The Old Lumber Yard Is Tabernash's New Living Room

Carrie Merchant is behind the counter at 'Nash Mtn Market most mornings, ringing up sandwiches and pouring coffee for whoever wandered in off Highway 40. On June 1, the market's first Ladies Night packed the small store with locals who came for the crowd as much as anything on the shelves. If you live in Tabernash and haven't been yet, you're behind the rest of town.

The market sits inside a building that has been three completely different things, and that history is worth knowing before you walk in.

A Building With Three Past Lives

Before it was anything else, the site on the south end of Tabernash was Highland Lumber. Then it became a cannabis grow facility for a company called IgadI. In 2022, Dan and Carrie Merchant, who had just moved to Grand County full time after years of visiting for the Fourth of July parade, the Flying Heels Rodeo, and community pancake breakfasts at Granby Ranch, bought the property and started over again.

They named it The Merchant Ranch. Soulshine CrossFit moved in first, back in August 2025, and the main building has kept filling up in phases since, with a second construction phase for two additional warehouses still in its early stages. What used to be a place that processed timber and then grew cannabis is now, block by block, becoming a small business park for the kind of companies a mountain town actually runs on.

What's Already Open Along Highway 40

By late summer 2026, at least ten businesses had moved into the park since the start of the year. Some are the kind you'd expect in a service-oriented mountain community. Others are surprising for a town this size to have gained all at once.

• Soulshine CrossFit, the first tenant to move in
• 'Nash Mtn Market, the general store and prepared-food counter
• Bishop Built Construction, whose owner also runs Ranger Insulation, which will occupy the first of the planned warehouses
• Grand County Wildfire Council
• Matt Shea, CPA
• Grand County Landscaping
• Steelog and Strategic Fabrication
• The Church Project
• Sky-Hi News, which relocated its newsroom to Tabernash in January 2026 after being headquartered on Main Street in Granby since 1995

That last one matters more than it might seem. Grand County's paper of record had operated out of the county seat for just over three decades. Its move puts the newsroom's front lobby window looking out at Byers Peak from a building on the edge of what used to be a lumber yard, which tells you something about where the county's center of gravity is shifting.

The Market That Solved a 20-Mile Problem

'Nash Mtn Market had a soft opening in April 2026, and Carrie Merchant has been candid about why she and Dan built it. Living in Tabernash means the nearest full grocery run is often in Fraser or Granby, and a forgotten gallon of milk can turn into a real errand.

"We saw that as an opportunity to jump in and help the rest of the community."

The market runs on a rotating cast of local cooks rather than a single kitchen. Tammy Reno of Mountain Goat Co. supplies prepared dinners, lunches, wraps, and salads sized for four to six people. Lizzie Clark, a Chicago-trained chef who owns Sweetpea and Thyme, handles the healthier grab-and-go side of the case. Between the two of them, the shelves change enough that regulars have a reason to stop back more than once a week.

The Merchants are planning to add preordering and business-to-business catering this fall, which would extend the market's reach beyond walk-in traffic to the other companies now sharing the property with it.

Grand Opening, Coming This September

The Merchants have said the whole business park, not just the market, will throw a joint grand opening party in September 2026. An exact date hadn't been locked in as of the most recent reporting, so keep an eye on 'Nash Mtn Market's usual channels if you want to be there when every tenant in the park celebrates together. Given how much has opened since the year began, it's worth treating this less as a ribbon-cutting for one store and more as the formal unveiling of an entire corner of town.

Not Replacing the Tavern, Just Giving It Company

Tabernash has had exactly one recognized dining anchor for a long time. Tabernash Tavern opened in June 2008 when chef Alberto Sapien, who had spent years as executive chef at the Ranch House at Devil's Thumb Ranch, partnered with owner David McKnight to turn a building in Tabernash into a restaurant. The Tavern has since become a fixture, having held a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in past years and building a following around a rotating menu, a deep wine list, and dishes like filet mignon and French onion soup.

The Tavern was built for an evening out. It's reservations, a wine list, a night when you want someone else to cook. 'Nash Mtn Market is built for the opposite: the five-minute stop between errands that turns into an hour because someone you know is also at the counter. Tabernash didn't have a version of that before this year. Now it does, just down the road from Devil's Thumb Ranch, the same guest ranch that puts Tabernash on outsiders' radar for its Nordic ski trails.

What This Actually Says About Tabernash

None of this shows up if you're only looking at Tabernash from the highway. The town's official population sits around 400 full-time residents, and its post office has been running at 8,400 feet above sea level for more than 120 years. That's a small number of people to generate this much new activity in under a year, and it says the town's day-to-day center isn't fixed. It moved once from a lumber yard to a grow facility and it's moving again now, this time toward a market with a coffee counter and a construction company sharing a parking lot with a CrossFit gym.

If you already live here, that's the kind of shift worth watching in person rather than reading about secondhand. Stop by 'Nash Mtn Market on a weekday morning, or plan around the grand opening party once a date lands. Either way, you'll be there before most of the county figures out what's happening in Tabernash.

For more on what's changing in the neighborhoods around Grand County, including Tabernash, browse the Tabernash neighborhood guide from The Simple Life Colorado, a Fraser-based team that's been tracking these mountain communities since 2011. If you ever want to talk about what any of this means for property in the area, reach out. Contact Us.