Where in Lakewood can you stand inside a 1948 diner, a 1949 motel and a gas station that went quiet after I-70 pulled traffic off Colfax? All three sit on one block of grass at 801 S. Yarrow St., a few minutes from Belmar's shops. All three got there for the same reason the museum around them exists.
Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park is 50 this year. The free exhibit marking the anniversary, "50 Years of Heritage in Lakewood," closes Nov. 28. Outside the gallery, every historic building on the grounds now has its own interpretive sign. A collection that started as a rescue list can finally show what it rescued without a tour guide.
A museum that began as a rescue list
The site started with a land purchase. A voter referendum let the city buy what became Belmar Park from the estate of May Bonfils-Stanton. The Lakewood Historical Society formed in 1974 to gather an initial collection of buildings and archives, and the museum opened in 1976.
May Bonfils, daughter of Denver Post co-founder Frederick Bonfils, acquired the land around today's Kountze Lake in 1936. She finished her mansion, Belmar, in 1937 and raised prize-winning sheep and cattle there. The mansion is gone. The Irongate Offices now stand where it stood. Its gates were removed for preservation and are in transition to a permanent display at Belmar Park.
What survived were the working buildings. The farm outbuildings became the historic core: the calving barn, tractor sheds, auction house and caretaker's cottage. After the first relocated building arrived in 1980, the history park grew as a way to keep endangered buildings typical of Lakewood architecture, as Patch reported in 2020. The circa-1910 Calving Barn was remodeled into the first museum. It opened in 1976 as the Belmar Museum and was first run by volunteers.
Until 2020 the site was called the Lakewood Heritage Center. The name changed in a rebrand that, as Patch reported, aimed to set it apart from the Lakewood Cultural Center and honor the Belmar estate. Today the city counts 15 historic buildings and more than 40,000 artifacts on the site, along with festival grounds and an outdoor amphitheater.
Three clusters, three versions of Lakewood
The grounds are arranged by era, and the arrangement does the explaining. Walk from one cluster to the next and Lakewood goes from a gentleman's farm to a farming community to a highway town.
| Hub | Era | Buildings to find |
|---|---|---|
| Belmar Hub | 1910s–1930s | Calving Barn, circa 1910; Auction House, circa 1930s; Tractor Sheds; Caretaker's Cottage; Kountze Lake and Boat House |
| Agricultural Hub | 1910s–1930s | Country School; Farmhouse and Turkey Coop; Streer-Peterson House with the 1922 Cason Howell Windmill; Glen Creighton Pump House, 1919, and Matthews Water Tower, 1932; Red Barn |
| Colfax Hub | 1940s–1960s | 88¢ Variety Store and Ethel's Beauty Salon; White Way Grill, 1948; Peerless Gas Station; Wide Acres Interurban Stop; Estes Motel, 1949 |
A few details are easy to walk past. The Auction House served as the office where May Bonfils and her husband, Charles Stanton, sold sheep and cattle. The Caretaker's Cottage was a farmhouse before the Bonfils era, and today it holds a public research space. The pump house and water tower are there because early 1900s homes and farms had to find and store their own water before local water companies existed. The Red Barn looks old but was built by the city in the 1990s to store vintage tractors.
The Country School carries two dates. It was built in the 1860s as a Methodist Episcopal church in Arvada and later became a one-room school, with a second classroom added in 1919. It moved to the park in 1983 and is furnished as a 1920s classroom. That's why the tour page calls it the "1920s Country School."
The Colfax Hub explains the street you drove in on
The Belmar and farm buildings show Lakewood before the suburbs. The Colfax Hub shows the road that made the suburbs possible, and how that road changed.
After World War II, people heading to the mountains drove Colfax, and the businesses on this block served them. The White Way Grill has eight seats. It took its name from the bright lights of the nearby Fox Theatre in Aurora, and it fed people who were moving to the Denver area or driving through to the mountains. The Estes Motel, built in 1949, was one piece of a larger motel complex the Estes family ran during the 1950s. The Peerless Gas Station is furnished to 1954. Stations like it fell out of use once I-70 drew traffic off Colfax and permanently changed what had been a booming thoroughfare.
The 88¢ Variety Store building opened in 1948 as a laundry and cleaners. It became a five-and-dime in the 1950s and a beauty parlor and barbershop in the 1960s. The front room shows the dime store, and the back room holds Ethel's Beauty Salon with many of its original fixtures. The Wide Acres Interurban Stop is a shelter from the rail line that ran from Denver through Lakewood to Golden. It stayed in use until 1950.
This is the part of the collection most connected to the Lakewood residents know today. The diner, the motel and the gas station come from the same corridor that still carries a lot of the city's daily traffic.
What the 50th year added
The city's July 13 announcement put it plainly:
"New interpretive signage at each historic building allows visitors extended access to learn about the site."
That matters because the building interiors open only during guided tours. Before the signs, an afternoon walk around Kountze Lake meant passing a motel and a diner with nothing nearby to explain them. Now each building has its own story posted outside. The free self-guided walking tour brochure, with a map, adds context for the grounds and the Belmar Park area.
The City Council marked the anniversary with a proclamation on May 11, alongside America's 250th and Colorado's 150th. Here is what's still on view as fall moves into winter:
- "50 Years of Heritage in Lakewood" covers why the museum began, what stories it tells and what the future may hold for the site. It's in the Visitor Center temporary gallery through Nov. 28, free, Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- "Building History" is displayed in the windows of historic outbuildings through Jan. 4, 2027.
- "Happy Birthday, Heritage Lakewood!" fills a Visitor Center hallway through Jan. 16, 2027.
- "State Historical Fund" is installed at the Country Schoolhouse through March 5, 2027.
The permanent gallery, "Lakewood: A 20th Century Journey," traces the century's major events, including the shift from farmland to commercial growth. The grounds are open every day.
Getting inside the buildings
To stand behind the diner counter or see the beauty salon fixtures, book the 60-minute guided tour. It covers the 1930s farmhouse, the 1948 Valentine diner and the Country School, among other stops. Call 303-987-7850 to schedule. Tours cost $5 for adults, $4 for seniors 65 and up, $3 for ages 3 to 12, and nothing for children 2 and under.
The site also runs smaller programs: historical luncheons in its historic spaces, History Happy Hour, and Sneak Peeks and Snacks, a curator-led research workshop in the Caretaker's Cottage. Cider Days on Oct. 3 and 4 has already happened. It was one of three anniversary dates the city chose to close out the year.
Dec. 3 lights up the Colfax Hub, and the budget looks ahead
The last of those three dates is Lakewood Lights on Thursday, Dec. 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. It's free. The Colfax Hub will be open and decorated, with a lighting ceremony and carols at the Gazebo. Hot cocoa and cookies are served free in the diner, with a suggested $1 donation. Santa sets up in the Visitor Center from 3 to 8 p.m., with sensory-friendly visits from 3 to 5. Santa visits are first come, first served, so arrive early to get into the queue. Cocoa in the White Way Grill may be the only time all year when the eight-seat diner serves a crowd.
Upkeep for those buildings shows up in the city's proposed FY2027 budget. It lists $439,281 in revised 2026 funding for Heritage Lakewood site improvements, then $50,000 a year from 2027 through 2031. The money covers paint, drainage, concrete, interpretive signs, safety work and minor repairs. A separate line proposes $125,000 in revised 2026 funding for Belmar Park at 605 S. Yarrow. That covers Kountze Lake decking, possible repairs to the historic pumphouse, and site planning shaped by community feedback. These figures are proposals, not final appropriations. As proposed, the money is going toward keeping the saved buildings sound and readable, and toward the lake path many visitors walk first.
If a walk past the Peerless pumps or a cocoa in the White Way Grill has you thinking about Lakewood's older blocks, or about who in town knows them best, Denver Does It is glad to make the introduction. We know the people who care for this city's history, and we'd love to help you find your place in it. Start With Us.
