In Spring of 2016 the History Museums: Exhibits and Education class at CU Denver took on creating three Auraria history projects. The first was to redo the exhibit hanging in the St. Cajetan's Church. The second was podcasts for historical walks around the campus. This online series of exhibits is...

By Elenie Louvaris One of the earliest depictions of Auraria showing the Cherry Creek dividing prospectors looking for gold and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who used the region as a campsite. Courtesy of Jerome Smiley, History of Denver, Rebecca Hunt Collection. Native American's and The Greater Denver Area While...

By Elenie Louvaris Prospectors Settle in Auraria Auraria--originally a camp frequented by Arapaho Indians---was settled by prospectors where the Cherry Creek and South Platte meet. Prospectors and town builders, such as the Russell brothers, settled in Auraria in 1858 after finding seven ounces of gold in the South Platte. The...

By Adam Cornett Cibola Hall was one of the first entertainment venues in early Auraria. It was only the third combined drinking/gambling/theater establishment in the Denver area. The first entertainment venue was the Apollo Theater in Denver. To visit and attend, Auraria residents paid the toll for a ferry crossing...

By Sally Boelens The original Rocky Mountain News and Uncle Dick Wootton’s rowdy "Western Saloon" once shared a building along Ferry Street, known today as 11th Street (if it continued through campus). It was a dangerous time to work for the Rocky Mountain News as customers below would shoot their...

By Emily Ferrufino-Coqueugniot Image from Smiley's History of Denver, from the Collection of Dr. Rebecca Hunt When Auraria was still a neighborhood, there were several schools available for the local children. On the West side of Auraria, where the athletic fields are now located, there was the Union Sabbath School...

By Emily Ferrufino-Coqueugniot An image of the Lindell Hotel from Smiley's History of Denver The Lindell Hotel was once a well-respected hotel in Auraria and Denver, located at Eleventh and Larimer, a site which is now the Athletic Field on the west side of campus. It was once one of...

By Adam Cornett Samuel Hawken and his brother Jacob were famous gunsmiths in St. Louis, Missouri during the first half of the nineteenth century. They developed the Hawken Plains Rifle in the 1820s which became very popular with frontiersmen for its power and accuracy. After Jacob died, Samuel, at age...

By Aimee Wismar Germans Picture Brewers gather outside the Tivoli Brewing Company. Photo courtesy of the Denver Public Library In Auraria Germans began immigrating to Denver in the 1860s and quickly became the city’s largest foreign-born group. Many German immigrants settled in Auraria. From the 1860s until the early twentieth...

By Janet Dubois Photo courtesy of the Denver Public Library Nine-year-old John Mullen arrived in America from Ireland with his family in 1856. They settled in New York where John learned the trade of miller. At age nineteen, John went west to Kansas to work. In 1871 he moved on...