Tour 13: West Colfax Avenue: From Agriculture to the Automobile Age along “Colorado’s Main Street”
Tour leaders: Robert Autobee, senior historian, Autobee & Autobee Cultural Resources and Kristen Autobee, historian, Morgan, Angel & Associates
Described as "Colorado's Main Street" and the “Most Wickedest Street in America,” 26-mile Colfax Avenue is the longest continuous commercial thoroughfare in the United States. Over the last 150 years, it has seen agriculture, the rise of automobility, tourism, neon advertising, and urban blight—and has become home both to myths and fantasies and to gritty cultural, economic, and social realities. On this tour, historians Kristen and Robert Autobee, who spent the past two years researching and surveying a five-mile stretch of West Colfax for Colorado's State Historic Fund, will describe how farmers, tubercular patients, innkeepers, and used-car salesmen built this Road to Rockies—and how preservationists are now trying to save this unusual slice of Colorado and American history.
Please note: The bus tour includes some walking. Participants will also take a short ride on the accessible light rail system.
Limit 25. $20 members, $25 nonmembers