Globeville Story: June 2017

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Nanny Goat Hill

During the 1880s, immigrants moved to an area north of Denver that offered jobs in the smelters, railroads and meatpacking plants. In this industrial enclave, developers began laying out tracts with pastoral-sounding names like Garden Place, Greenwood Addition, Cranberry Place and Tacoma Heights. Families acquired these small plots, constructed the tiny homes that still define the neighborhood and took their first steps toward building a life in Globeville. To the west, on a bluff overlooking the settlement was an area known as Nanny Goat Hill.
Sam Dreith remembers, "There was a section in between Broadway to about Fox Street we called Nanny Goat Hill. All along Globeville Road and where the Regency Student Housing is now, that was all truck farms. Old man Struck kept nanny goats. And, to the south, Fiori’s had a truck farm with nanny goats. There was nothing but prairie and the Argo ditch to the north. Quite a few Germans, Kriegers and Wilhelms, lived up there too. And the brickyards, Denver Sewer, Pipe and Clay, were up there on 45th and Fox Street. The Cook brothers had a service station up there. They were the only businesses up there on the prairie.
Today, this area is again the target of real estate developers, hungry to capitalize on a location close to transportation and downtown Denver. Long gone are the truck farms, the nanny goats and the memories of Globeville's early days.