A Brief History of South Denver & University Park

By Steve Fisher

University Park was founded in the 1880s when the University of Denver (Colorado Seminary) moved from downtown Denver to land donated by potato farmer Rufus Clark. The University, founded by Methodists, wanted to escape the urban blight of the city and build an oasis for education. Liquor production or consumption was not allowed, and though today the area has many pubs a number of home mortgages to this day contain old covenants forbidding the making or selling of spirits. Around University Park grew the town of South Denver, which was annexed to the city of Denver in the early twentieth century. For many years in the late 1800s the primary employer was the University of Denver, but over time others moved into the area for its attractive homes and well respected schools. The area has traditionally been upper middle class and has enjoyed one of the lowest crime rates in the city. At the geographic center of University Park is Observatory Park, named for the famous Chamberlain Observatory, built in the 1890s and still fully operational with popular public viewing nights. In the early part of the century Colorado Governor Henry Buchtel lived in the park, as did a number of famed early DU faculty such as Ammi Hyde, who beat the freshman boys in an annual foot race well into his 90's. The area boomed after World War II as many from other parts of the country who were stationed in Colorado chose to remain and make it their home. The area has remained prosperous and continues to grow, sharing in the overall success that the Denver metro area has experienced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614238287

Steve Fisher

Over the course of his life as a baby boomer, Steve Fisher has been a musician, a radio disc jockey, and a record producer before finding his true path as a writer. He is the author of the humorous animal classic, The World Is Your Litter Box. He lives in Studio City, CA, with his wife, Judy, and their three cats.

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INTRODUCTION

Blake Gumprecht, a former newspaper reporter who is now an associate professor of geography and chair of the University of New Hampshire Department of Geography, recently published a book entitled The American College Town (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008). In his book, Gumprecht examines some of the most interesting aspects of college towns in the United States. University Park, Colorado, located adjacent to the University of Denver (DU), demonstrates some of these aspects, such as a distinctive mix of residential and commercial districts. Gumprecht writes that college towns are exceptional places, worth knowing and worth knowing about. They are an essential component of American geography. They are part of what makes life different in these United States. They reflect the singular nature of American higher education and the indelible characteristics of American culture.

According to Gumprecht, the American college town is a youthful place that is home to highly educated people who are most likely to hold white-collar jobs. These people tend to be affluent compared to those in nearby communities but have higher living costs, especially for housing. The college town is a transient place where residents are more likely to rent than own, live in high-density apartments and have roommates. University Park, Colorado, has certainly witnessed a tremendous increase in high-density apartment construction in the past twenty years. Gumprecht notes that the college town is cosmopolitan, unconventional and offers a high quality of life, certainly characteristics of University Park and South Denver.

The geography of the American college town typically includes the odd mix of fraternity rows, student housing and faculty enclaves. Commercial districts near colleges and universities tend to be home to an interesting mix of businesses, including coffeehouses, bookstores, pizzerias, bike shops, music stores, bars and ethnic restaurants. College towns tend to be more politically liberal and politically engaged than their neighboring communities, where people with widely differing backgrounds coexist. College sports may play a prominent role in the culture, especially on weekends. At DU, hockey rules the day rather than football, which was dropped in 1961. (A popular local T-shirt reads, DU football—undefeated since 1961.) College towns are home to the inevitable town versus gown clashes between student renters and homeowners, and University Park is no exception, though in recent years disputes have decreased with improved campus-neighborhood communication.

In researching the American college town, Gumprecht conducted more than two hundred interviews, took two thousand photographs and amassed enough material to fill three filing cabinets and a six-foot-long bookshelf. Though he did not visit the University of Denver, he visited numerous U.S. college towns, and several are explored in depth in his book. They include Norman, Oklahoma; Ithaca, New York; Manhattan, Kansas; Davis, California; Athens, Georgia; Auburn, Alabama; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Newark, Delaware. This book will focus on South Denver and University Park but will explore far beyond the narrow town-and-gown relationship. As we shall see, South Denver has grown and developed far beyond just the University of Denver.

Clark Secrest, writing in the Colorado Heritage magazine in 1992, pointed out that the short-lived town of South Denver had its own railway and its own university but almost no saloons. The town hall was located at 1520 South Grant Street in the former home of Mayor James Fleming, who served three terms. South Denver extended from Alameda Avenue south to Yale and from Colorado Boulevard west to the South Platte River, according to Millie Van Wyke in her wonderful 1991 book The Town of South Denver, Its People, Neighborhood and Events since 1858. For the purposes of this book, I have kept virtually the same boundaries with the exception of using a western boundary of Santa Fe. The town of South Denver formally existed for just eight years, from 1886 to 1894, but played a crucial role in the growth and development of the University of Denver, and vice versa. Colorado Seminary, as the University of Denver was originally known, was founded in 1864 by John Evans and a group of prominent Denver citizens. Evans had previously founded Northwestern University in Chicago (Evanston is named for him) and wanted to create a college in Denver so future generations of students would not have to travel back east for their higher education. Colorado Seminary occupied a solitary building at Fourteenth and Arapahoe Streets in Denver, approximately where the parking garage for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts stands today.

In 1880, the school added the name University of Denver as the degree-granting institution, while the Colorado Seminary would own all property. By the 1880s, the Seminary Building was landlocked, making expansion difficult. Downtown Denver was also increasingly becoming home to a large number of saloons and brothels, just the type of institutions the good Methodist founders of Colorado Seminary wanted to avoid. They wanted to create a utopian educational colony, a university park away from the ills of the city. Evans already had some experience in this area, having helped develop Evanston, Illinois, the suburb of Chicago where his Northwestern University was located.

Deciding to vacate the downtown location for a more pastoral setting, the board of trustees, in 1886, considered several offers of land, including parcels in Barnum’s Addition and the Swansea area. The offer that was accepted came from a group of farmers headed by Rufus Potato Clark, who promised 150 acres three miles southeast of the city limits in what was then Arapaho County. Clark had conditions to go with his offer, such as the planting of trees and the creation of a street grid. He also demanded that no alcohol ever be made or sold in the area. Legend has it that Clark was a reformed alcoholic who had been saved at a tent revival meeting. Today, you will still find some home mortgages in South Denver with old covenants against producing or selling alcohol on the premises. In areas outside Clark’s original gift, the town of South Denver later placed a $3,500 annual saloon license fee, high enough to keep out most of these types of establishments.

Within a short time, other gifts of cash or neighboring land swelled the university’s holdings to nearly five hundred acres in the immediate area. Methodist bishop Henry White Warren and his wife, Elizabeth, demonstrated their support by purchasing land east of what is now University Boulevard and, in 1887, began construction on a home that came to be known as Gray Gables. Clark’s land offered a stunning view of fifty miles of Front Range mountains, away from the smoke and pollution of Denver. Charles Haines, an early resident, recalled in an interview when he was 102 years old that jackrabbits and coyotes outnumbered people for a number of years. Over the next few years, the university sold lots in the area to raise revenue. In 1887, the Denver Circle Railroad extended a line into University Park.

The next year, ground was broken in University Park for Chamberlin Observatory. Real estate promoter and amateur stargazer H.B. Chamberlin had given the funds to build the observatory. One advantage of building an observatory in University Park was the lack of urban lighting, which can interfere with stargazing. Evans erected an office building at the corner of what are now East Evans Avenue and South Milwaukee Street, across the street from the northeast corner of Observatory Park. It housed the first Methodist church in the area. The building still stands and is today a real estate office. In 1890, ground was broken for University Hall, and in the fall of 1892, the school officially relocated to University Park. Church services would now be held in University Hall, which also housed all of the classrooms, administrative offices, the library and the gymnasium.

Though South Denver had several hundred residents by the mid-1890s, only a dozen or so residents were actually living in University Park. Despite these small numbers, the park already had telephone service, a post office, graded roads and water from a well at South Milwaukee Street and East Warren Avenue. It would be more than ten years before electricity was installed throughout the community. South Denver was still largely farmland, primarily growing alfalfa, corn, beats, apples and cherries. The town of South Denver ceased to exist when voters approved annexation by the City of Denver, primarily for financial reasons. Though the residents of South Denver wanted to maintain their independence from the big city to the north, the Panic of 1893 had a negative impact on real estate values. Taxes would be cheaper and more city services provided by annexation to Denver. South Denver was not alone. Within ten years, Denver had annexed Park Hill, Highlands, Barnum, Colfax, Globeville, Montclair and Valverde.

Today’s South Denver is a vibrant part of the metropolitan area, with beautiful homes and a tremendous variety of shopping and restaurants. Scrape-offs and pop-tops are replacing older, smaller homes; this is a hotly debated topic, as are short-term parking and a recent increase in medical marijuana shops. Some things never change, though. Liquor laws were relaxed after World War II, and it is now not so difficult to find a drink in South Denver, but neighbors still debate the granting of new liquor license applications. The trolley tracks, torn out in the ’40s when buses became the norm, are being replaced again by Denver’s expanding light rail system. Chamberlin’s twenty-inch refractor telescope is still the largest of its type in the Rocky Mountain region and attracts scores of viewers to Observatory Park. Though much of the breathtaking view of the Front Range is now gone, portions of it can still be seen here and there from higher buildings on the DU campus and other areas such as Harvard Gulch Park.

1

THE MOVE TO THE PARK

University Park was not the first settlement south of Denver. Montana City was the first settlement located in what was later to become Denver, established in 1858 during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush on the east bank of the South Platte River, just north of the confluence with Little Dry Creek. At the time, the site was in Kansas Territory, and the location was selected because it was next to placer gold diggings along the South Platte River. The gold diggings at Montana City proved disappointing, and the site was soon abandoned in favor of the settlement at Auraria a few miles downstream. The Montana City site is located in what is now Grant-Frontier Park and includes antique mining equipment and a replica of a log cabin.

JOHN EVANS

One must understand John Evans to understand the early history and development of University Park and South Denver. Evans was a complex man—a physician, railroad builder, educator, lawyer, state legislator and territorial governor. He was born on March 9, 1814, in Waynesville, Ohio. Evans graduated from Lynn Medical College in Cincinnati in 1838, and he began practicing medicine in Attica, Indiana, that same year, specializing in obstetrics. He became a prominent figure in the movement to establish the first state hospital for the insane in Indiana. In 1845, the hospital opened, and Evans was appointed first superintendent. That same year, he was asked to present a series of lectures at Rush Medical College in Chicago, and in 1848, he joined the faculty as professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children, a position he held until 1857. He was elected to the city council of Chicago in 1852 and founded Northwestern University in 1855. The suburb of Evanston, where Northwestern is located, is named for him.

Replica of a cabin in Grant-Frontier Park near Evans Avenue and the South Platte River. This was the site of Montana City, one of Denver’s