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.