DENVER — A historical marker for Denver's Chinatown has officially gone missing.
Located next to an alleyway near the intersection of 16th Street and Wazee Street, it's one of three markers built last year to bring awareness to the history of Denver's one-time Chinatown.
"The marker talks about all the different reasons why Chinese folks had immigrated here, how Chinatown got started, and talked a bit about the resiliency of our community," said Joie Ha, executive director of Colorado Asian Pacific United, who helped install it in the first place.
According to Ha, they first discovered it missing back in early December 2023 and so far, still don't know who did it or why it happened.
"The marker missing feels like to us another type of erasure of our history. Whether or not the marker is missing because of malicious reasons, it does feel disappointing in a way that this is sort of a metaphor for oftentimes how marginalized histories are just not really in the mainstream," said Ha.
The history behind it
Where Chinatown was located in 1880 is now LoDo – a busy area of bars, restaurants, businesses and Coors Field. There’s no evidence that the area used to be a Chinatown, Ha said. According to historians, the area was home to 500 Chinese people at its peak.
On Oct. 31, 1880, that neighborhood was burned to the ground during an anti-Chinese riot – the city's first race riot in its history. One person died and hundreds of others were injured.
Denver's historic Chinatown in photos
Efforts to rebuild
Colorado Asian Pacific United has said they are working on fundraising efforts to help replace the missing marker. They currently have a GoFundMe that you can donate to.
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