Frozen Dead Guy

One of the things that put Nederland, Colorado, on the map has nothing to do with mining, railroads, or mountain scenery. Instead, it is the town’s unusual connection to a frozen corpse. The annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival began as a celebration of the strange but true story of Bredo Morstøl, a Norwegian man whose body was cryonically preserved after his death in 1989. His grandson brought the body to Nederland, where it was stored in a shed packed with dry ice on a nearby mountainside.

When local authorities discovered the arrangement in the 1990s, the story attracted national attention. Although the town prohibited future cryonic storage facilities, it allowed Morstøl’s body to remain, and the unusual tale became part of local folklore. Rather than shy away from its eccentric reputation, Nederland embraced it.

Beginning in 2002, the town launched Frozen Dead Guy Days, an annual festival held each March. What started as a small local celebration grew into an internationally known event featuring coffin races, costume contests, polar plunges, live music, and a healthy sense of humor. The festival became so popular that attendance often exceeded the town’s population many times over, bringing thousands of visitors to a community of only about 1,500 residents.

In 2023, after more than twenty years in Nederland, the festival moved to nearby Estes Park because it had simply outgrown the small mountain town where it began. Yet the event remains closely identified with Nederland, where the remarkable story of “Grandpa Bredo” first unfolded and where a quirky local legend became part of the town’s identity.

Every town has stories that make it unique. While Nederland’s mining heritage explains how the town was founded, Frozen Dead Guy Days helps explain the personality of the community today. It reflects the independent spirit, sense of humor, and willingness to embrace the unusual that continue to define this mountain town