Bead Hill Angus Ranch

In its original setting, this cabin nestled into a rocky hillside north of Bear Creek was built here by Lee Cox in the 1940s. The one-story building was designed after a stagecoach stop from settlement days, giving it a vintage look earlier than its origins. Mr. Cox probably also gave the adjacent hill its name, Bead Hill, for the Native American artifacts he collected in the area and elsewhere. It is not, to our knowledge, an official placename.

Mr. Cox continued to raise cattle on this land, once owned by the Rooney family, until the 1980s, when the site was endangered by the advent of the beltway being constructed around Denver. His later years were reportedly spent in frustration and bitterness, and he died about 1987 in a nursing home in Morrison. Former Town Board member Dick Scott reconstructs the story:

When the Town hired Carol O’Dowd [as Town Manager] in 1985, the state had already begun obtaining right-of-way for the new four-lane beltway, C-470, around the metro area. The Morrison interchange plan crossed Lee Cox’s ranch and, unable to sell it to be moved, the state would soon demolish his large, modern (built in 1945) “log cabin” ranch house. Lee alone, heartbroken, ill at eighty-some, dourly resisted each visitor while holding his shotgun when answering each knock at his door. Carol described her visit with Lee to me:

“Visiting all Morrison’s neighbors, I knocked on Lee Cox’s door. My smile got me past his shotgun, and I built a relationship of trust. Ill health soon sent him to the Morrison Nursing Home and I visited him there. We reminisced about his life and how to save his home, now in the new state highway right-of-way….”

A last-minute effort saved the cabin itself (read Part 2 here), but the site, now a stone’s throw from C-470, is currently occupied by the Town of Morrison’s sewage treatment plant.