About the Frisco, Colorado Area 

Frisco, Colorado
The Entrance to Frisco's Main Street





Frisco took a great leap forward in the years from 1970 to the present.  Explosive growth took place.  Copper Mountain ski area opened in 1972.  The Summit County library built its main branch in Frisco.  Interstate 70 progressed from the Silverthorne interchange to Frisco in the early '70s, then on into Ten Mill Canyon and over Vail Pass.  The Summit Medical Center opened, and on and on.

Located approximately 75 miles west of Denver via I-70 and Colorado Highway 9, Frisco has a population of about 2,700.  At 9,100 feet above sea level Frisco enjoys the high mountain weather of all of Summit County's towns - summer highs in the 70s winter highs in the 30s.

Present day Frisco has one of the nicest Main Streets of any small town in America.  Continued growth of both the business district and residential homes make it one of the finest spots in Summit County.

Central to four world-class ski areas, a world-class bike path system and along the shores of immaculate Lake Dillon, Frisco is literally at the crossroads of Summit County.  It's no wonder the headquarters for the Summit County School District, Colorado Department of Transportation, Summit Stage bus system, Summit County Library and the Colorado State Patrol are all located here.

In terms of commercial and residential growth, Frisco is unmatched by any community its size in Colorado.  Numerous restaurants, shops and hotels have opened in just the last few years.  Literally hundreds of new residential units have been constructed.  The town has taken advantage of the outstanding tourist economy to invest in numerous improvements, including adding pathways, installing athletic fields and a disk golf course at the Peninsula Recreation Area.

In the early 1800s, American fur trappers penetrated the isolated reaches of the valley the Utes called Nah-oon-dara (roughly translated as "land where the Blue River rises").  The basis that later became Frisco provided the beaver the fur trappers were looking for.

During the fur trade years, 1810 - 1840, the area provided a favored lair for the rugged trappers.  Early cartographers showed a rendezvous site "at the place where the rivers meet," called La Bonte's Hole, located beneath the Present Dillon Reservoir.

Colonel John C. Fremont described Frisco's environs in the diary of his 1843 expedition.

"In the afternoon the river forked into three apparently equal streams.  The Snake, Blue and Ten Mile Rivers. . . I proceeded up the middle branch (the Blue), which formed a flat valley bottom between timbered ridges on the left and snowy mountains on the right (the Ten Mile Range) terminating on large buttes of naked rock."

Henry A. Recen, a stonemason turned prospector, arrived in the spring of 1871 and decided to stay.  He constructed a cabin on a beautiful island at the confluence of the Ten Mile and North Ten Mile Creek (today's Ten Mile Island).

How the town got its name is shrouded in mystery.  According to one account a former government scout named Captain Leonard passed by in 1875 and, on impulse, the visitor tacked up a sign, with the carved name, "Frisco City." over the cabin Recen built.  Colorado historians have had a heyday with the mysterious "Captain Leonard" and the story of Frisco's name.  The most reliable account states that Captain Henry Learned, an 1879 Frisco town founder, former scout, civil war veteran and early town mayor, postmaster, school board organizer and mine owner was the "government scout" that was responsible for the name.

Frisco stands at the junction of two vital 1860s-built wagon roads, the Argentine Pass route from Georgetown and the Breckenridge Pass route (later named Boreas) from Denver.

An energetic group of Frisco founders filed incorporation papers for the Frisco Town Association, on April 17, 1879, according to the April 18, 1879 Rocky Mountain News.

"The Frisco town Association filed articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State yesterday morning.  The company organizes for the purpose of surveying and laying out a town site on the Ten Mile Creek in Summit County."

The photo to the right is an early
picture of Frisco's Main Street.

People poured into 1880s Frisco , putting up buildings, discovered silver and generally thrived.  By 1881 the town boasted a variety of stores and had a population of 300.

But, everything went wrong in the 1890s.  While Breckenridge had homes lined with elegant wallpaper, plush private rail cars and the 13 pound gold nugget "Tom's Baby,"  Frisco scraped the bottom of the barrel.  Henry Learned scurried to wear all the hats on the town board as trustees quit showing up for meetings.  An April 1892 blizzard canceled the election and not another town meeting took place till 1899.

Norwegian immigrant Peter Prestrud arrived in Frisco in 1910 to manage his father-in-law's investments in the King Solomon and Square Deal mines.  Discovering the mines to be less than thriving, he opened a grocery store and turned his leisure time attention to his favorite sport, ski jumping.  Almost singlehandedly, Peter Prestrud put Frisco on skis.

By 1946 Frisco's population had grown 50, one-seventh of Summit County's paltry population of 350.  The arrival of Dillon Reservoir spawned dissension in Frisco.  After the new lake submerged area ranches, road builders commandeered a pathway through the new ranch locations.  Tempers also flared over re-locating the school to Dillon in 1952.

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