Mile Long Table
“You can never walk into the same river twice because it’s never the same river and you are never the same man.”
Tim Jones has spent the last decade with a dream of a mile-long table. That passion led him to become the founder of Longer Tables, a local nonprofit developing partnership in Denver, across Colorado, and now cities around the country to gather people together for shared meals at longer tables.
Tim’s love for a longer table began when a friend hosted a long dinner table in a beautiful backyard in Greenwood Village in 2013. At that dinner, Tim sat across from a Black woman in her mid-60s. At the time, Tim was a white single male in his late 30s. He found himself laughing deeply with her over shared stories about Denver. As the evening unfolded, he witnessed people lean toward each other up and down the longer table. It was an inflection point in his life, an inchoate understanding, that helping people set and share tables was what he was called to do. Setting and sharing longer tables has expanded for Tim over the last decade.
In 2023, Longer Tables hosted The 528 Table in Civic Center Park. The event was a collaborative effort in which diverse community leaders invited 8 people to join them for a shared dinner. A 500-foot table set in Civic Center Park transformed a space that was often seen as unsafe to a place of connection and invitation. “The table transformed the space. In this beautiful way, it humanized it,” shared Tim with unreserved emotion. It was the longest table he had hosted, this one with the help of local caterers and corporate sponsors.
Tim shares two stories that embody the hope and heart of a longer table. There were seats intentionally left empty for people who would discover the table in the middle of the park. Two of those seats would be filled by a family from North Carolina visiting Denver for the weekend. The unexpected guest posted on Facebook when he returned home, “Thank you, Denver, for inviting us and welcoming us into your city at your table.” In a city with a history of rugged individualism, a shared table told a different story. The second story was from someone who had been living on the streets in Denver for years, requiring the use of a wheelchair. He was invited to the table by one of the organizers and accepted wheeling his chair to the table between business, civic, and community leaders. “He asked Matt, who was the businessman sitting next to him, if he would tear off a piece of the bread in the middle of the table because his hands were dirty.” The shared moment was an embodied practice of breaking bread with those who live in the same city but would likely never share the same meal.
Tim had a vision to see the table exponentially grow to over 5,000 feet. In July 2025, the first attempt at a Mile Long Table was hosted on the Auraria Campus. The meal was a reflection and representation of various indigenous Colorado cuisines. The organizing effort was 180 co-hosts inviting their coworkers, friends, and neighbors to share a meal with thousands of other citizens. The total attendance was just over 3,400 people. “When I saw the empty tables,” Tim shares humbly, “I thought, ‘There is no shame; there’s just more room at the table.’”
In 2026, as Colorado commemorates its 150th anniversary of statehood, Tim is leading the effort of Longer Tables to host a Mile Long Table This year, the Mile Long Table will be at the National Western Center. It will be a table 5,280 feet long, inviting people from every walk of life to a shared meal. For Tim, the Mile Long Table is a place of inspiration for individuals and neighbors to experience the sense of community that a shared table can bring.
In a moment where relational isolation and cultural division are the dominant narratives, a longer table is a place where people are invited to come together, and a meal is shared by 5,280 neighbors. A Mile Long Table is a sacred place.
Thank you to Tim Jones for his contribution to this article and for his passion and vision for longer tables to cultivate connection among the citizens of Colorado.
