Episode 5: Finding Beauty in Nederland: From Dead Guys to Carousel Guys

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. On today's episode, we try to explain the town of Nederland. A town the size of 1.6-square miles, with no stoplight, and a population of around 1,500 miners, hippies, and other assorted mountain folk. You'll learn what miners, dead guys, and Elton John have to do with Nederland's beauty and the Carousel of Happiness.

The Carousel of Happiness is a nonprofit arts & culture organization dedicated to inspiring happiness, well-being, and service to others through stories and experiences.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider visiting the Carousel of Happiness online (https://carouselofhappiness.org/), on social media (https://www.facebook.com/carouselofhappiness), or in real life; or consider donating (https://carouselofhappiness.app.neoncrm.com/forms/general-donation) to keep the carousel and its message alive and spinning 'round and 'round.

If you have a story to share, please reach out to Allie Wagner at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org

Special thanks to songwriter, performer, and friend of the carousel, Darryl Purpose (https://darrylpurpose.com/), for sharing his song, "Next Time Around," as our theme song.

Transcript

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. I’m your host, Allie Wagner. 

On our last episode, we heard the story of the 1910 Charles Looff-designed carousel frame from Utah that would join Scott’s animals in Nederland in 1986. After spinning for over almost 70 years at both Saltair Park in Salt Lake City and at the Utah State Training School in American Fork, the carousel was stripped of its animals by a collector, and the frame and motor were sold to Scott for $2,000. Scott rented a Uhaul, picked up the pieces, and then stored them until he was ready to build.

At the same time, Scott is carving animals one by one, storing them anywhere he could: in storage, in the garage, in his kids’ room, in the bathroom, at the local elementary school, at friends’ houses. 

Had Scott lived in a suburb during this time the neighbors probably would have had a fit. The local HOA would have been called, and the Harrisons would probably have had to address the fact that their wooden menagerie was spilling out of their house and into the community.

But because this is Nederland, no one seemed to mind. In fact, Scott regularly gave tours of the animals, as well as showed the bits of the carousel frame and motor as they were being restored at this time. Scott became known in the community as “the carousel guy.”

And, that is what today’s show is about. The community of Nederland. A town the size of 1.6-square miles, with no stoplight, and a population of around 1,500 miners, hippies, and other assorted mountain folk. On today’s episode, I do my best to explain this quirky town. What do miners, dead guys, Elton John have to do with the Carousel of Happiness? You’ll find out on today’s show.

Welcome, dear listener, to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. Let us begin with today’s story.

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I’ll never forget the first time I saw the short film “Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed.” I was on a date in Wyoming with a guy I had met on the internet. I had just moved to the rocky mountains after living along the coast for most of my life and, at the time, I was a bit outside my element. My 2WD Volvo barely made it up his snowy driveway; I didn’t own a single item of down or fleece clothing. 

And, on this date, during one of those “get to know you” conversations with this feral wildland firefighter I was coming to know, he was trying to explain what it was like for him to live in the town of Nederland. He had lived there for a decade in the 90s and, for whatever reason, it felt really important to him to explain this place to me. It felt like, if I understood Nederland, I might understand him, somehow. 

“It’s quirky…but in an authentic way. Like nothing makes sense, nothing goes together, nothing matches but no one cares. That’s what’s cool about it,” he tried to explain to me “You can do what you want. People just leave you alone.”

“So, like Berkeley?” I asked him. 

He shook his head. It wasn’t like Berkeley at all apparently. Because people in Berkeley cared too much about what their neighbors were doing. They were too nosy. Ned wasn’t like that. In Ned, people left you alone. 

I must have looked confused. He was getting frustrated. Our guessing game wasn’t working. Maybe this wasn’t going to work out after all?

Then, he seemed to light up from the inside. He had an idea. He dug around in a box in the closet and recovered a beat up plastic DVD case. The plastic was scratched, but you could still read a slip of paper in the sleeve. A Robin Beeck film called “Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed.” On the cover, there was a rugged snowy mountain landscape in the background and a skeleton face in the center. And, in all capital letters, underneath the title, read “FROZEN SOLID IN A BIZARRE CRYONICS EXPERIMENT BREDO “GRANDPOPSICLE” MORSTOEL NOW HAUNTS THE ROCKIES.

He slipped the disc into the player and I settled in to try and understand.

Over the course of the next hour, I learned the story about Grandpa Bredo. A Norwegian man who died at his family’s mountain retreat in Norway in 1989. But, in lieu of a typical burial, Bredo Morstoel was brought to the United States by his daughter and grandson, who were both proponents of cryonics – the practice of deep-freezing the deceased in hopes that scientific advances will allow for future resurrection. 

So, grandpa dies in Norway in 1989, and his daughter and grandson bring him to the States. After a brief stint in Oakland, right next door to Berkeley, by the way, grandpa was moved to Nederland in 1993. And in the hills overlooking Barker Reservoir, his daughter and grandson set up a makeshift cryogenic storage unit in a tuff shed in their backyard. And, there, they kept Grandpa on dry ice until 1994.

But, the plot thickens in 1994, when both his daughter and grandson faced deportation. That’s when his daughter started to panic. If they got deported, what would happen to grandpa? So, she came clean with the town of Ned, admitted what was going on in the tuff shed, and asked the community for help.

Town officials were not pleased. In fact, Grandpa is the reason Nederland town ordinance now specifically states that the storage of “the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being” is illegal within town limits.

But, in typical Nederland fashion, Grandpa was quite literally grandfathered in. The ordinance would not apply; he could stay in the tuff shed. And, not only that, after his family returned to Norway, locals began to take care of grandpa on their own. In fact, a man named Brad Wickham, known as the “ice man,” iced Grandpa’s body every two weeks with dry ice from 2014 to 2023.

It was that DVD, that story of grandpa, that made me fall in love with Ned. Not because I have an interest in or devotion to cryonics. Nor do I have a particularly dark personality. I’m not fascinated with death in the way some people are.

No, the appeal to me about grandpa’s story is the way the community held space for grandpa to be grandpa. The town was saying, we don’t necessarily condone it, but we recognize that there is value in holding space for radically different and controversial point of views. 

And, not only did the town hold space for grandpa’s views, they actively supported them. Neighbors pitched in and helped support their neighbors. It’s just what we do up here.

So, in the early 90s, on one side of town, Scott, “the carousel guy” is carving animals and restoring a 1910 carousel.  On the other side of town, less than a mile and a half away mind you, there’s a dead guy in a tuff shed being iced by his neighbors.

Remember, this town is only 1.6 square miles. There are only 1,400 or so residents here. We have no stoplights. There is one strip mall. The middle school and high school are combined into one building. We have around fewer than 10 restaurants in town and 4 cannabis dispensaries. This town doesn’t even get sidewalks until 2010.

What is going on here? How did this eclectic town come to be?

Originally, Nederland was a meeting point for Arapahoe and Ute (yoot) tribes. In the mid 1850s, when European settlers headed out west, it became a trading post between the Europeans and Indigenous tribes. But everything changed in the mid- to late-1800s when gold, silver, and tungsten mining took over.

And mining became big business in Nederland. In 1870, its population was 3,000, double what we see today. But the early population fluctuated greatly, largely governed by mining booms and busts, dipping to its lowest of 200 people after WWII.

But the mining culture was about to get a shake up in the 1960s, when hippies were drawn here. Many found themselves in Boulder first, until they discovered Ned. Boulder’s mountain cousin, 17 miles west, at 8,000 ft in the Rocky Mountains. Nederland offered hippies access to cultural events in Boulder, but closer access to surrounding natural spaces like the Indian Peaks Wilderness, Rocky Mountain National Park, Roosevelt National Forest, and the James Peak Wilderness. 

And this influx of hippies was the primary population trend in town that would continue into the 90s when that guy I mentioned earlier moved here for the same reason. He was living in Boulder, but wanted to be closer to nature, closer to skiing, and he was attracted to a place what felt free of some of the social pressures of his suburban upbringing.

Nederland was perfect.

And, during this time, between the 60s and 90s hippies flocked to Nederland. 

In 1971, as part of this population trend, music producer Jim Guercio left New York City and purchased Caribou Ranch, a 4,000 acre property with a barn he later converted into a recording studio. Guercio, who is best known for producing the band Chicago’s first 11 albums, was looking to get away from the city and offer artists the opportunity to create music without the distraction. Guercio envisioned a mountain retreat where musicians could unwind, relax, and be inspired by the beauty and tranquility of the mountains in Colorado.

And, as it turned out, it worked. From 1972 until 1985, Caribou Ranch became the center for music in the Rocky Mountain West. Chicago recorded there, Elton John recorded 3 albums there, including one actually called “Caribou.” Earth, Wind, and Fire, Chicago, Steven Stills, Michael Jackson, Poco, Dan Fogelberg, and John Lennon were among the 100 well-known rock acts of the 70s and 80s who recorded there.

If you’ve heard Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” you’ve heard something recorded at Caribou Ranch. Same thing with Elton John’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Remember that one? John Lennon plays guitar and offers backing vocals on that track, by the way. You can hear Beach Boys  in the background of Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” also recorded at Caribou Ranch.

And for 13 years, Cariou Ranch was an incubator for some of the greatest rock ‘n roll hits of the 1970s and 1980s, producing 45 top ten albums, 18 Grammys, and 20 number-one Billboard hits, including “If You Leave Me Now,” by Chicago for which Jim Guercio himself won a Grammy for Best Arrangement in 1976.  

And everything was going great until 1985, when a space heater caught fire and destroyed the control room, causing $3 million in damage. The ranch was sold, the rock n roll memorabilia auctioned off for charity, and a chapter of Nederland’s history wrapped up for the time being.

And while many people in town know Jim Guercio as the founder of Caribou Ranch, we at the carousel know him a bit differently. Because in addition to owning Caribou Ranch, Guercio also owned the Caribou Village Shopping Center, the one shopping center in town. It is anchored by the only grocery store in town and three authentic train cars that have been converted into a local coffee shop. In between, you’ll find a yoga studio, a pizza joint, a music store, and an art gallery, to name a few.

Right next to the train cars, up along the scenic Peak to Peak highway, there was a little ditch with a couple of trees in it, the remains of wetlands that used to be a mountain meadow. And in this little ditch, Scott was given permission by Jim Guercio to build a carousel. 

There’s something special about this place. And, four years ago, when my husband and I were looking to buy our first house we searched all over the west for a home. Not just a house, but a home. A place where we could settle; a place where we could be ourselves.

And, over and over again, I tried to convince my husband to return to Ned. Spoiler alert: that guy who showed me “Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed” 8 years ago ended up becoming my husband.

But, time after time, he said no. He said Nederland had changed too much; it wasn’t like it used to be. 

When we first moved here, I learned the term “Chief Niwot’s Curse.” 

As local legend has it, people who come to the area are enchanted by its beauty, and cursed to never leave it. And, if they do leave it, it won’t be for long, as the valley will compel them to return.

It’s only recently that I discovered what Chief Niwot is alleged to have said. Apparently, the leader of the Southern Arapahoe tribe by the way, before he was killed in the Sand Creek Massacre by the Colorado militia in November 1870, said of area now known as Boulder Valley:

“People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.”

“People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay.” That part seemed to translate with what I had heard, but what didn’t was the second part of the quote - “their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.”

I find that there’s this pull/push among residents, myself included. We are drawn to this area just as Chief Niwot suggested, for its beauty, but there’s a tension here. How does our staying here affect the place we love so much? How does our humanness affect the land around us? And, as my husband discovered, when we leave, how do we know if or when it’s time to return? 

Chief Niwot rightly worried about Europeans coming to his people’s land and destroying it. And it is true that we are experiencing modern growing pains just like many similar towns. There aren’t enough jobs; not enough housing. My husband was right; Nederland has changed. 

But what of its beauty? It seems to me that we do a better job of holding space for all kinds of beauty here; not just what you see in a catalog. Not just what is approved by an HOA. In Nederland, we understand there is beauty in the hope that your grandpa might return to this life. There’s beauty in the songs recorded at Caribou Ranch. And there’s beauty in the dream of a Vietnam veteran to build a carousel in a mountain meadow. And sure, the meadow is now a strip mall and there’s a highway right next to it, but over 1 million people have now had the opportunity to experience the carousel because of the support this town has offered the carousel.

And that’s what we’ll talk about next week. How a town of 1,400 people rallied around the Carousel of Happiness and raised over $600,000 to keep Scott’s dream here.

In the meantime, take care. Be well. And, as we like to say at the Carousel of Happiness, “don’t delay joy.” And we’ll see you next time around.