Giberson Bay on Lake Dillon

If you drive the Dam Road from Frisco to Dillon/Silverthorne, you will pass the Giberson Bay day use area. Every wonder how it got it's name?

The Giberson family homesteaded the land in the early 1900s. The photo to the left is from a hillside north of the Giberson hay meadow, looking down on a small portion of the 179 acres Howard Giberson left as a protected area to be called Giberson Preserve.

The original ranch, which the Giberson family homesteaded in the early 1900s, was just east of this photo along the road from Frisco to Old Dillon. For six decades the Gibersons ran cattle on the land. At its largest, the ranch was 720 acres.

In the mid-1950s, however, Denver Water began looking for a site to build a High Country dam and create a reservoir, and began buying most of the land around Old Dillon. As of June, 1961, only four ranches had not been sold to Denver Water - the Gibersons being one of them. Condemnation proceeding began that month, and Denver Water was offering the Gibersons about $105 per acre for 380 acres. Eventually they settled for just under $450 an acre.

By the mid-1960s, the family watched as the land they worked for so many decades got covered by water.