Throwback photos: Summer swimming in the Denver area

With school starting next week and Labor Day drawing near, let’s take one last look at summer, not as defined by the calendar, but as defined by jammed swimming pools.

Kevin Beaty

Aug. 18, 2016, 3:17 pm

2 min. read

Children stand behind a wire fence and watch a boy in a bathing suit prepare to dive into the Children’s Pool at Elyria Playgrounds (Elyria Park) at 48th and High Streets in the Elyria Swansea neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. Shows a stucco building with tile roof and brick quoins. An adult in a swimsuit watches the diver; other swimmers stand in the water and sit at the pool’s edge. Between 1918. (Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/X-28900) summer; pool; historic; denver public library; dpl; archive; archival; denverite

The swimming pool is that summer scene that lives inside many of us, attached to our inner children like birthday cake and the scent of a fresh box of Crayola.

With school starting next week and Labor Day drawing near, we wanted to take one last look at summer, not as defined by the calendar, but as defined by packed swimming pools.

With the help of the Denver Public Library's Western History and Genealogy Department's deep collection, here are some throwback photos of pools in the area:

Boys and girls play at this YMCA swimming pool in Littleton, Colorado. Circa 1961. (Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/X-12075)

Boys and girls play at this YMCA swimming pool in Littleton, Colorado. (Lloyd Rule/Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/X-12074)

A group of girls stand in the shallow end of the Lincoln Park pool. Between 1920 and 1940. (Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/X-27633)

Young women models pose in swimming suits at the Lakewood Pool. Between 1950 and 1960. (Lloyd Rule/Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/Z-10291)

Four men pose with two female swimmers in front of a pool in Denver, Colorado. One man wears a badge that reads: "Denver Press Club", and holds a megaphone with "Spalding's" painted on it. Between 1920 and 1940. (Harry Mellon Rhoads/Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/Rh-1414)

View of a drained swimming pool in Elyria Park at 48th (Forty-eighth) Avenue and High Street in Denver, Colorado. Between 1930 and 1940. (Denver Public Library/Western History Collection/X-20398)

Kevin Beaty

Kevin is a multimedia artist who flung himself into the world of journalism. He likes using a camera and microphone to tell stories about workers, the environment, social justice and fascinating humans.

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