The Hard Things: Muellers Carve Out Community Life in Colorado

Written by Doug Goodnough

“Family, church, and local community” was the mantra of longtime (and now retired) Hillsdale College history professor John Willson.

Paul and Kathryn Williams Mueller, ’09, ’09, are living that reality in the remote mining town of Leadville, Colorado, nestled in the Rocky Mountains. Paul, a native of Colorado Springs, and Kathryn, from Alaska, took an indirect route to their current lives through Hillsdale College. After graduation and marriage, they spent more than a decade living on the East Coast, with Paul pursuing advanced degrees and teaching economics, first at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and then at King’s College in New York City.

But they found the urban lifestyle and weather were not to their liking, especially with a growing family.

“The East Coast was like exile,” Paul said. “In D.C., Kathryn said, ‘It’s so hot here. It’s like a different country.’ We moved outside the Beltway, so it was a little bit better.”

However, when they visited family back home, “there were always tears going back to the East Coast,” Paul admitted.

In 2017, they purchased an abandoned Catholic convent in Leadville with plans of renovating it and converting it into a bed and breakfast. In 2023, the Muellers had renovated it to the point where they moved their entire family to Leadville and now live in and run The Abbey Bed and Breakfast.

The tears are gone. They couldn’t be happier.

“It’s not like a frilly bed and breakfast,” Paul said of the 1950s-style structure that came with its own chapel and stained-glass windows. “We tell people it’s more like an inn.”

The Muellers welcome visitors into their home, and each member of the family plays a role in running the business.

“Paul talks with guests in the morning, and he’ll make sure breakfast is set out,” Kathryn said. “He takes care of a lot of the online stuff. I essentially welcome people and talk with them in the evening and do a lot of cleaning and flipping [of rooms]. The kids each have their own set of things that they can do. Even Melody, who is 4, is expected to strip beds. She just pulls the sheets off and throws them down the laundry chute. There are not a lot of extras. We don’t have TVs [in the rooms], and more often than not, people are happy about that.”

The Muellers foster a sense of community within the Abbey, though finding personal space can sometimes be a challenge.

“People like walking across the kitchen to get my personal mugs instead of using the guest mugs,” Paul said, smiling.

They recently closed off a space to make it into their family living room.

“At breakfast, there will be people staying in three or four different rooms, and they’ll just be chatting about where they’re coming from or what they’re doing,” Kathryn said. “What makes it more like an inn are the shared, common spaces that are familial, or home-like. Then our family integrates into that in a way that used to be much more common when inns were family affairs and smaller scale.”

The summer months are busy with many running and cycling races coming through town.

“These are doctors and lawyers,” Paul said of some of their guests. “They’re coming just to do the races. There are a couple of big race weekends where everything is booked and the town doubles in size.”

The couple homeschools their children (they celebrated the birth of their sixth child last fall). Paul works remotely as senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.

“My main job is policy analysis,” said Paul, who occasionally is a guest expert on several national television news networks. “I do a lot of writing and public speaking.”

The Muellers have become active in their local Baptist church, which is predominantly made up of employees of the local mine just a few miles from town. Paul has recently become a church elder, and he said church leadership is exploring opening a school.

“We’re trying to figure out what it’s going to look like,” Paul said. “We probably don’t have enough students to do a K through 12 school. The big long-term vision is to maybe do a very small vocational college.”

A proponent of self-governance, Paul said he currently chairs the Lake County Republican Party and is trying to help organize the party both locally and at the state level. And he is using his expertise in economics to help improve community housing efforts.

“Being here, I have thought a lot more about self-governance,” Paul said. “Govern yourself and take care of your family. That’s where a lot of people stop with self-governance. But what does it mean to actually be in the community and help govern it? I’ve been much more active in that regard living in a small town.”

Kathryn, a standout piano player in high school, attended Hillsdale on a music scholarship. She now serves as mother, teacher, host, and artist. She makes the stained-glass pieces that adorn the Abbey and is also an avid reader, especially of children’s literature, which she often recommends to her local homeschool family network.

The couple are both thankful for their Hillsdale roots and are trying to create a “ripple effect” in their community.

“I have faith that God has a plan for this building. I care about space being used well, and I care about people,” said Paul, who was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. “This is a Hillsdale concept, where you set your eyes on what you believe to be good, and then just go for it. A lot of people don’t have much practice doing hard things. We don’t rush into hard things. But if it’s valuable, then we’ll do the hard thing, and we feel pretty practiced.”

Doug Goodnough, '90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.

Published in March 2026

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