A new memorial project is currently in the planning stages on Auraria Campus that seeks to reconcile the site’s complex past and offer a restorative space for future generations. The Peace & Healing Garden, a proposed 7,000-square-foot landscape installation, will serve as both a public acknowledgment of displacement and as a sanctuary for reflection within one of Denver’s most historically layered areas. For thousands of years, the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek made what is now known as Auraria a vital area for Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne peoples, who gathered, traded, and lived along its banks. By the early twentieth century, the neighborhood became known as the Old Westside, home to more than 300 Latino and Hispanic families who built churches, schools, and small businesses that anchored a thriving cultural hub near downtown Denver. The community was permanently disrupted in the late 1960s, when the Denver Urban Renewal Authority seized and cleared much of the area through eminent domain to create the Auraria Higher Education Campus. Hundreds of families were displaced, and today, only one block on Historic Ninth Street Park remains from the original neighborhood. 

The initiative is being led by the Auraria Historical Advocacy Council (AHAC), a coalition founded in 2019 that aims to preserve the original memory of the neighborhood in collaboration with displaced Aurarians and their descendants. The Auraria Higher Education Center also plans to provide institutional support alongside AHAC. Landscape design is being developed by Didier Design Studio, an architecture firm specializing in culturally responsive and ecological design. The layout plans to include a looped pathway and alternating open and enclosed spaces intended to invite quiet reflection and connection with nature. The planners emphasize that the project is not simply a memorial but a living educational resource 

“The Garden, 54 years into the displacement, will be designed to provide a sense of spiritual, physical, and emotional healing,” said Virginia Castro, president of AHAC and a leading advocate for the project. “Not only for the displaced and their descendants but all others on the campus needing a place for rest, reflection, and meditation.”  

The Peace & Healing Garden aims to honor both the Indigenous and displaced populations who shaped the area’s history. The design incorporates native and culturally symbolic plantings, from High Plains grasses that recall Indigenous stewardship of the land to species cherished by former residents of the Old Westside.. By reintroducing native ecologies and commemorating the cultural memory of displacement, the garden is intended to foster dialogue about land use, justice, and resilience.