'There's a reckoning in history': Colorado historians work to preserve Green Book sites

Feb. 5—Painted in black and white, a group of young girls laugh in their swim trunks and caps as they splash around in the cool waters of South Boulder Creek.

The year is 1935, and the girls are enjoying the day at a summer camp in the Rockies. The camp, called Camp Nizhoni, is less than 40 miles west of Denver in Lincoln Hills.

While the resort served as a spot to roast smores and watch sunsets, it was also a haven.

The recreational community operated as a getaway for African American tourists during a time when just stopping by the wrong gas station could spell trouble from racist store owners.

But here, vacationers could actually vacation.

Now, researchers at Colorado's State Historic Preservation Office are working to preserve historic spaces like these with new funding from the National Park Service, which awarded the office $74,998 in a recent round of Underrepresented Community Grants.

Through these grants, the NPS hopes to increase representation on the National Register of Historic Places, which is overwhelmingly made up of buildings associated with the wealthy and elite, said Patrick Eidman, chief preservation officer of History Colorado.

Among the sites listed on the National Register, only 8% of locations are tied to communities of color and/or women. That share shrinks when analyzing Colorado's State Register of Historic Places, in which only 5% of properties listed are directly related to underrepresented communities.

With the new funding, Colorado researchers will move forward with a statewide survey of sites crucial to African American travelers across Colorado, with the goal of nominating at least one of the locations to the National Register of Historic Places.

"Just because we didn't know about it doesn't mean the stories weren't being told. But the National Register has not done a great job of telling this broader history, so that's where our focus is," Eidman said. "We need to understand and document and celebrate the whole history of Colorado."

The survey is part of an ongoing project focused on African American travel and recreational resources in Colorado during the Jim Crow era.

This next phase will build on research released in 2021, which compiled important locations for further investigation in this upcoming stage. That report provides a preliminary overview and plan for the project.

History

A photo dated 1900 captures a group of five African American travelers posing on donkey back, draped in Victorian clothing and donning their large, touristy sun hats in front of Balanced Rock at Garden of the Gods.

While there is some evidence of Black tourists visiting Colorado in the early 20th century, traveling among African Americans really boomed in the aftermath of World War II, said National Register historian Poppie Gullett.

More African American residents moved to the state as the military established its presence in Colorado, providing travelers additional resources.

"Things really start to take off right around the mid-1940s. They have lots of stuff for people to do and suddenly, people have vacation time," Gullett said. "It really changes the game right in the middle of the 20th century."

While Colorado did not have explicit Jim Crow laws, the state was one of two hot spots for the Ku Klux Klan outside the South, Gullett said. This led many Front Range travelers to rely on guidebooks that listed safe places for lodging, dining and recreation.

"Places of public accommodation may not advertise that they practice discrimination," reads a disclaimer from the 1954 "TravelGuide," which also provided relevant information for travelers, like state speed limits, fishing license requirements and places of interest.

"It's important to know, anywhere you go, just because you're not going to face legal discrimination doesn't mean you're not going to have moments of unsafety," Gullett said. "You really want to know where you're going before you get there."

Pulling from nine traveler guides and Green Books dating from 1930 to 1967, the 2021 survey found 161 Green Book sites still exist in Colorado today, out of 280 listed.

"It really helps to have these guidebooks," Gullett said. "They're really filling this gap of people who suddenly have leisure time, who want to go see Colorado because it's beautiful, and they're interested in coming out."

From motels to retail stores to mortuaries — yes, mortuaries — the Colorado businesses listed in the Green Books were concentrated in Front Range cities, including Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

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Those cities were also home to the state's largest Black populations in the mid-1900s during Colorado's population boom.

But perhaps more telling to travelers were the towns such guides omitted, said Corinne Koehler, who jump-started the work to get Pueblo's Coronado Lodge, a reputable Green Book site, on the National Register.

"A lot of the communities that had places in the Green Book were on the train route," said Koehler, an at-large board member of History Pueblo. "Then you will also find the communities that are not listed, because they were the sundown towns."

Colorado had its share of sundown-towns — most notably Loveland, Koehler said. The townspeople made travelers aware of who they welcomed and who they didn't, with small, handmade signs under city limit billboards reading, "We observe the Jim Crow Laws here."

Other Colorado areas seemed to become more welcoming over time.

Colorado Springs, for example, went from being a town with an active KKK presence in the 1920s to having the third largest share of African American residents in the state by the 1970s.

Process

Historians Tom and Laurie Simmons spent much of 2020 looking through the lens of Google's Street Views.

As the pandemic restricted many to their homes, the pair virtually toured Colorado sites listed in travel guides, looking for traces of the past.

The Simmonses, who founded Front Range Research Associates, authored the initial survey plan in 2021, laying the groundwork for the project's next stage.

The Colorado Historical Foundation selected the duo in 2020 to complete the work with a $15,000 grant from Colorado's State Historical Fund. The survey plan was recognized by History Colorado last year with a Steven H. Hart award.

"I believe there's a reckoning in history," said Cindy Nasky, director of preservation programs at the Colorado Historical Foundation.

"It was really important for us to be part of the movement — that national movement, long awaited — to recognize different historical events and historical places."

The pair began to investigate each site to determine its nomination potential after crafting a master list.

What were the Simmonses looking for? The integrity of the original building, consistent appearance in traveler guides and overall eligibility. While they explored many buildings with the help of virtual maps, they also conducted drive-by windshield surveys, Tom Simmons said.

Now, the survey plan created by the Simmonses is being used by History Colorado researchers to embark on phase two.

Using the Simmonses' evaluations, the History Colorado team will select 50 to 60 sites to study.

"We're going to do a deeper dive," Eidman said. "We'll start doing some more intensive research into the history of the place."

With help from professional historians as well as public outreach experts, the team hopes to fill in some holes — including information that might not be documented.

"We really want to make sure that the Black community in the places we're going to be doing this work in have the chance to talk with us," Gullett said. "A lot of the stuff, obviously, we could access through books, but word of mouth was the No. 1 way that people found out what was safe."

The community engagement component will be an important part in piecing together the histories of these sites, Eidman said.

"There were sites that were just more informally known," Eidman said. "We think there's going to be a lot of local knowledge that we can access through this community engagement portion to understand more about those places."

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