When Europeans came to the land that is now Denver in the mid 1800’s, it was Arapahoe territory.  Sand Creek runs through East Denver, near the current location of Mosaic Community Campus, and down into the plains of Southeast Colorado, where the tragic Sand Creek Massacre was perpetrated by white settlers against a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans. The encampment was mostly made up of women, children, and elderly people. On November 29th, 1864, American soldiers under the command of Colonel Chivington murdered 230 Cheyenne and Arapahoe people in this encampment in a scene that even fellow soldiers thought was disgusting, cowardly, and horrific. Denver was built on the ancestral land of these tribes, and we cannot forget either their past and ongoing contribution to the landscape, or their treatment at the hands of white settlers.

This campus resides in Denver’s thriving Park Hill neighborhood, although at the time the campus was built, Park Hill consisted of only one housing development, and the rest of the land was expansive plains and farmland. Over the next century, Park Hill grew into a bustling neighborhood with shaded boulevards, restaurants, stores and parks, and expanded to include North Park Hill and Northeast Park Hill. After World War II, many Black families moved to Park Hill, and it became a national example of a racially integrated neighborhood. There is little information about the integration of the Colorado Women’s College, although we know that a woman named Henrietta Dove became the first Black student at Colorado Women’s College in 1951, three years before Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in schools. Like much of Denver, gentrification has been heavily impacting the neighborhood since the 1990’s, which has driven up housing costs and displaced long-time residents. Urban Land Conservancy has a long history of working with the Park Hill Community; you can view ULC’s other properties in Park Hill here.