Frisco: Swedish Stonemason's Mining Camp
Near Breckenridge, Colorado
In eighteen seventy-three, a Swedish immigrant stonemason named Henry Recen climbed into a high valley in Summit County and built a single cabin amid the silver and gold rush. That cabin became the seed of Frisco. The town grew with the Colorado silver boom, with hotels and saloons to keep the miners comfortable through the long winters.
When the mining boom faded, Frisco nearly went quiet. The revival came in nineteen forty-six when Arapahoe Basin opened nearby and skiers discovered what the miners already knew: this valley sits at the crossroads of everywhere in the mountains. Today Frisco's historic park preserves the frontier-era buildings, and the town that Henry Recen planted with a single cabin now anchors one of the most visited mountain corridors in Colorado.
