By Ahnaf Kalam | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
In the heart of Denver, what once stood as a mosaic of statuesque history and pride has become a city of empty plinths, iron bolts and plywood cover-ups—monuments, not to the past, but to a peculiar present.
The city, known for the quiet dignity of its Pioneer Monument, Civil War memorials and an enduring homage to figures of historic Colorado, has found itself sacrificing the aesthetic that once conveyed its cultural soul. In a surge of post-George Floyd “anti-racism,” Denver’s leaders have erased long-standing symbols, replacing artful bronzework with exposed screws and fenced-off pedestals. Denver, it seems, has become a city obsessed with forgetting.
In the summer of 2020, the removal of Kit Carson’s statue at the Pioneer Monument at Colfax and Broadway epitomized this new, uneasy age. Kit Carson, an early Colorado pioneer whose life work mapped much of the region’s untouched frontier, was no stranger to controversy. Yet, one must wonder at the strange conviction of today’s progressives, those who so vehemently believe that he — and others like him — are worthy of nothing more than condemnation. The Pioneer Monument was not destroyed by protestors, but Denver itself chose to dismantle it “as a precaution,” perhaps imagining an angry mob that might descend to tear down a statue standing for more than 100 years. In doing so, they left the city with an unceremonious plinth where there was once a tribute to Colorado’s very foundations.
Elsewhere, the city seemed to willingly give in to the caprices of cultural amnesia. A statue of Christopher Columbus, quietly standing in Civic Center Park for more than 50 years, fell to rioters — toppled by an anger not directed at Columbus himself, but at the very notion of an imperfect past. It had survived unscathed for decades, noticed more by pigeons than people, until one summer’s day when it was ripped from its place. Its crime? Not meeting the lofty ideals of a 21st-century progressive college campus.
But most staggering was the toppling of a Civil War memorial outside the Colorado Capitol. Erected in 1909, the statue depicted a Union soldier, meant to honor the men who fought to preserve the Union during America’s bloodiest war. It was targeted, perhaps by those too enraged to care about history, mistaken as a monument to the Confederate side or, bizarrely, for Colonel John Chivington — a name wrongly attached to this tribute, with echoes of his connection to the Sand Creek Massacre. In 2017, a petition circulated to remove it, but even then, the debate was academic. It was only in 2020 that the statue’s actual purpose — to commemorate the Union soldiers who fought to end slavery — was forgotten in the melee. And so it was, in the early hours of a summer night, that Denver lost yet another thread to its past.
An Armenian Genocide memorial, quietly sitting at the northeast corner of the Capitol, fared no better in the city’s summer of anger. Vandals defaced this solemn tribute to the more than one million people killed in the Armenian Genocide with graffiti, an absurd retaliation to the death of George Floyd — a man whose life had no imaginable connection to Armenian history, the first World War or the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, in the wave of rage that swept over Denver, even this quiet stone memorial became a target. Its damage was so severe that it had to be shipped off and sent elsewhere for restoration, a brutal testament to the heedless, baseless anger that swept over a city.
There is, however, a deeper cost to this so-called “anti-racist” purge. The empty plinths dotting Denver are more than just blemishes on a skyline once defined by bronzework and stone; they are a rejection of history itself. Roger Scruton, who wrote powerfully on the value of beauty in one’s cultural memory, would be astounded. “Beauty,” he argued, “is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.” It is in our history — our public art, our statues, our grand buildings — that beauty resides. By tearing down what we find inconvenient, we don’t just reject men long dead, we deny the very history that defines who we are.
Denver, like much of America, is plagued by a strange paradox: a city desperate to sever itself from the past it claims to cherish. For years, its residents delighted in the same shared history that bound Coloradans together, from the pioneers to the Civil War soldiers, to the immigrants who built and shaped the state. Today, Denver’s streets reflect less of its once-celebrated history and more of a sterile vision that prioritizes unsightly blank spaces and difficult discussions over any messy, complicated past.
The Denver of today, stripped of statues and bronzework, is not the city of our ancestors, nor is it a city made richer by progressive ideals. It’s a city of empty bases, a place more concerned with forgetting than with preserving. In a world where plywood has replaced artistry, where the beauty of history lies discarded and defaced, one wonders: what will Denver, and cities like it, remember in 100 years? Or will they even remember at all?
Ahnaf Kalam is the digital editor and podcast producer at the Middle East Forum, where he has been a writer and researcher since 2017. He writes regularly on issues of national security, counter-extremism, and foreign policy. His work has appeared in The American Spectator, The Gazette, Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, and other publications. He holds a bachelor’s in political science and international studies from the University of Colorado. You can follow him on X at @ahnafkalam.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.