Four Mile Historic Park

A few miles southeast of downtown, Four Mile Historic Park holds the oldest standing structure in Denver. In eighteen fifty-nine, brothers Samuel and Jonas Brantner built a two-story squared-log cabin along Cherry Creek, four miles from the young settlement of Denver City, giving the stop its name. The Cherokee Trail, established in eighteen forty-nine along an older indigenous route, passed right by the front door, and travelers pushing west during the gold rush needed a place to eat, water their animals, and rest before the final leg into town.

In eighteen sixty-two the Butterfield Stage Company began scheduled service along Cherry Creek, and the Four Mile House became the last mile-stop before Denver. New sections joined the original log structure over the decades: a wood-frame wing in the eighteen sixties and a brick addition in eighteen eighty-three, creating the U-shaped building standing today. The nonprofit Four Mile Historic Park was formed in nineteen seventy-seven, and the museum opened the following year.

Today costumed interpreters work the grounds alongside heritage livestock and original outbuildings, with the experience set to the eighteen sixties through the eighteen eighties. It is a twelve-acre pocket of the frontier inside the modern city.