ST. BERNARD (1980)

After the City and County of Denver opened Winter Park as a ski area in 1940, a small town sprang up below the lifts at the west portal of the Moffat Railroad Tunnel.

Catholics found a little chapel nearby on the William Z. Cozens ranch. Cozens, the pioneer sheriff of Central City, had helped establish St. Mary Church there with his wife, Mary York Cozens. After the Cozenses became the first homesteaders in the Fraser River valley in 1872, they welcomed priests at their ranch where early-day Masses were celebrated. Among the visitors to the ranch over the years were Jesuits from Regis College. William Cozens, Jr., continued his father's tradition of hosting Catholic Masses and the Jesuits and, in 1931, gave that order the historic ranch and 400-acre spread. The Jesuits converted it to a retreat and recreation villa, which they called Maryvale.

The Jesuits at Maryvale offered a regular Sunday Mass in the quaint cabin that still stands along U.S. highway 40. Winter Park became a full-blown resort town in the 1970s, Sunday worshippers soon outgrew the little church. In 1980, Archbishop Casey authorized establishment of St. Bernard parish. During the pastorate of Philip Meredith--a skier--the parish celebrated Christmas with a torchlight ski run followed by Midnight Mass.

H. Robert White, pastor of St. Anne's in Grand Lake, took charge of the St. Bernard mission in the 1980s. To accommodate the fast growing parish and many tourists, he began holding Saturday evening and Sunday morning Masses in the Silver Screen Theater in Winter Park.