Frederick: a coal camp called McKissick, three daughters, a lake the town dug itself, and the boom up I-25

Frederick sits on coal. The town was laid out on top of the northern end of the Front Range’s coalfield, a couple of miles east of where I-25 now runs, and for its first half-century the mine was the reason for it. This is the short version, from the Town’s own history page, its museum and Wikipedia’s article; where they differ, both are given.

McKissick

The settlement was first called McKissick, Wikipedia records, after the owner of the mine. The Town’s history page credits the early settlers, many of them Italian immigrants who came to mine the coal, with building the community; Wikipedia’s list of where the miners came from runs longer, through Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, several Slavic countries and Latin America. The Town’s page speaks of dangerous work for low pay.

1907: three daughters name a town

The land belonged to Frederick A. Clark, and in 1907 his daughters laid out the townsite and named it for their father, as Wikipedia has it; the Town says it was incorporated in 1907 by three young women, Clark’s daughters, who named it after him. The incorporation date Wikipedia takes from the State Archives is December 26, 1907. Firestone to the north and Dacono to the south are its neighbours on the same coalfield; together the three towns are the Carbon Valley, the name their shared recreation district, library branch and help center all carry.

The Town’s page picks out a few early milestones: a first high school in 1916, and a lake funded by the community itself. The lake is Milavec, now the centre of the Frederick Recreation Area.

The mine closes

The Frederick Coal mine closed in 1960, Wikipedia records, and the town stayed small for decades after. The Town remembers the flood of 1957 as the time neighbours pulled together, and says they did so again after the flood of September 2013. James M. Crist, mayor from 1961 to 1964, gave his name to the park at the entrance to downtown, the Town’s Crist Park page says.

What replaced coal was oil and gas, deeper down. Frederick lies in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, and the Town’s oil and gas page counts more than 600 wells drilled inside its boundaries. That legacy is still being worked out: the Town’s timeline of its dispute with K.P. Kauffman, which owns more than 100 mostly low-producing wells in town, runs from the state’s rejection of the company’s $10.3 million closure plan in October 2023 through leaks reported in January 2024, a temporary moratorium on new oil and gas applications passed by the Board of Trustees on April 23, 2024, and a state order of June 26, 2025 to plug two Frederick wells within a year.

The boom

The 2010 census counted 8,679 people in Frederick and the 2020 census 14,513, both from Wikipedia’s infobox. The Town’s own demographics page now puts the population at 16,873 across 15.96 square miles, with 5,614 households, a median age of 37 and a median household income of $117,087, figures its 2024/25 community profile attributes to 2023 estimates. The profile counts nearly 400 businesses, from Agilent Technologies and Otter Products to the construction and manufacturing firms in the business parks along the interstate, and the Town’s history page notes a medical campus that opened its first phase in 2013. A Frederick Metropolitan District was organised by court order on November 18, 2019, and in 2024 the Town signed with Intrepid Fiber to build a town-wide fibre network, due to finish in late 2026.

In 2014 the Town adopted a new brand and logo, a stylised gas lamp in front of a mountain range, Wikipedia records, with the tagline “Built on What Matters.”

Keeping the coal camp

The mining past is kept on purpose. The original Frederick Town Hall was moved into Crist Park to become the Miners’ Memorial Museum, a Colorado Historic Landmark since January 26, 2012, with a diorama of the original townsite, mining tools, a coal stove, an original wine press, the original mayor’s chair and stained glass and a fireplace from the historic Johnson Farm; the Town’s Historic Preservation Committee, seven residents, keeps the inventory of the town’s historic assets and arranges the exhibits. The museum opens on the first Friday of each month from 5 to 7 pm. And every September Miners Day at Centennial Park, with its parade, burro race, vendors, bands and fireworks, is held, in the Town’s words, to honor and remember Frederick’s mining heritage.