46 Years Ago
The March 16, 1978 Golden Transcript included this ad for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the Holiday Inn. This hardly seems like history, but it occurs to me that many current residents never saw the Holiday Inn and don’t know where it was.
The Holiday Inn was built at Colfax and Indiana (map) in 1964, opening in 1965. It was planned as part of a much larger development scheme that included a new shopping center. The “Wide Acres Center” was to have a major dry goods store, supermarkets, services businesses, retail outlets, a home center, automotive and recreation center.
The shopping components took much longer than anticipated. The Denver West stores (north side of Colfax) opened in 1999 and Colorado Mills Mall (south side of Colfax) opened in 2002.
When it opened, the Holiday Inn had an outdoor swimming pool, restaurant, and cocktail lounge. According to the company’s website, the Holiday Inn chain was relatively new at that time (having been founded in 1952), but was growing quickly. By 1965, there were 500 Holiday Inn motels in North America.
The chain began enclosing their swimming pools and introducing Holidomes (glassed-covered areas with pools, plants, and miniature golf) in the 1970s, and the Golden Holiday Inn got one too. This enhanced their appeal as a year-round destination for families.
I can’t remember precisely when “our” Holiday Inn closed, but in the oldest available Google Street View image (2007), it looks recently closed. There’s a chain link fence blocking the main entrance, but the sign is still up.
Empire Nissan now occupies that space.
Thanks to the Golden History Museum for providing the online cache of historic Transcripts, and to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!
