Around 1890, New Yorker Henry T. Mayham convinced the Denver Presbytery to build a Presbyterian University on land that he owned on
Crown Point, the highest point in what was then Arapaho County. After delays due to the depression of 1893, the school was incorporated
as Westminster University of Colorado and was intended to be the "Princeton of the West." Classes began at the Crown Point campus in
September of 1908 (tuition was $50).
The school was converted from a coed institution to an all-male school in 1915, but the sexist Board of Trustees learned its lesson two
years later when the University was forced to close its doors after all of its students were drafted into World War I. The building was
sold to the Pillar of Fire Church in 1920, and the new institution (still in operation today) was named the Belleview College and
Preparatory School. The name "Westminster" lived on, however, as the town of Harris had named itself after its university upon the town's
incorporation into a city in 1911.
Westminster continued to grow, and soon had some of the largest apple and cherry orchards in the country (Colorado's arid climate is
well-suited to such crops). Denverites flocked to Westminster in the spring to enjoy the apple trees in blossom, and in the fall to
purchase their fruit.
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