The strip of West Colfax Avenue slicing through the neighborhood that shares its name is urban archeology writ large. Used auto dealerships. Mid-century motels converted to housing. Mexican restaurants. A ramen joint. Little Man Ice Cream Factory. A McDonald’s. Depending on the hour, you can score a slice of pizza, a hot pastrami sandwich, a joint, a $5 cup of coffee, do your laundry and, maybe, take in a schvitz.

Bordered East and West by Federal and Sheridan Boulevards and on the North by West 17^th and 19^th Avenues and on the South by 10^th Avenue and the Lakewood Gulch, it’s a patchwork of old and new.

Colfax Avenue was originally the Golden Road because it connected Denver and Golden—and because it linked a nascent city to the gold mines. The road was renamed Colfax after Schuyler Colfax, a U.S. representative from Illinois (and later Speaker of the House and vice president under Ulysses S. Grant), who helped Colorado become a territory. Today, it’s a 26-mile ribbon of American eccentricity that extends from Aurora to Golden.

Throughout the mid- and late-1800s and turn of the last century, newly immigrated Central and East European Jews established a thriving community West of downtown, which eventually extended West of Federal. Golda Meir, who would become prime minister of Israel, lived on Denver’s West Side at 16^th and Julian.

Much of Denver’s Jewish community eventually relocated to the city’s East Side but there remains a healthy vestige of West Colfax’s Jewish past. There’s the Mikvah of Denver, Orthodox synagogues, a yeshiva, and an eruv encompasses much of the neighborhood. (An eruv is a symbolic boundary demarcated by a continuous wire where activities prohibited on Shabbat, such as using strollers, can take place). Lake Steam Baths, which was founded by a Russian Jewish couple in 1927, was sold in 2022. Yet, even under new management, they continue to soothe the soul through exclusive steam baths, massage therapy, exfoliating scrubs and more.

As the 20^th century progressed into the 1930s, West Colfax became U.S. Highway 40 one of the main thoroughfares through the city. Motels, car dealerships and restaurants proliferated. New waves of immigrants, Latinx and Asian, moved into the neighborhood. And when St. Anthony’s Hospital relocated to Lakewood in 2011, the redevelopment of that property created luxury townhomes, condos, affordable housing units and retail including Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Tap & Burger Sloan’s Lake, Cheba Hut and more.

Often mistaken for the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood just north, West Colfax offers a wide mix of housing offerings from a smattering of Craftsman bungalows and other early 20^th-century homes to custom mid-century homes built along Sloan’s Lake southside to ultra-modern multi-family units.

With the Edgewater Public Market food hall just to the West and King Sooper’s and Target nearby, this diverse walkable (Sloan’s Lake Park is right there), shoppable, dine-able, commutable (light rail is blocks away) neighborhood feels urban, suburban, commercial, kitschy and classic, historic and ultra-modern, allows you to choose your own adventure.

WEST COLFAX HIGHLIGHTS
Population: 11,100+
Location: Ten to 15 minutes west of downtown Denver
Housing stock: Some early 20th-century homes, mid-century modern ranches and contemporary single- and multi-family homes  
Public schools: Denver Public Schools
Public high school: North High School
Nearest hospital: Denver Health
Nearby parks: Sloan’s Lake Park, Lakewood/Dry Gulch Park
Fun fact: Stackhouse, a new complex featuring stackable shipping containers outfitted as tiny homes is offering a futuristic model of homeownership. It opens in the West Colfax neighborhood next year.
Niche.com neighborhood rankings:
     Overall Niche Grade — A-
     Nightlife — A+
     A Diversity — A
     Good for Families — B+