Whether or not you know you know Fred, you know Fred! Fred is a familiar sight, always on his golf cart around Morrison and Red Rocks, accompanied by his poodle, Missy. Fred is celebrating his 94th birthday on February 12th [1999], so if you see him this week, you might want to extend good wishes.
Fred was born in Rye, Colorado, in 1905, among the youngest of nine children, where his family was homesteading in a two-story log cabin. At 13, he walked over LaVeta Pass to Alamosa for his first job as a ranch hand.
Rancher, blacksmith and farrier, ironworker, all this prepared him for his later life in Morrison. After serving in World War II, Fred married Bertha Mae (Hebrew) LaGrow in 1947 and moved to Morrison. Fred joined Bertha in running the Gateway Stables, a business Bertha had previously run with her mother, Nora Hebrew. Sam and Nora Hebrew had started the donkey concession in Red Rocks when the area became an attraction in the 1880s.
When he married Bertha, Fred worked for General Iron, having been a blacksmith in the army. Bertha owned or rented pasture for cattle, horses, and burros from Indian Hills along Bear Creek all the way to Sheridan. Fred gathered hay for the stock clear to Meyers Ranch on Hwy 285, after he finished his regular day’s work at General Iron on Santa Fe Drive. One of his ironworking projects was the superstructure for the original welcome sign over Washington St. in Golden.
In her “spare” (?) time. Bertha Mae was quilter and a watercolor artist; Fred called her the “Queen of Morrison.” He has some of her pictures in his home on Bear Creek Ave., and the house is still labeled “Gateway Stables” in old, nonfunctioning neon.
Morrison History 