Lincoln Hills: Mountain Sanctuary
Lincoln Hills was the biggest retreat west of the Mississippi built by and for African Americans when it opened in 1922 in the Rock Mountains of Colorado. At the resort tucked into a valley along South Boulder Creek, a community of families and visitors shared their love for the outdoors and created a place to relax. See below for images related to the exhibition I curated in the spring of 2025, at History Colorado.
Making a Home in the West.
Millions of African Americans fled southern states after the Civil War ended in 1865. Some made their way west to Colorado, where they joined other Black Coloradans. Most members of Denver’s Black community lived in the city's center, in present-day Lower Downtown. The first Black churches in Denver—Shorter African Episcopal Church and Zion Baptist Church—both started there in the 1860s.
But discrimination meant Black Denverites had limited job, education, and housing options. Over the next several decades, African Americans created new communities in the Five Points and Whittier neighborhoods. They became centers of Black cultural and economic life that supported Lincoln Hills’s popularity and success in the 1920s.
Getting to Lincoln Hills
The forty-mile drive from Denver to Lincoln Hills on Highway 72 sometimes took five hours. The steep, unpaved road had tight switchbacks and no guardrails. But taking the train only took about an hour. The Denver & Salt Lake Railway, nicknamed the “Dinky Train,” had two stops near Lincoln Hills. After 1949, the California Zephyr train from San Francisco to Chicago also stopped nearby.
Building a Community
Black churches, newspapers, and neighborhoods were key to building the Lincoln Hills community. News of a development in the mountains, just for African Americans, spread in the 1920s largely through endorsement letters from pastors at Zion Baptist, New Hope, and Shorter A.M.E. Churches, as well as advertisements in newspapers like The Colorado Statesman and The Chicago Defender.
Through the newly formed Lincoln Hills Development Company, African Americans purchased individual lots to serve as homes away from home. Landowners used the lots as they pleased. Many chose to camp but a small number built cabins, some of which the original families still enjoy today.
Family Archives
See below for early 20th century recreation archival photographs gathered for the exhibition!
Exhibition:
Lincoln Hills: Mountain Sanctuary
Years
1922 - 1965
