Alongside Peña Boulevard, on a patch of grass seven miles from Denver International Airport, sits a relic of old Denver.
The dilapidated red barn sticks out like a sore thumb next to the busy roadway, the main thoroughfare connecting one of the world’s most-trafficked airports with the bustling downtown core.
It’s an oasis of the past amid creeping suburban sprawl and modernization. Down the road, electric vehicles zoom past advertisements for artificial intelligence companies as 747s ferry travelers across the world in a matter of hours.
The barn represents a gateway to Denver’s cowtown legacy — a time when farmers just outside the city grew dryland wheat, raised hogs and milked cows.
George Race moved to the farm with the red barn in 1936, maintaining some 3,000 to 4,000 acres, his grandchildren said in an interview. George’s son, Dean Race, operated a 100-head dairy operation on the land until 1982, while also raising chickens, turkeys, rabbits, lambs and horses.
There was nothing else around the farm, save for some other wheat farmers a few miles away, Dean’s children, Ed, Don and Debbie Race, said.
Going into Denver was a treat, the Races said. It was a big deal when Tower Road was paved; before then, all they knew were dirt roads.
Ed Race remembers going to classes in a one-room schoolhouse with a total of 20 kids from first through eighth grade.
The clan was a true agricultural family, they said. The kids participated in 4-H and competed in steer events at the National Western Stock Show, “winning some and losing some,” Ed Race said. He used to have trophies to prove his skills. Dean Race, meanwhile, served as president of the Adams County Co-Op.
The Races used to do chores in the morning, head straight to school, and then return for more chores in the evening. That meant feeding the animals, milking the cows and cleaning the barn, among other strenuous tasks.
“Everybody got scarce when we had to clean the chicken house,” Don Race said with a laugh.
“We created our own fun,” Ed Race said. “It also gave us a good work ethic: Work first and play later.”
Their skin is still paying the price for all those hours spent in the sun before the advent of sunscreen.
Then, in 1989, the city of Denver acquired 53 square miles of land east of the city for the construction of the new airport. The city relocated Dean Race and his wife, Delpha, to a home in Brighton but allowed the couple, along with other farmers in the area, to continue working the land for another five years.
Dean had to wear a nametag while driving his tractor around during those years, Ed Race recalls.
“All his life, that’s all he ever knew,” Debbie Race said.
Under the agreement, the city paid one-third of the cost of seeds, fertilizer and pest control, The Denver Post reported at the time. The farmers paid for the rest as they planted and harvested the crops.
It took some adjusting, moving from the homestead to a more suburban neighborhood, Dean Race told the High Plains Journal in January 1991.
“The wife seems to have adjusted real good,” he said in the article titled, “Farmer grounded by airport.” “It is handy for shopping, I guess, for her. We got married right out of high school. And we lived there right after we were married and have never moved. That was 43 years ago. She was used to puttering around outside and having a garden. She has had a little more of an adjustment than me, because I can get out and go to the farm.”
In 1995, the airport opened and the farmers stopped farming. The city built Peña Boulevard directly through the land where the red barn had stood, so the city moved the structure slightly.
These days, the barn is enclosed by a metal fence to keep out vandals and vagrants.
The roof’s wooden slats allow streaks of sunlight to stream inside. Owls have made themselves at home in the rafters, while the bones of dead vermin lie on the empty floor.
Airport officials say they are “evaluating ways to incorporate the legacy of the barn in future development as a tie to the airport’s history.”
The Race children, now in their 70s, have conflicting emotions when they drive past their old homestead.
Don Race called the development there “progress.”
Ed Race said he’s ambivalent about the changes to the area.
“It’s sad,” Debbie Race said. “I wouldn’t even recognize that area now.”
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