John Brisben Walker was a devoted family man and visionary businessman who shaped much of the Front Range landscape in this area through his search for an ideal family home and his preservation of thousands of acres around Morrison. A self-made millionaire by 1905, he bought more than four thousand acres here, including what is now Mount Falcon Park, and his efforts to preserve large tracts of land later became the foundation for Denver Mountain Parks and Jefferson County Open Space. The ruins here are the remains of his grand craftsman-style chalet, built for his wife Ethel and their children beginning in 1909, with ten bedrooms, a music room, observation deck, eight fireplaces, a library, and servants quarters. Tragedy struck when Mrs. Walker died in 1916, and after lightning struck the house and it burned in 1918, John Walker left Colorado for good. Beyond preserving this land, he advanced farming in Colorado by introducing irrigated alfalfa as a crop, developed Denver's Riverfront Park with a racetrack, a Castle of Commerce featuring art, agricultural, and mineral displays, and a theater, invested in the Stanley Steamer steam-powered automobile, and owned and edited Cosmopolitan magazine, making it a voice for progressive ideas.