Denver's Ghost Highways: Images from the 1967 Skyline Freeway

DENVER, CO -- What would Denver look like if freeways planned 50 years ago had actually been built? It's been 50 years since Denver voters approved an urban renewal plan to rid Downtown Denver of its skid row hotels, pawn shops and 1800s buildings and replace them with the Skyline Freeway system. The freeway was never constructed, but Denver planners demolished 27 blocks of the LoDo area.

A Imagur post by Kyle Dobbins overlays vintage proposals for Denver's "ghost freeway system" on Google maps of Denver. The maps show how much real estate LoDo and other Denver neighborhoods would have lost if the "ghost freeways" had been built.

The Skyline project was supposed to link Commerce City to Morrison, according to Dobbins. The Hampden Freeway would have gone through Englewood. The Columbine Freeway which would have traveled along Santa Fe, Downing, and Park Avenue West. The Mountain Freeway would have replaced all of Alameda, and The Quebec Freeway from I-70 all the way to I-25.

"Imagine having five different freeways from I-25 to I-225. Traffic might not be an issue getting into downtown, but what downtown would be left when you got there?" Dobbins wrote.

Perhaps because Mayor Michael Currigan stepped down from office in 1968, the Skyline project was never built. But acres buildings were demolished in downtown Denver, supposedly to clear the way for modern new skyscrapers, said CU-Denver Professor of Urban Planning Ken Schroeppel said in a May interview with Colorado Public Radio.

"The plan was that the city would tear down these blocks and prepare for redevelopment, then let the private sector do its thing," he said.

But the development took decades to come. Downtown Denver lost some architectural gems, such as the Tabor Opera House building in exchange for blocks of surface parking in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dobbins's posts show how even more destruction of Denver properties might have taken place in the name of blight removal, if Denver's ghost freeways had been built.

"In the end, it's probably for the best that the Skyline Freeway and its brethren never materialized," Dobbins wrote. "A lot of what makes Denver great would've been destroyed in the never-ending pursuit of shorter commutes. It's hard to imagine LoDo existing with a sunken freeway running through the middle of it!"

PHOTO: Vintage 1967 rendering of the proposed Skyline Freeway. (Courtesy Denver Public Library)