In Colorado’s rural areas, pastures full of cows, horses, and sheep are a familiar sight—but spotting a field of white buffalo is the kind of moment that’d make most people passing by do double take. However, if you’ve ever driven through the town of Evergreen, there’s a good chance you’ve had this experience, thanks to a local park that’s home to these rare and beautiful creatures.
Evergreen Memorial Park serves a diverse but complimentary function, acting as a cemetery, funeral home, wedding chapel, living museum, and wildlife preserve. The peaceful mountain property was originally purchased as a private park in 1965 by Ron and Carol Lewis. The couple has since committed the 100-acre site as a public tribute to the pioneers of Evergreen and the Old West.
Most of the land is used as an animal preserve. Coyotes, owls, foxes, horses, elk, buffalo, deer, ducks, geese, muskrats and one particularly faithful migrant heron occupy the acreage. But the pride of the preserve is the Lewies’s buffalo herd, which are a part of the Big E Game Ranch on-site. The animals have a direct bloodline to the original Great Plains Bison, the American “buffalo.”
In addition to having typical brown buffalo, the ranch is also home to several rare white buffalo as well. The white buffalo roam freely on their pasture, grazing on Colorado grasses and swimming freely in the reservoir. The almost dozen of them have become a staple of the herd, and a beautiful sight to behold…