Morrison Ciderfest

On Sept. 26, 2026, Jamee Chambers stood at an old-fashioned cider press in the small park in front of The Lodge at Red Rocks, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center in Morrison, and turned the crank while a crowd watched. The juice went out in free samples. For Ciderfest each year Chambers goes by Apple Annie. “It really kicks off fall,” said Casey Osborne of Thornton as she drank a sample. She and her family come back every year to buy local artwork, taste cider and buy books from Red Rocks Elementary.

The grounds sit at the corner of Highway 8 and Summer Street. From downtown the way runs over Bear Creek to a main entrance on the left. Admission is free, and the day runs from 10 a.m. to dark. Visitors who leave their cars at the free lots, among them the Park-n-Ride at C-470, Red Rocks Elementary and Morrison Park off Union Avenue, ride in on the Ciderfest Express. These are golf carts driven by Morrison’s students and youth, and the drivers take tips. Return rides leave from behind the beer garden.

Clydesdales, pumpkins and an Allosaurus

Music runs all day on The John Leonard Family Stage. The 2026 lineup was Joe Wren at 10 a.m., Dakota Blonde at noon, Second Gear Bluegrass at 2 p.m. and Trash Pandas at 4 p.m. Sturdy Clydesdales pull a wagon through the festival. The organizers’ notice for 2026 put the rides at “11ish to 3ish (horses run the show).” There are bounce houses for small children, blacksmith demonstrations and a vintage firetruck. Pets are welcome. In 2023 children played on the old fire truck while others painted pumpkins.

Much of the selling is done by schools and clubs raising money. The Red Rocks Elementary School PTA sells pumpkins and used books. Popcorn and fresh apple cider, $2 apiece, benefit the National Honor Society chapter at D’Evelyn Junior-Senior High School. In 2026 two of its students, Kurt Fedorczyk and Lucas Laurent, worked the cider stand for tips. Two Red Rocks Elementary students, Heidi King and Terra Riggs, sold handmade bead crafts to pay for their fifth-grade trip to Washington, D.C. The South Jefferson County Rotary sells a $30 self-guided tasting of local hard ciders.

New Belgium Brewing pours in the beer garden: Mountain Time Lager, Voodoo Ranger, Pumpkin Ale, Angry Orchard and Stem Cider, in 14-ounce pours at $8 a ticket. Morrison’s Elizabeth Burris volunteered in the beer tent in 2026. “I do love it because you get to see all the town people,” she said. The 2026 food trucks were The Cow, Jalapeño Food Truck, Mischief Pizza, Moe’s BBQ and Lucky Mary’s Baking & Sweet Company. The artisan market holds just over 20 spaces for fine art and handmade goods, and its organizers try to keep any two booths from selling the same style.

The Morrison Natural History Museum brings dinosaurs and the natural history of the Front Range. In 2023 families gathered at its tent around a replica Allosaurus. Lucas Todd, a paleontological interpreter at the museum, told them the animal had roamed the Morrison area 175 million years ago. Festival-goers in 2026 outnumbered the town’s population. Jocelyn Jeffries and Matt Dimichele came in after a morning drive. “We were going leaf peeping and we came here after, so now we’re enjoying our cider,” Jeffries said.

Apple Annie’s presses

The press is where the festival began. Chambers owns two. The older one is 150 years old, according to a 2023 account. She brings the newer one because it works faster. Volunteers feed apples into it and turn a wheel that grinds them into small pieces, and the pieces are then pressed into juice. That year a caption showed Paul Sutton at the press, and volunteers served gallons of the free cider to hundreds of people. A 2015 report described Chambers working “the town’s own cider press.” The festival’s website speaks of “our antique cider press.” In 2010 the program invited visitors to make their own cider on “Apple Annie’s” historic presses, bringing their own apples and empty containers.

The apples have not always been local. Before suburban development the region was known for its fruit orchards, and stray fruit trees still stand in backyards and open spaces around Morrison. In 2015 two spring freezes left almost no apple crop, and Chambers pressed fruit from the Western Slope. In 2023 hail forced her to buy apples. In 2026 a warm winter followed by a spring freeze wiped out most of the Colorado crop, and she again could not get apples from local farmers. “In fact, that’s why we have had so much trouble with bears,” she said, speaking of the bears that raided trash cans and homes in Morrison that summer.

The lawn of the nursing home

Chambers proposed the festival to the town in 1989, according to a 2015 Denver Post report. She said her aim was to “have a fun way to get to know neighbors and get to know each other on a nice warm October day.” Later accounts count the years differently. A 2023 report put the first event 34 years back. A 2024 report said 33. The 2026 Canyon Courier called that year’s festival the 36th and wrote that Chambers had helped start it. A 2024 account called it a one-woman effort.

In that 2024 account, Chambers took her cider press to the front lawn of the nursing home. “It’s the biggest gathering space we have,” she said. “My idea was to have people in town bring their apples to the cider press. Partly it was seeing apples fall off the trees; I didn’t want them to go to waste.” She added: “The people in the nursing home get to meet the town people, and vice versa.”

The host facility appears under different names in different years. It was the Bear Creek Nursing Home in 2010, Bear Creek Center in 2015, Prestige Care Center in 2024 and The Lodge at Red Rocks in 2026. The 2015 report said the festival had been held on that lawn since its beginning.

Tractors, then a town committee

The festival grew one year at a time. Chambers asked residents to bring their tractors and line them up on the lawn. “It became the tractor show and cider fest,” she said. “Most of the people in the nursing home had roots in rural areas and were thrilled.” Gina Barry, a longtime volunteer, remembered the volunteers lining up tractors for the residents, some of whom had come from Colorado farming country.

In 2006 the town of Morrison lent its support and Ciderfest became a large annual festival. The 2010 program shows what that looked like. It had a horseshoe contest and a beer tent run by VFW Post 3471, a car show, pedal tractors, a jumping castle, a climbing wall from the National Guard, hay rides by Bear Creek Stables and the Holiday Bar, and the Morrison Town Band.

By 2014 the festival drew an estimated 3,500 people, double the year before. The 2015 report credited good weather, a big apple harvest and new marketing aimed beyond the town. In August 2015 the town created the nonprofit Promote Morrison as a fundraising umbrella for its events. Kara Zabilansky, the town administrator, gave its purpose: “To create a sense of community.” Ryan Kloberdanz of the organizing committee warned that year: “Honestly, if it gets much bigger than what we had last year, we’re going to kind of run out of space to house people.” By 2024 the festival typically drew up to 4,000. “I just stood back and let it happen and it took off,” Chambers said that year. “It isn’t just a townie thing anymore, but it still has that small-town feel to it.”

Volunteers from Promote Morrison’s Ciderfest committee run it now, most of them Morrison residents. Committee member Maja Stefansdottir said beer and cider sales pay for the next year’s festival. She said the nonprofit is slowly building reserves for something for the town, such as a small stage or bear-proof trash cans. Shari Raymond is a former member of the town board and planning commission and now serves on the committee. “Everybody on the committee has a job and everybody does it,” she said. “I’ve not been on a nicer committee in my entire life.” After the 2026 festival, the organizers posted their next date: Saturday, Sept. 25, 2027.