A marker erected to spread awareness about the history of Denver's Chinatown has been reinstalled after the original went missing in December.
The marker was first installed at 16th and Wazee Streets by Colorado Asian Pacific United in August 2023, but it disappeared a few months later. It was recently replaced in the same spot, but AAPI leaders are still raising money to cover the $12,000 cost.
“When the marker was taken down, it felt very much like a continued erasure of our history,” said Joie Ha, executive director of Colorado Asian Pacific United. “But I think that it also fueled our determination to make sure that our histories don't go forgotten.”
The marker is meant to inform the public about racial violence perpetrated against Asian Americans in Denver a century ago.
In the late 1800s, a vibrant Denver Chinatown stretched from Market to Wazee streets, which is now part of LoDo. On October 31, 1880, a violent mob of 3,000 white residents descended upon the community and destroyed businesses, temples, and homes. One Chinatown resident, a man named Look Young, was lynched. His murderers were never prosecuted.
It took the City of Denver until 2022 to issue a formal apology to the descendants of Denver's Chinese immigrants and the state’s existing Chinese community. As part of that effort, led by former Mayor Michael B. Hancock, the city also removed a downtown plaque that critics said was a racist misrepresentation of the Chinatown riot. It was critiqued for celebrating white saviors and failing to name Lee and the other victims of the mob’s violence.
But the historical marker – a tall, metal and wood monument bolted to a concrete base – only lasted a few months before it went missing.
The Denver Police Department never found out what happened to the missing marker. “No arrests have been made,” and the case is “inactive pending new information,” a DPD spokesperson wrote in a text.
Previously, Ha told Denverite it was unclear what happened to the marker. There was no video evidence documenting its removal. Although CAPU didn’t receive any hateful messages about its disappearance, malicious intent has not been ruled out. Some suspect the marker was hit by a vehicle, but the fact that it was not left on the ground was cause for suspicion.
Although a new marker has already been installed, CAPU has yet to raise the remaining $2,000 needed to cover the $12,000 total necessary for its replacement.
“It was mostly smaller donations that helped us get there,” Ha said of the fundraising so far, as well as a larger donation from the Denver Asian American Pacific Islander Commission.
Ha said a community leader recently offered to provide a thousand-dollar matching donation if CAPU is able to raise the other $1,000 needed to meet its goal.
The new marker is nearly identical to its predecessor, with a few small adjustments.
“There are some changes that we made to make sure that it's even more sturdy, although it was incredibly sturdy before,” Ha said. “It's not something that you could have ripped out without a vehicle. But we did try to reinforce it further.” She said CAPU also enlarged the text on the new model to make it more legible.
There will be an official unveiling for the new marker in October – date and time to be announced.
“We want an opportunity for the community to get together and celebrate the fact that we were able to get it reinstalled and to see it and be in community,” Ha said.
Ha said event details will be announced on CAPU’s Instagram and Facebook. She also encouraged people who are interested in learning more about the history of Denver’s Chinatown to visit History Colorado’s upcoming exhibit, Where is Denver’s Chinatown? Stories Remembered, Reclaimed, Reimagined. It will be on display from Oct. 9, 2024, through Aug. 9, 2025.
Editor's note: This story was corrected to accurately reflect the intersection where the marker is located.
