BeatTour.com
(15th and Platte Streets)
My Brother's Bar at 15th and Platte (2376 15th Street), is not only a great Beat site, but it's also the oldest bar in Denver still serving alcohol on the original site (photos on the wall prove that the place has barely changed since the '30s). This is a bar where Cassady definitely drank (his older brother was a bartender here). There's no sign outside - never has been - but it's on the southeastern corner, across from Shakespeare's Poolhall. Owner Jim Karagas will happily give you a copy of a letter that Cassady wrote from the reformatory, asking a friend to pay his bar tab here, and if you stop back by the restrooms and pay phone, you'll see the letter framed along with a large photograph of Kerouac and Cassady. Before you leave, be sure to have one of the bar's trademark sandwiches, the famous JCB (jalapeno cheeseburger). 
Outside the bar, walk just a half block on 15th Street toward downtown, and you'll come to Confluence Park, where the Platte River and Cherry Creek are mingled for a geographical moment. The place has resonance for Coloradans because of the discovery of gold on these banks, but for a reader of the Beats, this was the place that Cassady considered "my beach," and he wandered here on regular Sunday jaunts with his father, where they'd sit under the overpasses and meet with down-and-out friends. Cassady describes it in his memoir, The First Third: 
Confluence Park "Sunday was my day to...tramp from morn to night over the miles of countless wonders that I set out to find below the Larimer line of Denver's bowery in a vast area where more and more often I came to roam away much of my childhood. Now, father knew this region better than most Denver people, yet soon not so intimately as my impressionable mind which, once initiated, expelled much of its early yearning in searches through the ever-new complexities abounding there in myriad profusion... Mainly it was the banks of the Platte that provided the flexuous corridor for my travels..."
DIRECTIONS TO THE NEXT STOP
Go back toward downtown on 15th Street for six or seven blocks, taking a right on Blake Street, crossing over Cherry Creek and taking a quick left onto Speer Boulevard, heading south for 10 or 12 blocks, taking a right turn onto West 8th Avenue Traveling west (toward the mountains), 8th Avenue will eventually curve left. Follow the signs directing you to westbound Sixth Avenue (stay in the right-hand lane.) Continue on West Sixth Avenue to the Sheridan Boulevard exit. Turn left on Sheridan and continue south for 13 or 14 blocks to West Alameda Avenue. Take a right on West Alameda and drive west for 10-11 blocks to Harlan Street. Take a left on Harlan and drive for 4-5 blocks, taking a right on Center Avenue. Kerouac's former home is the third or fourth house on the left, with a fence around the front. KEROUAC'S LAKEWOOD "HOMESTEAD" >>>