Tucked away near the Rocky Mountains is a gateway of history. The town of Nederland, Colorado is a place people from all over the world come to see its beauty, and history.
The small mountain town is full of restaurants with its aroma filling the air, and the sound of the creek is soothing many people never want to leave.
But what draws tourists to this place is the one person that never left.
“People come here because they’re curious about the Frozen Dead Guy,” says Anne Taylor, the woman who runs the Nederland visitor center. “The man’s name – we call him Grandpa – Bredo Morstol. His family in Norway believed in cryonics, and when he passed away there, they sent him to a lab in California. And some point in the 90s, his grandson was here and he decided to have him sent here to the property that he had here up on the hill.”
According to Taylor, in 1993, Bredo believed in cryonics and the possibility of being brought back to life after the advanced of modern medicine.
But one question comes to mind to a lot of tourists: how is this legal?
“Well, it’s not legal,” says Taylor. “At that point, there was no ordinance about it, because no one would think of having an ordinance about it. When this all came about, and it had to go to town council, the trustees passed an ordinance. Nobody else can do this, but grandpa got grandfathered in, so he’s still alive.”
And year round, there is one man who takes care of Bredo.
“Every two weeks, I come up here and bring in the dry ice,” says Brad Wickham, the caretaker of Bredo. “I take care of other needs that might need to be done, like trash off the property or keeping other people off the property.”
Bredo is tucked away in a shed on what was his property.
In honor of the town’s unique resident, Nederland holds an annual celebration that started in 2002 called
Frozen Dead Guy Days
.
