AURORA | Model T’s are parked on a wide dirt road next to mom-and-pop chocolate and soda shops. A Coca Cola advertisement sits near a storefront window. An advertisement for Ford hovers seemingly mid-air in the dreamy, black-and-white scene. Beyond the shops is nothing but the single dirt road with trees on both sides for miles. The corner of Dallas Street and Colfax Avenue was very different in 1921.
Today, the block is home to an Indian bazaar, a Mexican fashion boutique, a hair-braiding salon and an Ethiopian market — an ode to the metro area’s most racially diverse population. The only recognizable feature is Young Building, recently renovated by the Aurora Cultural Arts District as the city reinvents itself to serve a new wave of residents and immigrants.
The photo is part of the Aurora History Museum’s “The Golden Highway: Views of Colfax Avenue,” a mix of archival and donated photos that reveal 100 years of change on Aurora’s 8-mile stretch of the longest continuous commercial street in the U.S.
“All of these photos show life on Colfax, and how it has always been vibrant,” said MaryJane Valade, who curated the exhibit.
Aurora’s arts district also used to be home to the Piggly Wiggly, one of the nation’s first self-serve supermarkets, which is featured in multiple images throughout the exhibit.
“It was a gathering place for people,” said Valade. One undated photo shows children lining the block on bicycles for a neighborhood parade, a young boy standing out from the crowd in a cowboy costume.
Valade points to a photo from 1942 of a man standing next to a smiling boy who is holding an oversized balloon. “We have this one of the fire department. They would have a Christmas tree lot every year next to the Piggly Wiggly,” she said.
A black-and-white aerial view of the Fitzsimons site shows Colfax as a thin line that traverses pastoral plains with a cluster of small buildings to the north.
The photo has no date but Valade says one clue is that the picture is missing Building 500, which was built in 1941 to treat tuberculosis patients during World War II when Fitzsimons was an army base.
Aurora resident Colleen Shaw, who was visiting the museum with her 7-year-old granddaughter Julia, said they had just come from a tour of Building 500.
“To see how different the area looks now from then, it doesn’t look anything like that picture,” Shaw said. The area is now home to the Anschutz Medical Campus and one of the largest bioscience developments in the country.
Photos from the exhibit show the evolution of Colfax from a dirt road into U.S. Highway 40.
An image of the All-States Cottage City Filling Station at 11611 E. Colfax Ave. was taken at the height of motor tourism in 1940. Aurora resident David Heflin, who donated the photo, is pictured pumping gas in front of his family’s motel.
“He had pictures of the different cabins and their victory gardens, and chickens. He had great memories of working there and making the beds,” Valade said.
Valade says these filling stations, which were particularly popular along with rest-stop motels after World War II, included cabins for nightly stays as well as a small general store so visitors could have all of their amenities in one place.
“Before Interstate 70, Highway 40 was the main highway coming from Kansas and the plains. People would be driving and driving across nothing. Then you would come to Aurora and finally you’re at civilization. You can see the mountains, you have restaurants, gas and a place to stay,” she said.
Fast forward to the late 1960s, when I-70 was built and rerouted traffic from the strip. Colfax, no longer providing Aurora with an influx of tourists, turned to projects that would benefit its
residents.
One photo from 1975 taken by former Deputy City Engineer Ted Rousses shows former Assistant City Manager Mel Carle, smiling with a tobacco pipe in hand as he oversees construction of Del Mar Circle.
Former longtime Aurora City Council member Nadine Caldwell contributed a photo from her own archive to the exhibit. Saturated like a Kodachrome, it was taken at 10190 East Colfax facing west, the photographer perched high enough to capture a sweeping glance of the strip and the Rocky Mountains.
“We think it’s from the ’50s by the way the cars look,” said Caldwell, who found the undated photograph with her husband on eBay.
Caldwell grew up on the Denver side of Colfax and remembers when it bustled with trolley cars.
“My whole life, I’ve always lived within five blocks of Colfax,” she said. “It was probably the safest street in the whole Denver area. Everything you could walk to. I have great legs today because I had to walk most of my life.”
“Safe” is not the word that usually comes to mind for locals and visitors who think of Colfax today. The strip has held onto its lascivious reputation since the late 1800s when it came into existence.
The U.S. vice president the street was named after, Schuyler Colfax, once called the avenue a “den of avarice.”
Caldwell admits she’s seen Colfax through plenty of ups and downs, but that the reputation is not all deserved.
“With development coming in, people are being able to see the advantages of Colfax. Ten years from now, we won’t even recognize it,” she said.