Cultural Heritage Site
“Cultural heritage sites are a nonrenewable resource. When they disappear, they’re gone forever, a loss akin to the extinction of species.”
The cultural heritage sites in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities are sacred places. They are invaluable tangible reminders of the people who built homes and lives here before us. The oldest surviving historic structure in Denver is Four Mile House.
Before Denver had a name, the indigenous Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples lived on these lands. In 1859, months after the founding of Denver City, two brothers, Samuel and Jonas Brantner, built a two-story log cabin along the Cherokee Trail adjacent to Cherry Creek. Building the cabin was in violation of the Horse Creek Treaty, one of the many unenforced treaties in Denver history.
The name "Four Mile" came from the house serving as a stagecoach stop approximately four miles from the center of Denver. In 1860, a businesswoman bought the cabin and opened it as an inn until a major flood of Cherry Creek left the house stranded. In 1864, the house and 100 acres were sold to Levi and Millie Booth for $800. The Booth family operated Four Mile House as a successful stagecoach stop and flourishing farm. Levi dug irrigation ditches that watered an apple orchard. Millie ran a beekeeping business in the Bee House.
In 1912, Levi Booth passed away at the Four Mile House. Millie assumed ownership until her death in 1926, leaving the estate, water rights, and farmland to her daughter and son-in-law, Grace and Daniel Working. Grace would live on the land until 1946, when she sold the Four Mile House and surrounding land to the Boulton family who, lived in the house until 1963. Four Mile could have disappeared in the decades of the quickly growing city of Denver. But through preservation efforts, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. The City and County of Denver purchased the Four Mile House property in 1975. The preservation and education of the history of the land is now the ongoing effort of Four Mile Historic Park, a nonprofit organization.
At Four Mile Historic Park, the original two-story log house built in 1859 along Cherry Creek is now a museum. The rebuilt Bee House serves as a one-room schoolhouse for students on field trips. Tours of the property provide a unique embodied experience of the past stories of Denver. The staff of Four Mile curate events and programs throughout the year that invite people to learn from the past and the place. Cultural heritage sites hold history in invaluable ways. They are the landmarks that remind us there were families full of hopes and fears here before us. Four Mile is a sacred place.
