) ceremony."

Connor's great, great, great, great grandfather Robert Francis Roberts was born in Wisconsin in 1856 and came to Colorado in 1874. He hauled freight from Denver, eventually worked in Leadville and then came to Aspen via Independence Pass. Roberts founded the Aspen Lumber Co. in 1884 and started several sawmills, according to the family's research. He also owned a ranch up Brush Creek in what is now Snowmass Village.

Roberts married Anna Sanborn, whose parents came to Colorado in 1879 and settled in Leadville's California Gulch. They later lived in several places in and around Aspen. They homesteaded on 160 acres in Missouri Heights.

That's about as local as it gets. The more he has learned about his family tree, the more he appreciates that there are several sites in the region that are tied to his family.

"My dad keeps telling me the story about how (Roberts) had to take apart a wagon to get over the pass and into the valley," Hoffman said. "That's a long time ago. You can say 149 years but it's actually hard to comprehend that until you say, ‘This is what they were doing back then.’"

Hoffman has the smarts and skills that would make his ancestors proud. He has been a tinkerer for as long as he can remember.

"When I was a kindergartener I wanted to be an inventer when I grew up and now it's evolving to engineering," he said. "I’m super passionate about electric vehicles. My dad and I converted a snowmobile from gas to electric."

Connor's parents are Greg and Linda Hoffman. Greg, also a graduate of Basalt High School, oversees chairlift and vehicle maintenance at Snowmass Ski Area. His mechanical abilities rubbed off on Connor.

When Connor was 13, his dad enlisted his help to find a way to monitor speeds of individual cars on the Alpine Coaster at Snowmass.

"My dad kind of came to me and said, ‘We’ve got this problem where people are going too quickly and we can't track their speed when we need to.’ So I was able to design a system using an electric eye, what you have on your garage door to detect if there is something in the way. It will measure how long that beam is broken, and based on the length of the car and how much time it was broken, it can determine how fast it was going."

If the car was going too fast, the attendant is notified.

"I had an absolute blast designing the system," Hoffman said. "It was so much fun to do. It's actually still in use today, which is pretty cool."

Greg and Connor also teamed to convert a gas-powered snowmobile into an electric sled a few years back. It's still in use on the hill at Snowmass.

His inventing skills also will leave a legacy at Basalt High School. He secured grants from the state of Colorado and Aspen CORE for an EV charging station at the high school two years ago and got a contractor lined up for the installation last summer. That fell through. Greg told him they could do it themselves, so during spring break this year they dug a trench, installed conduit, poured the concrete and put in the pedestal. They are waiting for a final inspection and then Holy Cross Energy will be able to turn on the juice. There will be one station with two ports. The infrastructure is there to add stations as demand warrants.

Several faculty members as well as some parents and students drive EVs to school that could use the chargers. It's also accessible for EV drivers using the nearby Rio Grande Trail.

"The demand is most certainly there for the stations," Hoffman said.

Continuing his education at Stanford seems like a natural next step.

"It's a school I’ve been dreaming about since the age 5," he said. "I watched a documentary called, ‘The Great Robot Race.’ It was about a competition between all these different organizations and the goal was to create this autonomous car that could navigate a 150-mile stretch of desert road. Stanford won. It was pretty clear to me that's where I wanted to go to school."

He applied for electrical engineering. He's interested in designing power systems for electric vehicles. However, he will keep his options open, which Stanford accommodates.

"I think it's going to be electrical engineering but artificial intelligence is blowing up right now and I’d love to get into that so maybe some computer science," he said.

He's already earned his associates degree in economics from Colorado Mountain College. He will consider a double major in economics.

Working in green technology projects reinforced that he wants to be an engineer and help solve climate challenges.

"Growing up here," Hoffman said, "the environment has been a very big part of my life and all so it's pretty cool to continue that. I have an appreciation of the environment and want everybody to also appreciate it. I want it to stay around, so I want to do what I can in my power to make an impact on that."

There is a lot of talk about the technological advances that will help with climate issues by 2050. Hoffman believes that's too long to wait.

"If that's when you’re making the difference then you might as well not make a difference at all," he said.

He enjoyed his years in Basalt and in the public school system, but he is eager to move on to a diverse campus culture outside of Colorado. His goal is to return to the valley after college, whether working here remotely or in a branch of a start-up. The longevity of his family also is on his mind.

"I’d like to get away for now when I go off to college and stuff, but I’d also like to come back and continue that (presence in the valley)," he said. "I think it would be cool to keep it going eight, nine generations."

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