The beauty of the mountains first drew people here and they
just keep coming! When Thomas Bergen homesteaded in what is now Bergen Park –
just four miles north of present-day downtown Evergreen – he couldn’t have
imagined he was planting the seed for one of Colorado’s most unique communities.
Bergen arrived in 1859, at a time when most people passed through what would
later become Evergreen on their way to the Rocky Mountain gold country in search
of their fortunes.
The surrounding hills never produced much of the precious ore
that enticed miners, but the enterprising Bergen created a different kind of
gold mine. He established a ranch and stage stop on the summer hunting range for
the Ute and Arapaho Indians, and became the first of many ranchers, lumbermen
and farmers to settle in the high valleys.
In those days, legend has it, Evergreen’s pine, spruce and
fir forests were so thick one couldn’t walk a horse between the tree trunks.
Harvesting those forests kept many a mountain family from going hungry. The
lumber produced in Evergreen’s sawmills fed Denver’s enormous appetite for new
homes and commercial buildings. Cattle raised on local ranches, along with the
hay, potatoes, and peas farmers could coax from the soil, also went to Denver
for sale.
Shortly after Bergen’s arrival, some settlers moved south of
Bergen Park to build homes and establish businesses in Bear Creek Canyon, the
present site of downtown Evergreen. Homesteader D.P. Wilmot, who bought a large
tract of land south of town in 1875, first called the area "Evergreen". The name
stuck. By the 1880s, the town was populated by about 200 people. Six sawmills
operated in neighboring mountain valleys; downtown, there was a blacksmith, a
barber, a carpenter, two summer hotels, a Methodist church and two general
stores.
The tiny mountain town began to grow with the improvement of
the Denver-Evergreen road up Bear Creek Canyon in 1911, and the advent of
electrical service to the area in 1917. From the 1880s through the 1920s,
Evergreen had become than a rural logging and ranching community – it had become
a popular summer resort for Denver residents. Troutdale-in-the-Pines, a posh
resort hotel on picturesque Upper Bear Creek, catered to Hollywood movie stars
and America’s elite. Other summer resorts sprang up in the area as well,
including the Greystone Guest Ranch and the Brook Forest Inn. Throughout the
‘20s and ‘30s, Evergreen remained primarily a resort community; its population
of about 600 year-round residents nearly doubled during the summer months. In
the ‘40s and ‘50s, as roads were improved and automobile travel became more
popular, the identity of the isolated mountain town began to change. Those whose
jobs might otherwise have kept them city-bound suddenly found themselves able to
live in more rural areas. Some became the first of the Evergreen-Denver
commuters. By the 1970s, Evergreen was established as a year-round commuter
community.
Evergreen has a lot to offer, whether you’re thinking of a
summer getaway or a full time residence – those who commute choose to live in
Evergreen for the same reasons Thomas Bergen did – for the quality of life.
