Every year, the US Mint (on Colfax Avenue in Denver) strikes over ten billion coins identifiable by the small D that appears below the date. The free guided tours of the Mint are one of Denver’s top attractions. Visitors can see the huge, noisy high-speed presses spitting out 40 million coins each day onto conveyor belts overflowing with a bright, glittering hoard to be counted, sorted and bagged. In the basement, lies the biggest collection of gold bars outside of Fort Knox. The shop is a haven for coin enthusiasts, with boxed sets of mint coins available. During the summer, queues frequently stretch round the block with waiting times of one hour or more. Tours last 20 minutes and begin every 20-30 minutes.

320 West Colfax Avenue at Cherokee Street
Tel: (303) 405-4761
Website: www.usmint.gov
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 8:00 am - 3:00 pm (opens 9:00 a.m. last Wed of the month).
Admission: Free.

Built in 1908, in the domed classical style, Colorado State Capitol embodies the confident civic pride of the young America at the turn of the century. The brilliant dome gleams with 24-carat gold leaf outdone only by the unique rose-colored Colorado onyx wainscoting inside. Quarried in Beulah, Colorado, the entire world supply of this onyx was used here. The highlight for the fit and healthy is the winding 93-step climb to the top of the dome, rewarded by panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains. Back at ground level, a brass marker on the steps reminds visitors that they are still ‘one mile above sea level’.

200 East Colfax Avenue, at Broadway
Tel: (303) 866-2604
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 7:00 am - 5:30 pm. Tours depart every 45 minutes 9:00 am to 2:30 pm. Dome open 9:00 am - 3:30 pm.

Admission: Free.

Colfax Avenue and Broadway Tramway - Painting by Joe Priselac

1864: Land north of the eventual state Capitol building is dedicated as Grand Avenue and becomes one of Denver's main streets.
1874: A drawing of the city shows the street, renamed Colfax Avenue, as a six-block street with a handful of homes lining it.
1880s and '90s: The city grows around Colfax, but an economic bust is the avenue's first major hurdle.
1886: Denver Tramway builds the first rail lines on Colfax.
1890: With 106,000 people, Denver is the 26th-largest city in the U.S., in part due to the growth on Colfax.
1893: A silver crash forces some Colfax businesses and homeowners to leave, beginning a dark period.
1900s to '40s: Aurora and Lakewood emerge; boom times for Colfax as U.S. 40 makes the avenue a gateway to the Rocky Mountains.

1900: Denver Tramway and Denver City Railway build a trolley system that allows commuters to move between Aurora and Denver.
1908: The Westside Benevolent Society creates the Golden Hill Cemetery, on West Colfax, which later becomes a historic landmark.
1916: Colfax is paved.
1917: The Colfax viaduct links the east and west portions of Colfax, creating a near-seamless road across Colorado. Colfax, part of U.S. 40, channels people through Denver on their way to the mountains.
1925: The most liberal zoning laws in Denver are put on Colfax Avenue, eventually paving the way for adult-oriented shops decades later.
1928: Buses are introduced.
1950s to '80s: Good economic times end with the arrival of Interstate 70, which routes traffic around Colfax.
1950: Colfax sees its last trolley.
1957: Land in front of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society is sold, making room for a shopping center that will one day be home to Casa Bonita restaurant.
1960s: North Capitol Hill sees an era of prostitution and drug sales.
1962: The interstate highway system is in full swing, beginning a steady decline on Colfax Avenue.
1974: Casa Bonita opens.
1983: Sid King's Crazy Horse Bar, the city's most notorious strip club, closes.
1990s and 2000s: A major Colfax revival is considered, then acted upon.
1994: A coalition among Aurora, Denver and Lakewood forms to rehabilitate the avenue.
2001: Construction begins on the Chamberlain Heights development in Denver. It is the first new residential development on Colfax in 80 years.
2004: Lakewood begins creating development guidelines to accentuate a retro feel for West Colfax.
2005: Denver adopts a "Main Street" zoning designation to lure more pedestrian-friendly and mixed-use development to Colfax.
2007: The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and The Children's Hospital plan to open at the old Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, creating a campus that could employ 16,000 people by 2010.

Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation novel On the Road, some of which takes place in Denver, contains several references to Colfax. The protagonist, Sal Paradise, at one point keeps an apartment there and drinks in its bars. When the characters Dean, Marylou and Ed Dunkel leave Denver, Kerouac writes that they "roared east along Colfax and out to the Kansas plains" — this was before the construction of Interstate 70.

Vanishing Point is a 1971 road movie starring Barry Newman as "Kowalski", Cleavon Little as "Supersoul", and Dean Jagger. The film is notable for its scenery from locations across the American Southwest and its social commentary on the post-Woodstock mood in the United States. It was one of the earliest films (following on the example of Easy Rider), to feature a rock music soundtrack. It is beloved by Mopar enthusiasts because it is one of the most significant movies ever to feature a classic Dodge muscle car. The film continues to be popular to this day and is considered a cult film. The start of the movie showed Kowalski cruising down Colfax Avenue to score speed at a biker bar. They even had Bob Palmer from Channel 4 news doing the interviews on television.

For The Glenn Miller Story (1953), the first feature-length movie ever shot in Denver, Lowry Air Force Base was turned into the site of a World War II USO show, and the corner of West Colfax Avenue and Fourteenth Street became a 1926 gas station.

In the "Erection Day" episode of South Park, Jimmy tries to buy a hooker at Colfax Point, a reference to sections of the avenue noted for prostitution. Another episode of South Park features a visit to Casa Bonita, a Mexican-themed restaurant and entertainment complex located on west Colfax in the city of Lakewood.

Denver area punk band The Colfax Stranglers takes its name from the street.

Five Iron Frenzy, a ska-punk band consisting of Denver natives, has a song called "Where the Zero Meets the Fifteen." The title refers to two bus routes that cross at this intersection. In the song, the narrator is waiting at a bus stop. The songs lyrics describe how an experience at Colfax & Broadway made the singer feel as though he would be unsuccessful in his continuing attempts to save the world.

In the movie About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson's character drives his RV along a stretch of East Colfax near Ogden Street. The viewer can clearly see the Royal Host Motel and the Ogden Theater in the shot.

In the movie Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Jimmy 'The Saint' Tosnia picks up a prostitute along East Colfax, in front of the Bluebird Theater.

East High School, built in 1925, is Denver's first high school. Students of East High included famed actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (once expelled for dressing up the campus statues on St. Patrick's Day), singer Judy Collins, Neal Cassady (Beat hero, honed his writing skills at East), Don Cheadle (nominated for a 2005 Academy Award for his portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda), Actress Pam Grier (films: Jackie Brown, Coffee, Foxy Brown, etc.), Dianne Reeves (received a Grammy Award of "Best jazz vocal album" for A Little Moonlight in 2004), Hattie McDaniel (America's first ever black Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress, playing Scarlet's servant in the 1939 epic film Gone With the Wind), Olympic gold medalist Jerome Biffle, Philip Bailey, of Earth, Wind, & Fire, Peter O'Fallon (Hollywood film director, who was publicized for the film Suicide Kings in 1998), T.J. Miller (a comedian who starred in the movie Cloverfield), Flobot Jamie Laurie, Miss America 1958 Marilyn Van Derbur, and the mother of the kid who played Spanky (Our Gang, the early-1900's comedy serial), was a teacher there. Spanky also reportedly lived in Denver. In early 1997 the film Asteroids was released using East High for a crowd scene.

For more info about East High School, be sure to visit Ancient Angels, East High Alumni Association.

Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Clint Eastwood's classic about a drifter and his pet orangutan, featured Eddie Bohn's Pig-N-Whistle on West Colfax, a fist-fight scene at the Zanza Bar, a country-Western joint on East Colfax, and Sid King's Crazy Horse strip lounge on East Colfax. In another scene Clint stays at the Royal Host Motel, 930 East Colfax Avenue, and rides the glass elevator to the curb, then walks east toward the Seven Eleven right across the street. You can also see them passing Jerry's Record Exchange on Capitol Hill.

In the early part of the century the great magician Harry Houdini and legendary writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came together at the Ogden Theater at 935 East Colfax for the purpose of engaging in a debate over the reality or myth of Spiritualism. For more on this famous debate, read the October 2007 issue of ColfaxAvenue.com.

The Satire Lounge: Bob Dylan, Smothers Brothers & Judy Collins

One day back in the sixties some relatively unknown scrawny kid living in the Capitol Hill neighborhood wandered over to Satire Lounge at 1920 East Colfax Avenue to play some Woodie Guthrie music. The story is that he got "hissed" right out of there. That kid was none other than Robert Zimmerman who had renamed himself Bob Dylan after poet Dylan Thomas. Bobbie later became the idolized troubadour of an entire generation with lightning quick twisting lyrical metaphors of great complexity and social importance. Dylan lived for a brief time at 1736 East 17th Avenue in a tiny wood house near Williams Street.

The Satire Lounge was also the beginning of two very famous comedy careers, those of Tommy and Dick Smothers, better known as The Smothers Brothers who hit their peak in the late 60s. The Smothers Brothers were spotted clowning around somewhat hilariously in the bar and around the billiards table when a talent manager suggested they make it a career. Equally significant, the brothers lived in the only apartment above the Satire, which is now occupied by Joe who has been a Satire employee for some twenty years. One source indicates the brothers went on to San Francisco to do their first show.

Famed folk singer Judy Collins also did some of her earliest performances at the Satire. She was a student at East High School just a few blocks away.

More recently and for decades the Satire has been owned by popular patron of Denver's Greek community, Pete Contos. Pete's father in law is Ari Zavaras, former Denver police chief, director of Colorado Dept. of Corrections and more recently Colorado's top cop, aka the Manager of Public Safety. Contos has been prominent in the colorful annual Greek Festival at Assumption Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Pete told this editor he came to the USA from Greece in 1956.

History of West Colfax Avenue

Colfax Avenue has been a major transportation route for over 100 years extending a total length of 26 miles from the plains to the mountains through the cities of Aurora, Denver and Lakewood and Golden. West Colfax Avenue has a long and colorful history. More than 8,000 years ago Native Americans first made the trek between the foothills and plains on paths that would someday become West Colfax Avenue. By the mid 1800's, Ute Indians routinely used this route to bring trade goods to markets in Denver. Golden Road, as it was first called, ran through the countryside connecting the early settlements of Denver and Golden. That countryside today is West Denver and Lakewood. In 1896, Golden Road was officially renamed Colfax Avenue after Schuyler Colfax, Vice President under President Ulysses S. Grant.

In Denver, the area between Decatur Street and the Platte River was known as Brooklyn. Brooklyn provided employment and a new streetcar line bringing families looking for more land to build homes. Residential development boomed. Except for the Voorhees subdivision, a small enclave of relatively expensive homes between Irving Street and Julian Street, Conejos Place and 16th Avenue, most of the houses were small residences occupied by factory workers and laborers. In 1889, eastern entrepreneurs Charles Welch and W.A.H. Loveland platted the Lakewood Subdivision located between Harlan Street and Carr Street on the south side of West Colfax Avenue. By 1892, a new hardware company located along the roadway was looking for 400 men to employ. The company was offering more than just jobs, housing and a general store were also available. While many of the early structures are long gone, the Loveland Home at 14th Avenue and Harlan Street remains today as a reminder of bygone days.

One of the most significant neighborhoods in the area west of Denver was the Jewish community that moved across the Platte River from Auraria (there was no viaduct at that time) to settle near Federal Boulevard and Avondale West to Sheridan Boulevard. "The West Side" as it was called, was a thriving community that offered kosher markets, a dry goods store, drugstores, and all the services needed for the families in the neighborhood. One famous resident was Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister of Israel, who lived at 1606 Julian Street when she was a teenager. Her home has been restored and relocated to the Auraria Campus in Downtown Denver.

Another neighborhood that is worthy of note is the Glen Creighton Subdivision. "The Glens" is bounded by West Colfax, 20th Avenue, Garrison Street and Dudley Street. Platted in 1923, the Glens was planned and designed as a "residence park" with winding streets and oddly shaped lots by the prominent Denver landscape architect Saco Rienk de Boer, whose graceful designs include many parks, colleges, parkways, and the Bonnie Brae Subdivision in Denver. As this westerly route toward "pure air and an excellent view of the mountains" gained importance, businesses and streetcar subdivisions replaced large and small family farms. The history of the rail lines is a rich story in itself; however, the growing popularity of the automobile caused the demise of this noteworthy enterprise.

Health institutions also played a significant role in the history of West Colfax. St. Anthony Hospital Central, starting as a dream of the Sisters of St. Francis, was dedicated on June 13, 1893, after the sisters overcame financial obstacles by visiting mining camps, barber shops, and saloons to raise funds for construction of the facility. Located at West 16th Avenue and Stuart Street St. Anthony Hospital Central has continued to grow and modernize in response to community needs. In 1972, St Anthony Flight For Life became the first airborne ambulance service in the nation. Further west from St. Anthony's in 1904, the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society (JCRS) opened a sanatorium, just north of Colfax between Pierce and Kendall Streets that treated tuberculosis patients. In 1954, this facility was renamed the American Medical Center (AMC) and became a major cancer research facility.

The Colfax-Larimer viaduct was completed in 1917. Built for both streetcars and automobiles, the viaduct was the longest concrete span of its kind in the world. In 1935 and 1936, West Colfax Avenue was widened to become a link in one of the fast transcontinental highways, U.S. Route 40. The roadway improvements were performed by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). It was a program that offered employment during the Great Depression. The designation as a major national route initiated "the golden years" for West Colfax as it became a tourist strip lined with motels, tourist camps, service stations and diners. Eventually, however, construction of Interstate Highway 70 to the north and the 6th Avenue freeway to the south, virtually eliminated Colfax Avenue as a significant route choice for vacationing and commuting travelers.

Marine Corps. Memorial

The Memorial is in Golden, CO. along West Colfax Avenue.

JCRS Sanitarium

The JCRS Sanitarium was established in the early 20th century in what is now Lakewood, a western suburb of Denver. JCRS, or the Jewish Consumptives' Relieft Society, was organized by a group of working men who were frustrated with the policies of the other tuberculosis sanitarium in Denver, National Jewish Hospital, which refused to serve kosher meals, discouraged the use of Yiddish, and for a time (because of the fear of being swamped by destitute patients) only accepted sufferers with incipient tuberculosis and those who could afford to support themselves once they left the hospital.

The organization and success of JCRS was due in large part to the efforts of Dr. Charles Spivak, a local legend, and Yehoash (Solomon Bloomgarten), who came to Denver to "chase the cure" in 1899. Starting around 1906, Yehoash presided over the Yiddish section of the 'Sanitorium,' a JCRS publication, including his own poetry and that of "Lung-fellow" as well as using graphics designed by the Bezalel School in then-Palestine. (Spivak and Yehoash, lovers of Yiddish, are famous for their dictionary of Hebrew elements in Yiddish).

I've started researching Denver's Yiddish history. So far my search has yielded the Yiddish sections of the 'Sanitorium' (which deserve to be translated), and record books of the Arbeter Ring, Branch 957, from 1941 through 1962. I also visited the Golden Hill Cemetery, also in Lakewood, to find the graves of Dr. Spivak and David Edelstadt, another Yiddish poet and an anarchist, who died of t.b. around 1892. Edelstadt's grave (a monument) was inscribed with one of his poems and a photograph of the poet. Spivak's grave was adjacent; Spivak donated his skeleton to the Hebrew University. The upper part of the cemetery contained the graves of the patients who didn't beat the "white plague;" many, unfortunately, are marked only with small metal plaques, now unreadable.

The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse has several poems by Leyvik, including one entitled "Sanitorium" ("Efn Zikh, Toyer" in Yiddish).

As a final note, my zeyde, suffering from t.b. circa 1918, was invited to recuperate at JCRS, which would have meant a long trek with family from Syracuse, N.Y. My bubbe nixed the idea; she didn't want to leave her own mishpokhe and "live with the cowboys."

Thanks to Jeanne Abrams, Director of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society, for the information about JCRS. For further information, see her article in the Summer 1992 issue of the Book-Peddler, entitled "The Magic Mountain."

Diane Rabson
Boulder, Colorado