Overland Park

The bronze's "mulatto daredevil," in today's terms a man of mixed Black and white parentage, was the mountain man Jim Beckwourth, who reached Denver in 1859 and stayed until 1866, when he went back to the Crow country where he died. In between he clerked in a store in town and farmed beside the Platte near here. In November 1864 he guided Chivington's command toward Sand Creek, and the next year he testified before the military commission about the killings he saw there. The plaque's other names map the valley's gold-rush beginnings around this park.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado Overland Park Most historical of Denver's municipal parks. Created in 1882. This site was homesteaded in 1862 by "Potato" Clark. Jim Beckwourth, mulatto "daredevil", erected a home in 1860 .6 mile north- east. Sam Brown's toll bridge of 1859 located 4 miles south. Gold discovered during July, 1858 .2 mile southwest by Green Russell's party from Georgia. That fall log cabins of Montana City were built about .5 mile south of this spot. Gold traces were found at Spanish Diggings 2 miles north in 1857. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the William A. Braiden Foundation and by Sons of the American Revolution American Pioneer Trails and the western history students of South High School. 1948

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado State Capitol — 4.0 mi
  A capitol of Colorado granite, marble, onyx and gold, with three different steps claiming to stand exactly a mile high.
• Dinosaur Ridge — 10 mi
  A hogback near Morrison with the bones of 1877 on one flank and the footprints a road crew blasted open in 1937 on the other.
• Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  Mustard gas, nerve agent and pesticides for forty years, then bald eagles, bison and black-footed ferrets on the same ground.
• Red Rocks Amphitheatre — 11 mi
  Walker's Garden of the Titans, finished by the CCC between Ship Rock and Creation Rock and dedicated on June 15, 1941.

More markers nearby

• Camp Weld — 3.3 mi
• Sand Creek Massacre — 4.0 mi
• Passing of the Street Car — 4.0 mi
• Smoky Hill Trail — 4.0 mi