Last year, Arcadia Books published Denver historian Shawn M. Snow’s
“Denver’s City Park and Whittier Neighborhoods.” The slender volume is full of arresting archival images and stories about Denver during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Claire Martin, The Denver Post
Q: There used to be a horse-racing track on the land where City Park’s athletic fields are now?
A: Yes, on that southwest corner of 23rd Avenue and Colorado, stretching back into the park. A big promoter was J.J. Joslin, who started the department store. They had horse races, sulky races, a little bit of everything. There were bicycle races there, too.
Q: Seriously?
A: Yes. They did automobile races there, too, but I think that ended somewhere between the Great Depression and World War II. I have a map of the park from 1925, and the racetrack is still there.
Q: And there were maypole dances?
A: Yeah, that was a great thing! Schoolchildren doing choreographed dances and maypole dances at 19 Maypoles. It was a surprise to learn what a focal point City Park was for all of the Denver public schools. The schoolchildren came each year on Arbor Day and planted trees starting in the 1880s. One was the Whittier Oak.
Q: Is it still there?
A: You know, I looked for an oak tree big enough to stretch back to that era, but I couldn’t find one that dated from the 1880s.
Q: What did you learn about the bear that inspired the Denver Zoo?
A: Its name was Billy Bryan, named after William Jennings Bryan, and it was owned by Thomas McMurray, the mayor at the time. He’d gotten it as a present in 1896.
Q: As apet?!
A: Yeah; it doesn’t seem so likely today. He couldn’t control the bear, so he gave it to the City Park maintenance staff. It was in an enclosure, but living and running around pretty freely. When it began eating chickens and things, it was put into an enclosure and became the first exhibit of the Denver Zoo.
Q: What’s the story behind the cannons in the park?
A:The Civil War cannons came in the 1890s, and they’re some of the oldest objects left in the park. I didn’t realize when I started this project how old they were. They were really popular. The park was a big focal point for people, and they liked to have their pictures taken by the cannon. Going through my mother’s photographs, I found one of my great-grandmother next to one of those cannons, dating back to 1917.
