A Brief History
The Early Missions, 1860–1887
With the new territory awash in saloons and lumber yards and makeshift hotels, frequented by land speculators, miners, and merchants, Jack Kehler, the newly named sheriff of Arapahoe County, saw a need for clergy. He invited his father, an Episcopal priest, to join him. A month later, The Rev. John H. Kehler ("Father Kehler") arrived by stagecoach. He had left behind a congregation in Sharpsburg, Maryland, not much enamored of their rector's Union sympathies. The nation was on the brink of the Civil War.
Kehler and his flock were soon celebrating church services in the Union School House on McGaa Street on the very banks of a flood-prone Cherry Creek. Together they formed the Church of Saint John in the Wilderness—"in the Wilderness," for one member of the vestry noted that the closest Episcopal church was 700 miles away. The congregation soon moved into a church building vacated by the Southern Methodists. Father Kehler was the first of many circuit-riding clergy serving missions in the mountains and on the plains, holding services in gambling halls, saloons, or other available quarters in the new U.S. territory.
St. John's Cathedral Historical Tableaux Program, October 15, 1939
