The Byers Branch Library, now a Denver landmark, opened in 1918 at 675 Santa Fe Drive; it was named for William Byers, who d founded the
Rocky Mountain News sixty years earlier. Also coming under scrutiny was the Ross-Barnum Branch Library, at 3550 West First Avenue, which gets half of its name from the so-called “Greatest Showman,” P.T. Barnum, who in 1878 bought the land where the library now sits for a subdivision. The Ross-Barnum Library opened in 1954.
But today, DPL sees a need for change. In his newspaper, Byers openly advocated for a few months of active extermination against Indigenous people, whom he referred to as the red devils. Front-page stories applauded the Sand Creek Massacre, the November 29, 1864, assault led by Colonel John Chivington on a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho in the southeast corner of the Colorado territory that killed at least 200 members of the tribes, including many chiefs.
Sand-creek
Colorado
United-states
Rocky-mountain
Denver-public-library
Winter-park
Byers-evans-house-museum
Denver
American
John-chivington
Casey-van-divier
Joice-heth