Full Tour

Stop 1: Welcome to the Westside

Sheila Perez-Kindle: Hello, I’m Sheila Perez-Kindle, a Displaced Aurarian, and this is the Auraria Campus History Tour. You’re probably wondering why these 19th century homes are here in the middle of an urban campus surrounded by classroom buildings and parking lots. Well, growing up, we knew this area, our home, as the Old Westside! It was once a vibrant neighborhood full of homes and businesses, where families lived, worked, and played in a safe and supportive community. It was filled with amenities, such as grocery stores, churches, and factories. That was before the city flattened it to make way for the Auraria Campus.

Like many other Displaced Aurarians, I was born here, at 1004 Champa St. It was one block east of here, very close to where you are now standing. I was baptized at St. Cajetan, a major hub of our community, and which you’ll soon see on this tour. When I was seven years old, a nun in her full habit from St. Elizabeth Church taught me to play tennis. A year after that I made my first Holy Communion at St. Elizabeth, and at 10 years old I had my first paid job there, as a babysitter.

When my parents arrived in Denver from Wyoming, and where they had temporarily worked in the coal mines, they also brought my four older siblings. Like most community members, my parents were hard working. Although my father, Luis Perez, was highly educated in his native country, his education didn’t transfer here with him. Early on, he worked as a laborer to support our family. My mother, Josephine Perez, worked in various industries, including the pickle factory near here. Education was a major priority for their children. Mother later became a fierce community activist who taught us to stand up and never forget who we are or where we came from.

The Auraria Campus History Tour follows a two-block loop that begins and ends here at 9th Street Park. Although the stops follow a general sequence, you can tune into any one of the 11 stops or pause the tour and still get a strong sense of the community and events before and after displacement.

This tour is the result of the dedicated work of community members and our supporters, including students and teachers at CU Denver who helped research, write, and record the stops. One of my partners in this work, Rachel Gross, will be leading you through the rest of the tour.

Rachel Gross: Welcome to Auraria. I teach history classes here on the campus, and I’m happy to be leading you on this history tour of the old West Side neighborhood. Our first stop is at 1027 9th Street, the two-story red brick house on the right just a few steps from here on the flagstone sidewalk.

Stop 2: Growing Up in Auraria

Rachel Gross: The house at 1027 9th Street might be quiet now, but sixty years ago it would have been alive with the voices of children, the smells of shared meals, and the rhythms of working-class life in a tightly knit neighborhood.

The old Westside’s families came from near and far. Wagon Mound, New Mexico. Riveton, Wyoming. Saltillo, Mexico. Canton, China. They came from farms and mines and ranches, arriving in this bustling neighborhood, just west of downtown Denver on the banks of Cherry Creek. They found work in factories and flour mills and meat plants, working for railroad companies or for the city of Denver itself. Others started their own businesses, opening a local grocery store or renting out rooms and apartments. Although most of them were poor, they built a community that was rich in connection.

Mary Maestas arrived in West Denver in the late 1950s as a single mother from New Mexico with three young mouths to feed and very little money. Her oldest child, Gloria, recounted years later:

Gloria Gallegos: I grew up poor and didn’t know I was poor. And when I look back on it, it was like, wow, we were really poor. My mom did her best as a single parent, and she worked part time. But we used to love when she would bring home a box of the hot dogs. They were like, all beef hot dogs. We were like yay, we got hot dogs.

Rachel Gross: Unlike some residents, Gloria didn’t have an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in the neighborhood. Instead, her neighbors became her new family. Again, Gloria:

Gloria Gallegos: Growing up there, I didn’t feel like it was just us. It was, you know, like the neighbors. My mom, she knew all the neighbors. And of course, we knew all the kids in the neighborhood. And even as far as probably blocks down, you know, like it could be down two or three blocks. And we still knew all the kids from all the surrounding area. …I don’t remember having any fear as a little kid, you know, walking to school because along the way we would know everyone. You know, you knew that family, that family. Or as you walked along, you had friends that joined you, and then by the time you got to school, you were a little group.

Rachel Gross: These sorts of memories weren’t unique to Gloria or her family. Let’s walk next door to 1033 9th Street to hear more about how another Westside family built a sense of community and connection.

Stop 3: The Torres Family Porch

Rachel Gross: Just next door at 1033 is the Torres House. Here, neighbors congregated on the long porch and enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Torres family. Phillip and Petra bought the house in the 1930s and raised their seven children here. Five of those children were delivered at home by Dr. Justina Ford, Colorado’s first black doctor. The family lived here for almost 40 years.

The building holds memories for Philip and Petra’s children and grandchildren. Look up at the roof. Daughter Frances remembers a playful dare between siblings, resulting in her sister Teresa jumping off this roof onto the ground in front of the house.

And if you look closely at the third-floor window, you might catch a glimpse of La Llorona, a mythical ghost who was feared by neighborhood children. She represented the real-life struggles and historical trauma of many individuals in the community.

The Torres family was quick to provide rooms, meals, and fellowship to those who needed it–however long they needed it–including La Llorona.

Neighborhood kids would gather around the house for games and meals. Dennis remembers his grandmother Petra Torres’ generosity:

Dennis Lobato: Well here’s 1033 Ninth Street porch is definitely a destination….We would, we would gather in that front porch area, and that’s where life happened….And so me and my cousin would obviously go to school, but where would we go after school? Because, you know, we had obviously both of us had parents that worked….But who was always home? Grandma. Grandma Torres was home. And of course, you can’t go to Grandma Torres’ house without her great hospitality of feeding you.

Rachel Gross: Petra’s husband Phillip also promoted neighborhood health and cohesion. In his work as director of the Lawrence Street Rec Center and as a member of the mayor’s Audit Division, he was constantly fighting for basic city services. Meanwhile, Petra focused on education–a strong value among Chicano families. She co-founded and directed the Adult Education Program at St. Elizabeth Church down the street.

For families like the Torres’s, the 1950s and 1960s were a time of promise for Auraria. As Philip and Petra’s son Matteo remembers, there was a feeling of just having arrived. “We were about to thrive,” he said. “We were getting better jobs, even in our family, and we were about to thrive.”

Head north on this sidewalk to the end of the block, where you’ll see a sign for the Los Molinos restaurant, to hear more about the grocery stores, bakeries, and barbershops that sustained this community before displacement.

Stop 4: Local Business

Rachel Gross: Take a peek into the windows of Los Molinos on the corner of 9th street. Instead of a restaurant, imagine the Groussman Grocery store, built in 1906 by Albert and Bella Groussman. It was a general store that once provided milk, eggs, meat, and penny candy to the community. Imagine the neighborhood kids walking home from school and rushing inside the store with their tennis shoes slapping on the wooden floor, taking the pennies they made from washing windshields, and reaching into the candy jar on the counter.

Rita Gomez, who lived across the street, recalls running errands to the store for her grandmother, who had a secret deal with the store worker, Eddie:

Rita Gomez: My grandmother was diabetic, and she would write a little note and she’d tell me, Give this only to Eddie. And I’d say, okay, go up there, give him the thing. And then he’d put two bags, one bag here, and then he’d tell me, Make sure your grandma gets this right away. And I thought, Oh, it must be medicine or something. You know, I’d run all the way up there. Turns out she was ordering ice cream.

Rachel Gross: Customers could put their ice cream or eggs on a tab. Workers would stop in on their way home, pick up a pound of meat, and pay for it when they received their monthly checks. Gloria Gallegos, who lived around the corner at 8th and Curtis Streets, remembers Eddie regularly offering credit for folks in the community:

Gloria Gallegos: He used to do tabs for my…like my mom would say…and back then we were allowed to do this…’Can you go get me a pack of cigarettes at the store and put it on my tab? Just tell him to put it on my tab.’ So that was, I guess, the beginning of what would have been credit.

Rachel Gross: This early credit system was important to sustaining the neighborhood. Residents knew they could get what they needed just by walking a block or two.

If you look up and down the street outside Los Molinos, try to imagine the many small businesses that made this a vibrant community. There was a bakery, a barbershop, and another small grocery owned by Cecilia Lopez-Albertson’s grandmother. Cecilia remembers her brother’s first haircut at Ernie’s barbershop just across from her grandmother’s store.

Cecilia Lopez-Albertson: I remember Ernie Lopez, Ernie the Barber, and his last name was Lopez, too, but not of any relation. But he had his barber shop right across the street from grandma and everybody got their first haircut there. All the boys did. My brother was..there are pictures of my brother crying in the chair, getting his haircut. But everybody has that memory of crying from their first haircut.

Rachel Gross: Whether it was a secret pint of ice cream or a pound of beef for a tamale dinner, the small businesses contributed to a sense of connectedness.

To continue the tour, walk north across the traffic roundabout and continue up 9th Street Plaza past the covered bus stop. Follow alongside a long red brick building on your right-hand side. Stop at the first set of stairs leading to a doorway into the building, at 1150 10th Street.

Stop 5: Play in Industrial and Residential Spaces

Rachel Gross: As you face the long brick building on the right side of the plaza, you’ll see a small sign above the stairs that says “Arts” and “1150 10th Street.”

Imagine opening a jar of pickles and breathing in the sharp, tangy scent of vinegar and dill.

This was the signature aroma of the Perkins-Epeneter pickle factory, located at the approximate spot where you are standing.

The Perkins-Epeneter factory brined millions of cucumbers in large vats of salt-water each year in order to make jars of dill pickles, sweet relish, and sauerkraut. The scent of dill and vinegar mingled with the smells coming from the other businesses and factories: Rubber tires. Cans of paint. Fermenting beer. Fried potato chips. All of this came together in what Sheila Perez-Kindle remembers as “the smell of business.”

This mixed landscape of homes and businesses, warehouses and lots, streets and alleyways, became one big playground for the neighborhood kids. Some remember lining up for free daily pickles at the factory, while others claim they engaged in a bit of mischief, swiping a salty snack from the factory when nobody was looking.

After the pickle factory shut down in the 1960s, some kids would climb the fence to slide down the factory’s chutes or play hide and seek in the empty vats.

Frances Torres remembers a feeling of freedom while playing:

Frances Torres: We played a lot of kickball, a lot of softball…we did a lot of alley playing. I mean, we just did. We just walked through the alleys and we walked through people’s yards and people walked through our yards and I guess you just have to understand and nobody really thought anything bad about it.

Rachel Gross: Children roamed throughout the Westside, by bike and on foot, throwing footballs, playing kick-the-can, or even climbing inside abandoned tires and rolling each other down the sidewalk.

Freedom and autonomy came with growing up in Denver’s Westside. This freedom was only possible because of the watchful eyes of neighbors.

Gloria Gallegos remembers her busy single mother telling her to go out and find her younger brother:

Gloria Gallegos: And at the end of the day, my mom would be like, where’s the baby or where’s baby? And we had to be young, like two or three years old. Oh, she’d say, well, go, go ask the neighbors. Go look for him. There was no concern, you know, as far as him being lost or it was just he’s, he’s with some of - one of the neighbors. So we would, we’d go knock on the doors and say, is baby here?….I guess she didn’t have a real concern. She thought, well, you know, he’s in one of these playing with someone.

Rachel Gross: While this hands-off approach to childhood may seem jarring today, it reflects the tight-knit nature of the Westside community. The neighborhood’s blend of industrial and residential life created a space where children could roam freely, their laughter and games mingling with the sounds and smells of factories and businesses.

To continue our story, keep walking in the same direction until you get to the steps of the large blue and yellow church named St. Cajetan’s, which was the cultural center of the Auraria community.

Stop 6: Community Gathering

Rachel Gross: Face the grand doors of the church building.

This is San Cajetano, as the old-timers called it. It was built in 1926 as the first Spanish language church in Denver.

Seventy years ago, this would have been a far noisier place to stand. Former students at the St. Cajetan school recall walking under the Lawrence Street Viaduct to get to class. Inside, the Torres sisters’ organ playing competed with the sound of cars rushing by as though traffic was right on top of the church.

St. Cajetan was a true home for the Westsiders. Community members recall the power of hearing their own language in church for the first time and gathering in the beautiful building.

This church was where baptisms and communions took place. It was a parish school for many of the neighborhood’s children and a credit union where neighbors could access credit.

Katelyn Puga recalls the big role St. Cajetan played in her grandparents’ lives:

Katelyn Puga: They were just very involved in the Catholic Church in St. Cajetan’s and you know, Grandma would, would talk about how they learned how to play all their musical instruments at St. Cajetan and in all their schooling. And then Grandpa Torres was the president of the St. Cajetan’s Credit Union. And I don’t know how long he did that, but he played a big role in that as well.

Rachel Gross: James Mark Tafoya also remembers how important the church was.

James Mark Tafoya: The beauty of St. Cajetan’s church as a community center, as a gathering place, as a healing place, as an art place, as a music emporium, was really dynamic, and we lost that.

Rachel Gross: To raise money for the church and the school, congregants would host a festival called a bazaar. Here, mothers and grandmothers sold tamales, green chili plates, and other homemade dishes. Others sold tickets for games like bingo, egg toss, or a dice game called chuck a luck.

These were the steps where happy families gathered after weddings, a scene captured in an iconic painting by local resident Carlos Fresquez named “Westside Wedding.” In it, the church is rendered in bold rose pink and vivid blue, with stained glass windows reflecting the blazing Denver sunset. A shiny, curvy green sedan is decked out and ready to whisk a newly married couple away.

For Frances Torres, the Fresquez painting captures the place of St. Cajetan in the community celebrations. She sees the scenes on the steps of St. Cajetan’s as something bigger than just one wedding.

Frances Torres: First of all, there were a lot of marriages. And if you remember during that time, marriages were big. And, you know, that’s part of the Mexican culture, too, is having a big wedding.

But the funny part about that painting is when I show it to people, when they see it at my house, everybody thinks it’s them. It’s the whole West side of Denver.

Rachel Gross: Turn your back to the church.

There is the downtown skyline that St. Cajetan’s school children would have glimpsed from under the viaduct. In the late 1960s, city planners were trying to shed Denver’s image as a cowtown. As part of that vision, they imagined downtown as a home for a set of urban universities and colleges. The question was where such a campus would go.

Increasingly, city planners turned their attention towards the neighborhood west of Speer Boulevard and north of Colfax Avenue, an area they called Auraria.

By 1969, a new proposal from the city threatened to destroy the tight-knit Westside community, but its residents wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Retrace your footsteps by walking back down Ninth Street Plaza towards the historic homes. Partway down on the right, you will see a large parking lot. Pause here for our next stop on the tour.

Stop 7: Urban Renewal Takes Aim at the Westside

Rachel Gross: The parking lot alongside 9th Street Plaza was once a dense block of church buildings, businesses, and homes–even a health clinic residents went to for aches and ailments. To understand how all of this ended up paved over into a concrete parking lot, we need to go back to a much longer history.

Starting in the 1920s, cities across the United States began implementing new zoning codes, which determined what kinds of buildings were allowed in different neighborhoods. Zoning codes might seem boring, but they had a big impact on Auraria’s history. While predominantly white neighborhoods in Denver were zoned as residential, most of Auraria was zoned as industrial, despite the fact that hundreds of residents were living in homes alongside the pickle and potato chip factories.

Cameron Blevins: “Blight is settling over the heart of Denver. In areas of the worst blight, the city will be empowered to purchase the land, tear down the structures, prepare land for sale, then sell it to private enterprise for development.” (The Denver Post, 1955)

Rachel Gross: Because of this zoning history, when Denver’s city planners looked at their maps, they saw Auraria as a run-down, semi-industrial neighborhood. This made it ripe for what was known as “urban renewal,” or attempts by cities to clear out so-called “blighted” areas in order to make way for new development.

Cameron Blevins: “Today, Auraria is a generally blighted mish-mash of small homes, salvage yards, railroad tracks, small businesses, and junk cars, showing clear signs of old age and of being bypassed by new development.” (The Denver Post, 1969)

Rachel Gross: By the 1960s, Denver’s politicians began looking for a place to build a new campus that would house three institutions: Metropolitan State University, the Community College of Denver, and the University of Colorado Denver. Supporters argued that the location should be close to downtown businesses and organizations, where the action was.

The city commissioned several studies and surveys to find an ideal location. The Auraria section of Denver’s Westside was not the only site surveyed, but it quickly became their top choice.

As all this planning was going on, residents were left in the dark. There were signs and rumors that the city was planning to clear the land for an urban renewal project. Tony Garcia remembers this period after 1965:

Tony Garcia: And even though they they hadn’t passed the resolution, you know, you start seeing a bunch of white guys in white shirts and ties with clipboards and, you know they’re, you know what they’re doing.

Rachel Gross: In 1968, Denver secured federal funding for the campus project but needed additional money from the city itself to complete it. In the November 1969 election, Denver gave voters the chance to approve or reject a ballot measure that would provide this additional money. If approved, it would spell the end of the old Westside.

The ballot’s supporters were a powerful bunch. They included not just city officials and higher education administrators, but also the Archdiocese of Denver and even the city councilman representing the neighborhood.

They argued that Auraria was not the heart of the West Side but rather a northern extremity. The residential community there, they said, was dying.

In the leadup to the election, residents organized in opposition, often meeting in the basement of St. Cajetan’s Church. They formed an organization called the Auraria Residents Organization–ARO– in order to fight the upcoming bond. St. Cajetan’s priest Father Pete Garcia and community board member Phil Torres helped organize the group to meet with the city’s Urban Renewal Authority, highlighting the potentially devastating impacts of demolition.

Cameron Blevins: “More heat than light was generated during the 2 and ½ hour meeting in St. Cajetan’s Church, as city officials bore the brunt of sharp questions and resentful comments from 200 West Side residents…One Chicano college student hurled a chair down in front of the panelists and led a walkout of young people chanting: ‘Vote no!’…Many of the attendees will lose their homes if the proposed Auraria Higher Education Complex is approved by Denver voters on Tuesday.” (Rocky Mountain News, 1969)

Rachel Gross: On a clear and mild Tuesday in November of 1969, Denver voters went to the polls. Despite the community’s efforts to save their neighborhood, the ballot measure narrowly passed. One month later, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority mailed out notices alerting families that they would have to leave their homes. The displacement of Auraria’s nearly 800 residents had begun.

Continue walking down 9th Street Plaza, crossing over Curtis Street by the traffic circle. Our next stop is located at the iron fence marking the beginning of the historic Ninth Street block.

Stop 8: The Trauma of Displacement

Rachel Gross: Stand at the iron fence looking down the grassy center of historic Ninth Street Park.

In the aftermath of the 1969 bond measure, the process of displacement started. It was slow at first. As Tony Garcia remembers:

Tony Garcia: And there was rumors and then there were conversations. And then there were meetings and then there was referendums. And each of those was a step and the families started to sell their houses and leave or rent their houses someplace else because they knew the inevitable was going to happen. And we moved out of the neighborhood.

Rachel Gross: This trickle of people leaving the neighborhood increased as the final deadline approached.

Rita Gomez Delgado’s home had already been sold to the Auraria Higher Education Center, known by its acronym AHEC, when moving day came. On that day, strangers entered their home even as her family was still trying to pack up their belongings.

Rita Gomez Delgado: It was chaotic. It was people that we didn’t know that were in our house just taking things…. And they said they had gotten permission from the owners of the Duplex.

Frances Torres: Yeah, because, because everything had been sold already to AHEC.

Rita Gomez Delgado: So people were going into our house while we were still living there…. My mom had nobody to help her move, and she ended up losing our major furniture, you know, sofas and chairs…. We had a really pretty gold French provincial sofa that my mom couldn’t get anybody to help her move it. And she said, I’ll be darned if I’m going to let them take that. And she she broke it. She broke it into pieces.

She said, I’m not going to let them take this.

Rachel Gross: Displacement was not just about the physical loss of homes or belongings. It was about the loss of community. For many, there was no time to say goodbye to neighbors and friends who were soon scattered to the winds. Some sought to stay on Denver’s Westside, moving south across Colfax or west across Federal. Others went further afield, to Denver’s Northside neighborhood or surrounding suburbs in Lakewood or Littleton.

Sheila Perez-Kindle recalled how hard it was to piece those friendships back together.

Sheila Perez-Kindle: We had to regain that relationship. We had to find out where they were or run into them in a different place because some went north, some went east, some went west. I mean, they were dispersed.

Rachel Gross: The neighborhood was gone, and the deep ties that once bound families and neighbors began to fade.

Decades later, Rita Gomez Delgado reflected on the lasting impact of that day:

Rita Gomez Delgado: And so people complain why are we still crying about an issue that happened 50 years ago? Well, they should have been there that day. They should have been there that day and watched their world fall apart.

Rachel Gross: If you look down on the other side of the iron fence, you might see a small rock on the ground in front of you. This rock is the only physical reminder anywhere on 9th street of the community that was displaced. Its hard-to-read text only gives a small hint of what they lost.

Sheila Perez-Kindle: In tribute to the several hundred families whose lives,

memories and sacrifices were offered so future

generations of students could attend the Auraria Campus

and enrich the greater Denver community.

Rachel Gross: The rock in front of you can’t possibly do justice to the deeper story of the neighborhood, the one about furniture destroyed out of despair, about lives disrupted, families scattered, and a neighborhood’s spirit torn from the ground.

This rock and its inscription illustrates how even after residents were forced to leave, some of them fought to preserve the memory of the old Westside. To hear more about these efforts, turn to your right and walk twenty feet to the next stop, the iron plaque along the sidewalk at the entrance to Ninth Street.

Stop 9: The Histories That Get Remembered

Rachel Gross: At the start of the sidewalk running down historic Ninth Street you will see a metal sign attached to a six-foot tall pole boasting the official looking stamp of the Landmark Preservation Commission. Unlike the half-hidden inscription about displaced residents you saw at the previous stop, this sign is prominent, proudly announcing a more celebratory story of historic preservation. It explains why and how these old houses are still here.

Cameron Blevins: “There has been a great deal of talk in recent months about the Ninth Street Project of Historic Denver. In Auraria there were a group of unusual Victorian small houses that, according to the Interior Department, could be unique in the country.” (The Rocky Mountain News, 1974)

Rachel Gross: In the 1970s, a non-profit dedicated to historic preservation stepped in to protect the buildings. The homes were renovated to highlight the trim and other decorative elements. They were then officially designated as historic buildings to be preserved by the city. Up and down the block, small signs outside of each building celebrate this architectural history.

Cameron Blevins: “No two homes are alike. Some are cottages with quaint trim, one is like an Italian villa, another resembles a miniature Windsor castle made out of brownstone.” (Fourth Estate, University of Colorado Denver, 1974)

Rachel Gross: By focusing on a more distant period, these signs and plaques ignore the more recent past. They turn displaced Aurarians into ghosts–some of their homes survive but their stories are not fully visible.

Tony Garcia described what it was like to walk around the neighborhood in the years right after his family was displaced.

Tony Garcia: I was walking through the Auraria neighborhood and through the west side, and I saw those houses. And all of the sudden I felt like, what I would refer to it as ghosts. I saw the ghosts of a community that had been there.

Rachel Gross: Garcia has embraced the ghosts of the community, allowing their voices to shine through his art, including theatrical and musical performances like “Westside Oratorio” and “El Corrido del Barrio,” which celebrate Auraria through song.

To get to the next stop on our tour, walk down historic 9th Street along the right-hand sidewalk until you get to a brick structure at 1050 9th street.

Stop 10: Redress and Renovation

Rachel Gross: Stand at 1050 Ninth Street in front of the red brick building with a blue and gold painted porch. Turn around and look at the whole block of homes. In addition to being a time capsule of early Denver, many of the homes now serve official campus purposes, including offices for faculty members and school administrators. Depending on the time of year, you might see employees on their lunch break or students walking between classes.

Set against the hustle and bustle of a college campus, the longer history of the neighborhood fades into the background.

Tony Garcia, who ended up teaching Chicano Studies at Metro State University years after his family was displaced, recalls his students, many of them first generation Mexicano or Latino, learning about the neighborhood and its history for the first time.

Tony Garcia: Their reactions were they were angry because they had not been told that this existed, that this was, that they, that their people had roots in this neighborhood. They were walking through a place that they thought was foreign and it was really theirs. And nobody had told them that.

Rachel Gross: Continue walking south down the Ninth Street sidewalk until you get to a sign with a list of the buildings and their offices.

Turn around and look back towards the house you just left at 1050 Ninth Street. For years, community activists have sought a dedicated space of gathering and remembrance on campus. Their efforts culminated in the Auraria Peace and Healing Garden, which as of 2025 is planned for the empty lot standing between you and the home at 1050 Ninth Street.

On the rear of that building, you should be able to glimpse part of a colorful mural. The mural shows six people, including two of them wearing graduation caps.

This mural symbolizes the importance of higher education and the ways displaced Aurarians fought for it. Aurarians remember that during debates over removal, officials dangled the promise of a scholarship to the campus’s three schools to Auraria residents, their children, and their grandchildren. They also promised access to the campus library, gym, and pool for locals. But for twenty years, nobody on campus seemed to know these promises.

This is precisely the situation that Sheila Perez-Kindle encountered when she enrolled at CU Denver in 1977.

Sheila Perez-Kindle: I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. However, during my time at CU Denver, I went to the financial aid office each semester to explain that displaced families were promised a scholarship. Office personnel claimed to know nothing about it and often were rude and dismissive. I never received access to the promised scholarship.

Rachel Gross: Activists worked for years to get the University of Colorado Denver, Community College of Denver, and Metro State to honor their promise. Because of this activism, the three schools finally agreed to create the Displaced Aurarian Scholarship in 1994 to cover tuition and fees for former residents. Today, all their descendants are eligible for the scholarship, and hundreds of people have taken advantage of it to fund their education.

Alyssa Lobato was one such scholarship recipient. Her great-grandparents Petra and Philip Torres lived at 1033 9th Street. For her, the financial support mattered as she earned her degrees, but so too did the recognition of her family’s history and legacy.

Alyssa Lobato: I will say as a descendant of Displaced Aurarians and, you know, as someone who’s able to take advantage of the education on the Auraria campus. I feel empowered as a student and as a person because I know all of the history involving my family there, I can go witness it.

Rachel Gross: To get to the final stop of the tour, continue south to the end of historic Ninth Street, then cross Champa Street. After crossing, look to your left and you will see a circular mural adorning the brick wall.

Stop 11: Resilience

Sheila Perez-Kindle: Hello, again. This is Sheila Perez-Kindle. The tour’s final stop is here in front of a mural titled “Displaced but not Erased,” completed in 2024 by Silas “Jolt” Ulibarri, and Ezra Herrera, a descendant of Displaced Auraria. With much input from the Displaced Aurarian community, the mural commemorates the neighborhood that once was, and the culture that thrived here. Take notice of the arms and hands holding the community and notice that the wrist and hand of the young girl at the top and the woman walking toward the homes all wear the same beautiful bracelet and ring. We want you to view that as a sign of resilience!

We and our descendants are still here, despite the trauma, and are a testament to our community’s resilience and its history. We have offered you the gift of our stories and culture and hope you treasure them and pass them on.

If you want to delve deeper into the history of the community’s resistance and resilience, as well as the larger Chicano Movement in Colorado, check out El Semanario’s “We Speak Your Language” podcasts. We also like History Colorado’s archives of “El Movimiento” and “I Am Auraria,” exhibit at the Auraria Library. If you want to become involved in or donate to the community’s current efforts to keep their stories alive, please visit the Auraria Historical Advocacy Council’s Facebook page.

So now when you walk through campus, this is what I hope you remember or think about. We, our families, and our neighbors were never somnolent! Our barrio may have been poor, but it was full of strong and energetic people! The community organized and fought against the displacement. It is my hope that you and every individual–whether it be a student, faculty member, or visitor–who walks through and sees this sacred place will know even a portion of the history of the forced removal by eminent domain and the trauma that still exists today more than 50 years later.

Thank you.

Rachel Gross: This history tour was written by Cameron Blevins, Michelle Comstock, Rachel Gross, Krista Marks, and Indira Saha, with editorial oversight by Sheila Perez-Kindle, Virginia Castro, and Frances Torres. Krista Marks and Indira Saha edited the tour. Sophia Imperioli provided additional research. Music was provided by Tony Garcia and Daniel Valdez. Funding for this project came from the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from Nolbert D. Chavez, Chief Strategy Officer, University of Colorado Denver. The oral histories we drew from come from the History Colorado Center’s Museum of Memory project on Auraria. With special thanks to the Auraria Historical Advocacy Council, whose vision helped create this tour.