Back to High School?

The morning was cool and crisp, and riding my bike at any speed in the dark before sunrise was chilling. But I was dressed for the trip, and the ride along Bear Creek was short. I wanted to check out John F. Kennedy High School (KHS) in Bear Valley, and I thought that it would be an easy ride to see what I could find.

While the grounds were vibrant and alive, the school itself, of course, was dormant and quiet. The neighborhood surrounding the school was also quiet before the new day.

When the sun slowly rose above the horizon, so did the level of activity.

While some residents left in vehicles, a few walked and jogged through the streets of the neighborhood.

Back in early April, I hiked along the banks of Bear Creek, leaving the paved paths behind to “bushwhack” between animal trails. I soon found a trail connected to the school via a bridge over the creek with flowers in full bloom. I want to share this photo again, in the context that while I’ve never actually been inside KHS, I’ve been around in the neighborhood for a long time!

Back then the trees were just starting to leaf while the early germinators were getting busy, but now in the heights of summer it’s a different story! In the photo that follows, US Highway 285 (AKA “Hampden,” the name of the avenue where the highway reaches the city of Englewood) can be visible as a long, low, arch passing over an unseen Wadsworth Boulevard. The view to the southwest from above KHS is arboreal, and also shows where I once lived many years ago—next to the radio tower in the upper left of the photo, next also to Hampden and Wadsworth, my old “stomping” grounds.

The high school has been a long fixture of this neighborhood, contrasting in size and architecture with the four much larger and traditionally neoclassical “direction” city high schools in Denver. In addition to KHS, nearby Abraham Lincoln High School and George Washington HS share the same general modern architecture as they were all designed around the same time, with KHS the last of the “presidential” high schools to be built.

Although I was a near neighbor to KHS, I lived on the other side of the county line in Jefferson County. Serving that county since 1908, Bear Creek High School (BCHS) was a much older and smaller building when I attended (not quite ‘08, of course), surrounded by “temporary buildings” doubling its classroom capacity in order to serve about 1000 students when I was there. The BCHS where my children graduated had been completely rebuilt, and now has about 50% more enrollment than KHS, which stands today at ~1200 Denver students. In addition, another religious high school has since been built just south of Hampden, joining Colorado Academy and Mullen High School as the local private schools.

I should also give a shout out to the only high school in the area that I have yet to mention, Sheridan High School, part of yet another county in this area; predating the others, Arapahoe (that’s the way it’s spelled) is Colorado’s first county.

That’s some of the history and overview of my little world, apparently!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!