Colorado Department of Transportation Demolishes Historic Buildings at Burnham Yard, Possible Future Home of Broncos

The Colorado Department of Transportation has started demolishing the remaining historic buildings left at the 58-acre Burnham Yard property, where the Denver Broncos may build a new stadium.

CDOT purchased the land in 2021 with intentions to expand Interstate 25 or use the former railyard to increase Front Range rail options. However, after conducting a study, CDOT determined neither option would work and began preparing the land for a sale.

When CDOT decided to sell, local nonprofit Historic Denver warned that there were five buildings and one piece of historic infrastructure left behind by the railroad that CDOT might demolish to make the property more attractive to a buyer.

Now, that fear has come to pass. John Deffenbaugh, Historic Denver CEO, and David Griggs, a board member of the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, confirm that there has been significant demolition activity on the site, including removing the buildings that Historic Denver had identified as historically important.

“The state hasn't done anything illegal,” Deffenbaugh says. “But they've done something that's deeply immoral by demolishing these buildings without recognizing their historical significance, without engaging with the local communities around the site who care about the story that the site tells.”

Neighbors who live near the Burnham Yard area have stated that recognition of the parcel's history is important to them as new development is contemplated for the land. Because state enterprises are exempt from Denver’s zoning laws, CDOT was not obligated to preserve the buildings despite their age and significance, but Historic Denver had hoped the state transportation agency would work toward a good-faith compromise.

Griggs confirms that CDOT did not notify the local neighborhood association prior to moving to demolish buildings on the site. Demolition began on July 26, according to Historic Denver.

The roundhouse foreman’s office, women’s locker room, coach shop, testing laboratory and steel car shop have all been destroyed, according to Historic Denver. Deffenbaugh says those buildings worked together to tell the story of Burnham Yard as it relates to Denver and America at large.
Burnham Yard existed as a railyard before Colorado even became a state, established in 1871 by the Denver & Rio Grande rail company.

According to a 2017 research report compiled by Square Moon Consultants at the request of Historic Denver, by 1917 the railroad served by Burnham Yard spanned 2,489 miles of track.

The neighborhoods near Burnham Yard grew to be working-class strongholds, holding European and Russian immigrants in addition to Mexicans fleeing the revolution of 1910, according to the report.  Historic photographs show that the workforce at Burnham was racially integrated by the early 1900s, something that was rare in America at that time.

World War II was another significant period for Burnham Yard, as women took on mechanical and scientific jobs in place of men who had gone to war. In 1943, the railroad built a women’s locker room and hospital to accommodate the new workforce.

The foreman’s office was built in 1906 and had various uses over Burnham Yard’s history, including serving as the African-American shop workers’ locker room during World War II. The women’s locker room built during that time also still stood until this weekend.

“Burnham Yard tells such a unique and fascinating history about women's workplace history, racial equality and transportation history, which is what Denver is founded upon,” Deffenbaugh says. “For buildings which still existed until the weekend and continue to tell that unique story to be demolished during the weekend, with no engagement with the local community, with no dialogue with the City and County of Denver's landmark team, or Historic Denver, is highly immoral and a terrible example.”

The coach shop built in 1901 was the oldest remaining structure on the site. The testing laboratory was built in 1937 and the steel car shop was constructed in 1924.

Historic Denver met with CDOT in April to discuss the buildings but hasn’t heard from the department since, according to Deffenbaugh.

Asked about the demolition, the Colorado Transportation Investment Office, a state enterprise and division of CDOT, sent this statement:

“We have worked with the State Historic Preservation Office and the Department of Personnel and Administration, which manages state properties, to clean up the Burnham Yard site in advance of any sale. This process includes mitigation of any hazardous materials, such as asbestos, but also demolition of structures. None of the buildings found to be historically eligible by the State Historic Preservation Office are a part of this cleanup effort, and we are committed to working through the historic eligibility process for those structures. The historic easements will remain on those structures after the sale of the property.”

Discussions around Burnham Yard heightened earlier this year when the Broncos were linked to several real estate purchases near Burnham Yard; the team is currently in the process of finding a place to build a new stadium but has not commented publicly on Burnham Yard itself.

Deffenbaugh believes the Broncos could have integrated the historic buildings with new development to create an “exciting concept.” Now, any new development on the site won’t have that chance.

“The demolition of these historic buildings represents a stunning lack of vision,” Deffenbaugh says. “The narrative that we can have either new development or historic buildings is completely false. With sufficient vision, we could really have it all. We could have a wonderful new part of the city, grounded in a small number of historic buildings, but that takes vision and thought, and neither of those things have occurred in this case.”