Welcome to Ridge Home History

Written Friday, June 23, 2006
I decided to re-write this history of Ridge Home. The previous version had tons of updates and it started to jump around too much. So here it is, welcome to Ridge Home, Arvada, Colorado.

Let's take a trip back to the year of 1909. The State of Colorado planned to build a 310 acre site 2 miles west of Arvada for mental hospital to soon be named Ridge Home. Ridge Home ended up being built on the south side of Arvada on property which is most Wheat Ridge today. One year later, Ridge Home was ready for residents. The final building on the original campus wouldn't be finished until 1936. The main administration building proudly wore the cornerstone saying "A.D. 1910 State Home and Training School for mental defectives, founded by the State of Colorado through the efforts of Ella Parish Williams of the State Board of Correctives." Ridge Home got the name from the street that runs on the north side of the main campus, Ridge Road. It's real name is "Colorado State Home for Mental Defectives at Ridge." The first patient had arrived in July of 1912. By 1936 Ridge had a enrollment of 260 out of the capacity for 300 patients. Those who were committed to Ridge were to stay there the rest of their life. Unless the were transferred to Pueblo Insane Asylum. Some got to stay with family members when they awaited their transfer. Among the original buildings was a school, and a farm that patients would work at with supervision. Ridge Home was also made a stop on the Tramway to Golden, and the efforts of Simon Guggenheim established its own separate post office.

In the 1960's my grandma started working at Ridge. She was what was known as a "pill pusher." She hated that the people at Ridge were always drugged. But it was her job and she had to do this to the people there. She also disliked seeing the children in the hospital. She would see them one day and the next they passed. She had also said that perfectly normal kids were dropped off there, but by living there all their lives, they became social mentally disabled. People were dropped off at Ridge, and forgotten. It was like their dirty little secret. My grandmother worked there for quite sometime. She had passed in 1988 from cancer.

1989 the Federal government had started to get complaints from people on Ridge Home. At first the feds were going to charge Ridge with $8 million if the state didn't improve the conditions. Ridge Home was constantly littered with the bodily waste from the patients using every part of Ridge as a bathroom, not many of the staff seemed to care.

When two Federal agents came to Ridge Home to see the current conditions, they stood talking to the director at the time, while a man was banging his head on a wall. Two orderlies used "extreme excessive force" to stop him. In 1990 they determined that Ridge needed 155 new staffers, and they had to spend at least $1.3. million to get the new staff. The people who ran Ridge said that everything at Ridge was safe and was fine, so they refused to do anything that they were asked to do.

All of the legal action against Ridge Home started in 1989 and in 1990 they were given 5 days to get things fixed, then the staff and adminstrations at Ridge started complaining that 5 days was a short deadline. When in fact, they had 1 year and 5 days. People who had family at Ridge started to get worried that Ridge would be gone.

In 1990 the same year, Ridge got a 90-day reprieve. The feds found that the conditions at Ridge were getting better. This reprieve ran out on July 8, 1990. Then again they extended the deadline to August 17. But on August 29, 1990 the Feds decided it was enough, they cut off more than $12 million in Medicaid funds to Ridge Home. The state decided it was wrong and appealed. They said that they had taken massive steps to clean up.

Then all this mess made Ridge Home decide to move patients out into communities. Neither the communities or the patients were ready. They were moved into places that are group homes, that is where they reside today.

After the residents of Ridge Home left, there was still patients who would have to stay and some would just come back for classes or other things at Ridge Home. Only VERY "severe cases" were kept to live at Ridge. So past the day it was "closed," Ridge Home still had residents and staff.

September 1991 a fire ran though one of the abandoned Ridge Home buildings. It was the third blaze in the last two months. No one was hurt, but firefighters did drench a black and white cat that they found in the attic of the building. This building was the one that was three stories and it has been gone since then, the roof collapsed. On the following day, a security guard was arrested on suspicion of setting the building on fire. His name was Micheal George King, a two-week guard from Burns International Security Services, the name is a little ironic... He was 24 and set the fire in the attic. Later he admitted to setting the fire. This was the administration building that once so proudly stood at the main entrance of Ridge. The cornerstone was found in tact and was taken in 1992 by the Colorado Historical Society.

In 1994 an Aurora man died when an argument over a woman ended in a shooting. Michael Fluellen, 22, was shot once in the face, in the northeast parking lot of the Wheat Ridge Regional Center (the new Ridge Home) he was a psychiatric technician. It happened at 6:10 a.m. as shifts were changing. All because the man, Wilbur Swift, thought that Fluellen was having an affair with his wife. The police were unable to tell if the murder was an accident or not. Swift "allegedly made a statement that he didn't know the guy (Fluellen) had a gun," Arvada police Sgt. Merle Westling said. "Apparently they were having a pretty good go at it." The center, commonly known as the Ridge Home, is a residential facility for the developmentally disabled. Numerous Ridge Home employees saw the fight, and many more saw Fluellen's body, draped with a white sheet, lying outside the northeast entrance. Sharon Wallace, a psychiatric technician who worked with Fluellen, said he had worked a double shift Monday night and Tuesday morning without complaint. "That's just the kind of guy he was," Wallace said. "He was really easy- going, very happy with his job." Wallace was disturbed that violence had reached her place of employment. "Any more, you're not even safe in your own home," she said. "People are getting shot in their front yards, they're being shot in their back yards, and now, at the workplace."

Through out the years people have thought of building on top of Ridge. I have never seen it happen, so I never expected it... But now it is actually happening. It looks so horrible there, the place has holes in the ground, the paths are undriveable, and it is such a mess! It has in the past been planned for housing for troubled teens, but that is why Look Out Correction started in Golden, they had planned an amusement park for the land, a rec. center, other houses, commercial use, Red Rocks wanted to use it, they have used some of the property, but it wasn't the original site. But the clean up of the asbestos could have kept those plans at bay in 1998 it would have cost $5 million to clean it all.

They had Pedophiles living in the Ridge Home property in April of 1999. It was all on the main grounds of the original facility. There were 22 developmentally disabled sex offenders confined in Ridge Home.

Ridge Home today is gone. They have torn it down and built a Super Target and a few other stores in it's place. One of the most historical and oldest buildings, the Education and Training Building was torn down with no reason. The spot where it was, is now just an empty spot of dirt. The chapter of Ridge Home has finally come to an end, most things do.

I would like to say a special "Thank You" to the staff at the Wheat Ridge Regional Center. Your emails and comments on Ridge Home have been some of the best I have ever gotten. Coming from those of you who did work at Ridge, those of you who know/knew what it was like and are able to tell me I did a good job, it just means the world to me.