Why Are Downtown Denver Streets Diagonal? Downtown Denver’s streets, unlike those in the rest of the city, were originally platted in reference to Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in order to give claimants in the mining camp access to water. As the city grew and mining operations shifted to the mountains, the street grid was shifted in 1878 to align with standard compass points, beginning at Broadway on the east, Colfax Avenue on the south, Downing Street on the west, and roughly what became I-70 on the north. The next time you have trouble navigating in or out of the “downtown angle,” perhaps it will help to recall that the awkward intersections along the old city’s edges are a legacy of Denver’s days as a mining boomtown.
Read more in Colorado Heritage Magazine’s “Grids of Chaos” by Phil Goodstein.
- Courtesy of “Dr. Colorado” Tom Noel (Photo: Birds eye view of Denver from the northwest looking southeast in 1874, by E.S. Glover. Courtesy of History Colorado, G4314 .D4A3 1874 .G5a)