Serving the Barnum Neighborhood

Extreme Community Makeover is proud to serve Denver Neighborhoods. We do 
volunteer work in Elyria, Globeville, La Alma/Lincoln Park, Swansea, Villa Park, 
West Colfax, Westwood and Barnum. 

Barnum is located in an area known as West Denver. The neighborhood's 
northern boundary is the Sixth Avenue Freeway, its eastern boundary 
is Federal Boulevard, its southern boundary is Alameda Avenue and its 
western boundary is Perry Street. 

Barnum

In 1878 master showman P. T. Barnum purchased a tract of land on the western edge of 

Denver. Over 130 years the area has developed into a robust neighborhood with a 

population that is more than 75 percent Hispanic.This community of young 

first-generation and immigrant families today welcomes newcomers from all 

over the world.

History

Barnum began as a nineteenth-century Denver suburb, developed as a haven for 

working-class families. P. T. Barnum’s involvement with his namesake’s development 

has become part of Denver folklore, especially in the durable legend of the showman’s 

plan to establish a winter home for his circus in the city. Beginning in the 1950s, 

large numbers of Hispanic residents, whether from long-established Colorado families 

relocating to jobs and opportunities in Denver or relatively new immigrants from Mexico, 

began to make Barnum a distinctly Hispanic neighborhood.  In 1950, just ten percent 

of Barnum’s residents were Hispanic; three decades later, in 1980, a majority of its 

residents (50%) were Hispanic.

Today

Today’s Barnum remains a neighborhood of families, now mostly Hispanic (some 75% 

[2000]) and of modest means (with an average household income of $41,185 [2000]).  

More than two-thirds of Barnum’s housing is owner-occupied, and the rate of Hispanic 

homeownership in the neighborhood is substantially higher (66.01% [2000]) than for the 

rest of Denver (49.11% [2000]).  Barnum remains a vibrant working class neighborhood, 

as it has been for more than a century.