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.
