Denverites willing to navigate Colfax Avenue's ongoing construction got a glimpse of history this week.
When crews dug into asphalt at Franklin Street, in front of Voodoo Doughnut, century-old rail lines were waiting there to be unearthed.
For a day or two, you could see them as they looked when trolleys ran along the corridor at the turn of the 20th century.
"This is something that happens periodically with construction projects in the city," Ryan Keeney, a transportation planner and president of YIMBY (Yes In My BackYard) Denver, told us. "Colfax was remarkably striking because you could actually see all the rail ties, too. I mean, it looked like a railroad track underneath the street."
The rail was buried when Denver pivoted to car-centric design in the mid 1900s. It's being revealed as the city attempts to reverse that trend.
Keeney studied the city's streetcars while he was working on a master's degree at the University of Denver, and mapped where the old lines stretched across the city.
He said Denver's most known commercial corridors — Tennyson Street, South Pearl, South Broadway, Colfax and more — are destinations today because of that urban planning effort 100 years ago.
So there's a little irony here, he agreed, that the old rail has been exposed by an effort to improve transit in the city.
Construction began on Colfax in October for a Bus Rapid Transit project, which will eventually install bus lanes through the center of Colfax Avenue. The idea is to make it easier to navigate Colfax without a car.
Keeney said urban planners embraced highways and parking lots as streetcars faded from Denver, sometimes demolishing homes and neighborhoods to make way for the traffic. Things have changed in recent decades.
"The profession has done a 180, and has recognized the benefits of mass transit, bicycling, even walking," he added. "And now this has begun to be reflected in public policy. And one of the forms that's taking is this BRT project."
Transit, particularly the dense zoning it needs nearby to be successful, goes "hand in hand" with the advocacy he and his YIMBY Denver colleagues regularly advocate for.
Keep your eyes peeled. Rail sightings may be brief.
While some passers-by managed to see the Franklin Street tracks in their full glory, they were mostly torn up and twisted by the time we arrived the next day.
Nancy Kuhn, spokesperson for Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, said most of the lines will remain undisturbed, underground — except where bus stations are planned, like on the Franklin block.
"The railroad ties are considered hazardous, so the sections that are removed must be disposed of at a hazardous waste facility," she added. "To remove those required coordination with the State Historic Preservation Office."
The tracks stretch from Broadway to Monaco, which means you'll have chances to see the embedded history through 2026 as the project creeps eastward.
Its complete footprint, all the way to I-225, is not expected to be completed until 2027.
The uncovering was a moment of delight, but people are still worried about the construction.
Josh Bailey, at artist at Lifetime Tattoo at Colfax and Franklin, said he'd prefer easier access to the shop than any bus or historic intrigue.
"We're a walk-in based business. We need people walking in. We need cars driving," he said.
While his colleague, Kirk Wilken, agreed, he said he was also amused to see the tracks once they were uncovered.
"I think it looks cool. Why'd they ever do away with that?" he said. "But yeah, it does really mess with everybody's business. There's no place to park, dude."
Keeney said impacts to local businesses worry him, too, but he's not concerned about the parking. To him, this bus project, which revealed how Denver grew up in the first place, is helping the city return to a more accessible era.
"Yeah," he said, "we're kind of correcting the mistakes of the past."
