We love hearing from readers, and we always learn something new about Morrison’s history! Here are some stories from comments made in recent years. We invite you to add your own comments to any posts that strike your fancy.
Yvonne wrote (in 2022):
I was born (1940) in Evergreen where my family had emigrated in the 1860s and homesteaded. Morrison was part of the Evergreen life and history. My father (b. 1907) talked about skating on Bear Creek all the way to Morrison. A stagecoach served to carry passengers between the two towns. I was told that my grandfather’s ranch was the source of Kosher cattle which he would drive down the Canyon to the railroad where they would be turned over to the Jewish community for Denver. I remember well the stops at the Tabor Bar and the town around it, since it was the “halfway” point in the (then) long drive to Denver.
From Jeannine (in 2022):
James Wilson Haworth along with his wife Alverda Rice and infant daughter Arminta left Springfield Missouri and moved to Morrison in 1875. They sold their drugstore in Springfield and joined a wagon train heading west to Colorado. They set up a drugstore in Morrison and lived there until 1880. Two sons were born to them there. Julius Ross Haworth in 1876 and Samuel Elmer Haworth in 1879. Their little daughter Arminta passed away Nov.3 1875. She is likely buried there in Morrison. In 1880 the family moved on to Pueblo Colorado and set up another drugstore. Their daughter Alma was born there in August 1880. Living very close to the Haworths was Alverda’s widowed Mother Henrietta Lewis Rice, along with her three children. The whole extended family eventually moved farther west with the wagon trains into Oregon and Idaho where family still reside.
From Linda (in 2020):
Willow Ridge Manor, now located in Morrison [on Hwy 8 near The Fort], was originally a private home located on Old Kipling Rd. My grandfather, George Alexander Allen bought that house and renovated in 1915. The house sat north of the land he donated to build the 1st school on Bear Creek, which was originally called the “Montana School”. My grandfather met my grandmother, Myrtle Griffith, when she came to teach there in 1917, and they were wed in 1919. My father, Jack R. Allen, was born in that house in 1924. They sold the property in 1929.
From Rod (in 2019):
My great grandmother was Martha Ann (Bergen) Greene, daughter of Thomas Cunningham Bergen and Judith Roe Fletcher. Her father, who founded what is now “Bergen Park” in 1859, eventually moved down Bear Creek to farm just south of Morrison in the early 1870’s. He was the first to dig a couple of ponds for irrigation and cultivate a fish business there. The two small ponds are yet on the T.E.V. Edelweiss outdoor Facility property. My great grandmother was married there on Hogback Ridge 11 June 1876 to Thomas Henry Greene. They eventually moved back to Hopkinton, RI in 1880 (his birthplace) to care for ailing family.
In 2008 my brother and I travelled to Bergen Park, Idaho Springs, and Morrison tracing the Bergen family sites. With the help of a 1928 photo album of my grandfather’s, who had taken his mother back to Colorado in 1928 to visit with her brother, William Henry Bergen (whom she hadn’t seen in 48 years) and four generations of his family there … my brother and I were able to locate Thomas C Bergen’s headstone in the Old Morrison Cemetery just above the town (and just below The Red Rocks Park).
We also traveled up “Oh My God” Road, off the Virginia Canyon Rd out of Idaho Springs to Central City. It runs up through Gilson Gulch where my great grandmother, Martha Ann Bergen, spent two years running a boarding house for the Gilson’s while my great grandfather Thomas had staked and was mining two claims. Martha’s first child was born up there on Christmas Day 1877. In 1880 they sold their claims and went to Hopkinton, RI, where they raised eight children and were both buried. My great grandmother lived until a week shy of her 100th birthday in 1956.
Morrison History 
