The History of The Colony
The Colony is a beautiful and serene mountain community, where wildlife roams, and family and friends gather to create memories. It is also rich with history that dates back more than 100 years and a legacy that lives on through the Condas founding family. Originally, in 1912, Delbert Redden, a prospector and trapper from a Coalville pioneer family owned 160 acres in White Pine Canyon. Redden went on to expand his ranch by staking claim to more land in the canyon. In 1924 Redden sold the ranch to John George Condas.
John George Condas was born in Lamia, Greece in 1885. John arrived in the United States at Ellis Island in 1904 at the age of 19. He moved out west to Utah the following year. His father, George, who was a butcher by trade, came over from Greece. Then, John’s three younger brothers, Spiros (Sam), Gust, and Peter arrived in subsequent years. While the Condas family initially lived in Salt Lake City, they later moved to Bingham Canyon. Bingham was a mining town located in southwestern Salt Lake County at the edge of the Oquirrh Mountains. There John and his siblings owned several stores including a slaughterhouse that provided food for the miners. John eventually purchased sheep and entered the sheep herding business. In 1913 John married Demetra Siarris who had emigrated from Arahova, Lakonia, Greece. Together they had eight children. George, the oldest, born in 1914, continued the sheep herding and ranching business.
As the mines expanded, so did the pollution in Bingham. John needed to move his sheep to cleaner land. John started acquiring land in White Pine Canyon in 1912, adjacent to Redden’s land. In 1916 he acquired more land, and in 1924 John ended up purchasing the 160-acre Del Redden ranch. John’s brother, Pete, acquired the adjoining land in the canyon to the south and east of the ranch, and their brother Sam owned land as well in the canyon.
The John Condas family established a homestead in White Pine Canyon and every summer they would move their sizable herd of sheep to the mountains that offered plentiful grass and grazing. Later in the fall, the herd was moved back to their ranch in the Salt Lake Valley. They used Redden’s original cabin until it burned down in 1935 (building remains are located by the Colony post office).
After the fire, John rebuilt another family cabin on the land where the family would gather for barbecues every weekend with roasted lamb, Greek delicacies, and wine. That cabin was also destroyed in a fire in 1968, and so the family built yet another cabin.
John continued to acquire land in White Pine Canyon through the 1950s. In 1956 John retired from ranching and started leasing out the land for grazing, helicopter skiing, and films. In 1969 John and Demetra both passed away. A flagpole with a dedication to John Condas remains on Colony property.
As Park City continued to grow the Condas family considered developing the property and were approached by multiple developers during the 70s and 80s. In 1981 the Summit County Planning Commission did approve a plan for a major ski resort, however, that project fell through, and a similar project was proposed in the late 80s with plans to connect to the Park City Ski Area.
As the Condas family was thinking through their options for development, Mike and Ginny Mariani (Ginny is Sam Condas’ daughter) connected their son-in-law, Walt Brett who was a builder and developer in San Diego, to the John Condas family. Brett suggested a project that would have less impact on the land. The family’s goal was to keep the land as pristine as possible. Keeping the land and the project within the family was important and therefore, the Condas family decided to move forward with Brett and his business partner, to develop the unique ski-in ski-out community known today as “The Colony”.
In 1992 The Colony master plan started to come together. Construction of the infrastructure began in the fall of 1998. It took years to acquire all 4,600 acres, water rights, and negotiate with the owners of the ski resort, which changed names multiple times over the years and is the current day Canyons Resort. The vision of the family was to create legacy estate properties that closely aligned with the original Condas family homestead and to preserve the original beauty of White Pine Canyon.
The final Colony master plan included 274 homesites ranging from 2 to 114-acre lots. In 1998 the first 30 Colony homesites sold out in one day. The Colony has continued to grow and change over the past 20 years. In 2021 the last of the developer homesites were sold.
The Condas family is still involved in the community today. Marina Condas Gianoulis, John’s granddaughter, and daughter of his first-born son, George, and her family live in the Colony. Stephen Jeffers, the great-grandson of Sam Condas, continues to assist in the sale of homes and homesites.
