Nederland history: a silver mill named for Holland, a disputed founding date, the tungsten boom, Barker Dam and the bid for Eldora

Nederland sits at the west end of Barker Reservoir, on Middle Boulder Creek, where Colorado 119 meets Colorado 72. It began as a mill town for a silver mine higher up, took its name from the Dutch company that bought that mine, boomed on tungsten during World War I, emptied, and filled again from the 1960s. This is the short version, from the sources listed at the foot; where they disagree, both are given.

Before the town

The Town’s history says the valley was cut by a glacier and that the Ute and Arapaho hunted and foraged in it in summer. The main park, Chipeta Park, is named for Chipeta, wife of the Ute chief Ouray, known as the “Ute Peacemaker”. Trappers came for beaver in the early 1800s, and the first homesteaders gave the place a string of names. The Town lists Dayton, then Brownsville; the historical society’s timeline and Wikipedia have Dayton, then Brown’s Crossing. All three agree that in 1871 it became Middle Boulder, after the creek; the Town and Wikipedia tie the change to the new post office. The Boulder Canyon road was finished the same year, though the Town says the first automobile, a Stanley Steamer, did not make the climb until 1910.

Silver from Caribou, and a Dutch name

The money was six miles northwest, at the Caribou silver mine near 10,000 feet. Who found it depends on the source: the Town credits Sam Conger, Wikipedia’s Caribou article a prospector named Conger, and Boulder County a prospector named William Martin, who it says had mined in the Cariboo Range in British Columbia and gave the mine its name.

In 1871, the Town says, Abel Breed bought the Caribou and brought its ore down to the warmer valley to be milled. In 1873 he sold it to the Mining Company Nederland from Holland. The miners called Breed’s mill “the Netherlands”, the low lands, which it was beside Caribou. Wikipedia’s Caribou article instead dates the sale to Dutch investors to 1871, at $3 million, and the historical society says the Dutch bought the mill, renamed the town in 1873, and went bankrupt in 1878. The name stayed. Caribou burned in 1879. By 1890, the Town says, there was little ore left to mill and Nederland had become another mountain ghost town.

1874 or 1885

The Town’s history says that “in 1874, when the town was incorporated, the people chose Nederland as the new name”, and the State Demography Office’s historical census file also gives 1874 as the incorporation year. Wikipedia’s infobox gives 15 November 1885, citing the Colorado State Archives’ list of municipal incorporations, while its own text says the town was established and incorporated in 1874. The 1880 census counted 279 people and the 1890 census 111.

Gold at Eldora and a railroad up the hill

Four miles west, gold revived the district. Wikipedia’s Eldora article says enough gold was found in 1875 to open a mine and that the camp boomed in the 1890s, with 1,300 to 1,500 people at its height; the historical society dates the find to 1882.

The railroad came in 1905. The narrow-gauge Colorado and Northwestern, which had named its line up Fourmile Canyon the Switzerland Trail, opened a branch south to Nederland and Eldora, as the historical society records. It hauled ore down and tourists up, and the county says the Blue Bird Mine on today’s Caribou Ranch became a tourist stop on it. The line shut in 1919 and the tracks were pulled up.

Tungsten

The historical society says they called it “the damned black iron” until they learned it was tungsten ore, used to harden steel, and that the Wolf Tongue Mining Company was formed in 1904. The Town credits Sam Conger again with finding it north and east of town, and says the old silver mill was converted to treat it. By 1915, the timeline says, 22 mills were processing tungsten, all of them said to be profitable. The society’s home page calls Nederland the center of world tungsten production during World War I.

The Town puts the population at nearly 3,000 by 1916. A camp called Tungsten grew up at the foot of the new dam, with a post office from 1916 to 1950 and a reported 600 people in 1916, and Lakewood grew north of town. Then the war ended. The timeline records a flu epidemic and the collapse of the boom as wartime demand fell. The Town says about 200 people were left by 1920; the census that year counted 291. A smaller tungsten revival came with World War II, and the society says mining and milling went on into the 1970s.

Barker Dam

The reservoir that defines the town today was built for power. Wikipedia says the Central Colorado Power Company began the dam in 1908; the historical society’s Gillaspie House page says construction began in 1907. Both say it was finished in 1910. Wikipedia says it is named for Hannah Connell Barker, who refused to sell the land and was forced to, and that materials came up on a spur of the Switzerland Trail. Nederland’s mayor, Dr. Carbon Gillaspie, had been elected in 1908 on the “dry ticket” when, the society says, practically every other building in town was a saloon. The City of Boulder bought the dam and reservoir in 2001 and runs them for its water supply and for power. The Town lists Barker Meadows Reservoir among its open spaces.

The quiet years and the revival

Between the wars, the Town says, small mines, farming, ranching and tourists picnicking at the new reservoir kept Nederland alive, and after the 1940s the theater, bowling alley, stores and banks closed. The census found 272 people in 1960.

The Town credits “hippies” in the 1960s with bringing a music scene and a new way of life, and the census went from 492 in 1970 to 1,212 in 1980. Eldora’s ski area was conceived in 1961, opened with a road and two T-bars the next year, and installed its Little Hawk chairlift in 1967, which Wikipedia calls the oldest operating chairlift in Colorado. On the road to Caribou, producer James William Guercio turned a ranch barn into the Caribou Ranch studio, in 1971 according to the county and 1972 according to Wikipedia. Chicago recorded five albums there and Elton John named a 1974 album for it, before a fire in March 1985 closed it. Guercio sold 2,180 acres of the ranch to Boulder County and the City of Boulder in 1996 and 2001, and the county’s open space now holds the Blue Bird Mine buildings.

In the 1990s, the Town says, Barker Meadow became the town’s only shopping center as commuters moved in. The census counted 1,394 people in 2000 and 1,471 in 2020.

The frozen grandfather, the carousel and the library

In 1993 the body of Bredo Morstøl, a Norwegian who died in 1989, was brought to Nederland on dry ice by his family, who planned a cryonics facility. Wikipedia tells how the Town then outlawed keeping bodies, with an exception for Bredo, and how Frozen Dead Guy Days grew from 2002 into a March festival of coffin races and polar plunges. The festival left Nederland after 2022 and Bredo followed in August 2023, to the Stanley Hotel. The festival’s own site now announces 9 to 11 April 2027 in Estes Park.

The Carousel of Happiness came by a longer road. Its own history says Charles Looff delivered the carousel to Saltair park outside Salt Lake City in 1917. In 1986 Scott Harrison, a Nederland resident and Vietnam veteran, trucked its empty frame home and spent 26 years carving more than 50 animals for it. The town raised $700,000 for its building, and it opened on Memorial Day 2010.

The library’s history begins with a Town Board resolution in 2000 and a room in the Community Center in April 2001. Voters created a library district in November 2002, a snowstorm collapsed the Community Center roof in March 2003, and the Nederland Community Library moved into its own building in January 2011.

Fire, and the mountain

Early on 9 October 2025 a sheriff’s deputy saw the Caribou Village Shopping Center at 20 Lakeview Drive burning. Boulder County reported that the two-story building on its south side was fully engulfed, homes around the reservoir were evacuated for the morning, and the carousel on the west side was only slightly damaged. The fire district says the ATF ran the investigation, and as of its 27 January 2026 update the reports were not yet available.

Then there is Eldora. Wikipedia’s Nederland article says the Town’s purchase of the resort from POWDR was completed in January 2026. The Town’s own update of 30 September 2026 says otherwise. It says the previous purchase agreement has expired, that the Town is “continuing to pursue the acquisition”, and that it plans to raise about $20 million philanthropically for improvements.

Where to see it

The Nederland Mining Museum at 200 North Bridge Street was created by the historical society, and Boulder County bought its collection in 2012. It is free, open Friday to Sunday from 11 to 5, June 1 through October 31. Its collection includes a 1923 Bucyrus 50-B steam shovel, which the society says worked on the Panama Canal and was moved to the museum in 2005. The house Dr. Gillaspie built in 1905 and 1906, at Bridge and Fourth Streets, was given to the Town in 1975 and is the society’s Gillaspie House museum.