Denver Lost Gay Bars History: From the Pit to Blush & Blu

Denver lost gay bars are easier to follow in date order than in a single list, and the listed sources date enough of them to lay out a timeline a reader can check. This page runs from a basement bar downtown in 1939 to Blush & Blu, which closed on October 5, 2024. Each entry keeps only the names, places and dates that a listed source states, and the counts, owners and addresses that no source supports have been removed. The entries are kept in order so that a reader can check each opening and closing against the source named beside it. It suits a reader who wants a dated sequence to lay over the city's map rather than stories about nights out.

The Pit operated in 1939 in the basement of The Steak Bar at 17th and Glenarm in downtown Denver. It is the earliest dated entry here, and the detail of a basement room is what makes it worth a stop in the timeline, because it shows where queer drinking happened before the Colfax entries begin. The wider period is covered in Denver's LGBTQ+ history before Stonewall.

Mary's Tavern opened on Broadway during the 1940s. The sources give no more than the street and the decade, so the entry is short, but a reader can still place it on a map. Read together, the Pit and Mary's Tavern put queer nightlife on two downtown streets before Colfax enters the record.

Category Six Books opened at 909 East Colfax in 1982 (List of LGBTQ firsts by year). It was a bookstore rather than a bar, and it stays in the timeline because it is a dated gay space on Colfax that the listed source places in time.

The Denver Detour opened in 1983 and operated as a lesbian bar until 2009 (List of LGBTQ firsts by year). It is the only entry in this section with both an opening year and a closing year, which makes it the easiest bar in the group to place in sequence. Its run as a lesbian bar is what gives it a place in a timeline of lost bars rather than a list of openings.

The Woman-to-Woman Feminist Book Center operated at 2023 East Colfax through the 1970s (History of lesbianism in the United States). Its name marks it as a feminist book center rather than a bar, and its address puts it on the same avenue as Category Six Books. Two entries on one avenue is the pattern this section is built to show.

For the street's wider history, read Colfax Avenue: Queer History of Denver's Most Notorious Street.

Blush & Blu opened in 2012 and closed on October 5, 2024 (List of LGBTQ firsts by year). It is the most recent entry on this timeline, and its closing date is the one a reader can check exactly against the source.

That closing date is the fixed point the earlier entries are read against. A reader moving down the list from 1939 ends at a dated closing rather than a general statement about nightlife, which is why the timeline reaches into 2024 at all.

The pages below cover Denver LGBTQ+ history outside this timeline, and none of their details are repeated here. Cheesman Park's queer history covers the park as a queer gathering place. Charlie's Denver, the country-western gay bar covers a bar with its own history. Tracks Nightclub, Denver's LGBTQ+ dance club covers a dance club with its own run. Each page is a separate read, so a reader who has finished this timeline can move to them without going back over the dates here.

Updated 2026-10-11: removed unsourced dates and figures, kept sourced openings and closings, added inline sources.