The Fort (Morrison, Colorado)

Did You Know?

• The Fort's menu features local ingredients and regional game, particularly bison, elk, and quail.
• Recipes are inspired by a 3,000-volume rare and historic cookbook library amassed by Sam Arnold.
• New menu ideas are considered through a semi-annual process involving the restaurant's kitchen staff.

History

The Fort in Morrison, Colorado, began as an ambitious project for Sam Arnold, a Denver advertising executive, who constructed the adobe building between 1961 and 1963. Modeled after Bent’s Fort, the structure required more than 80,000 handmade adobe bricks, with beams shaped by drawknives, foot adzes, and hand planes. Arnold originally intended it to be a living history museum and family home, but to secure Small Business Administration funding for the interior, he shifted plans and completed the first floor as a restaurant.

This 300-seat, Western-themed establishment opened on February 1, 1963. Arnold created a menu based on ingredients available in Colorado during Bent’s Fort’s era and promoted frontier cooking through the public television series Frying Pans West. After his second marriage, he sold the restaurant in 1973, but it returned to him via foreclosure in 1986. In 1997, the restaurant hosted President Bill Clinton’s state dinner for the 23rd G8 summit.

Following the death of his second wife in 1998, Arnold’s daughter, Holly Arnold Kinney, bought 49% of the operating business in December 1999, with her father retaining 51%. She scaled back her media company, Arnold Media Services, Inc., to become the full manager and operator of The Fort, running it alongside her father until his death in 2006. That year, Kinney purchased the real property from his estate, becoming sole owner and operator. She also founded the Tesoro Cultural Center in 1999, a nonprofit that hosted an Indian Market and Powwow and other cultural events at the Fort, until it dissolved in 2025 upon her retirement.

Committed to historic preservation, Kinney secured The Fort’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 and placed a voluntary historic easement on the property with the Colorado Historical Foundation in 2025. On January 6, 2026, Kinney retired and sold the restaurant and property to Revesco Properties and City Street Investors.