This is a story of industry; of what was and what is made here.

Our story is centered at Franklin and 39th st. and with only a hazy understanding of the industrial blocks and residential abodes that surround.

When we think of ex-industrial areas, there is the faint glow of the past; industrial building have an ever present functionality. This rings true for their architecture, their equipment and after their dereliction there is the begged questions - what did this do, why did someone spend their life's work putting this here, is there a use anew?

First doors close but that does not hearken a change. It's once abandonment of a building or an area truly set in and the human soul feels there is the restriction; it is then that society feels a push against the closure and a universal appeal to get close to something much bigger than our human scale. Owners and guardians deal with this in often tried, true and liability limiting means...

Yet still we can see the industrial and even aesthetic forms of the works gone by. One can imagine the pride in office, the pride in factory, the pride in form those of the past felt.

But for those buildings unprotected and disused, a darker time comes and their remnants of the past a mocked anachronism. Even nature once encouraged, now left alone, may try her hand at taking back the building.

But industrial life is hard to see and can still be thriving in these places. We see the sign of modern cameras keeping their eye on works; later we find the address of a building still in-use while covered by graffiti, even the regularity of an exhaust vent fresh with the smell of a solvent.

One of these non-descript warehouses is home to the non-descript CDI Inc. Ironically a place that holds much interest for me to explore their wares.

Porta Power, here for over 30 years, is a warehouse supply company. And the business of the owner of the Denver Rock Drill complex.

As we all know the world does not stand still. Things don't always move in a coherent direction but here in Colorado, usually things move in only one-way and in the areas that get on the train of the expanding and improving Denver, that's revitalization. We can see that some of the graffiti is intentional street art; even one of a annonnymous dapper fellow. . Things keep moving and there are new developments around.

Quite the clean, well-marked sidewalk for the typical industrial area..

It's not often a graffiti clad dumpster in-front of a fenced off block warehouse on a cracking sidewalk is separated from a billboard for better financial tools by a vacant lot..

There's now a multi-block long park providing a connected path and separation of the high-density commercial and historic residential neighborhood. The modernism is in stark contrast to the industrial past and once seemingly little resourced neighborhood. We can still appreciate the industry of the park and its mechanical needs for grand water handling as it like the water swiftly connects many blocks long impassible except by industrial business.

While many stories of the past remain untold we at least can more clearly see this block and what it once did and what it means for tomorrow. May development and rebuilding hold a future happier for all than the happiest of past developments.

As an aside an undated, first quarter of the 20th Century photo of the Denver Rock Drill sote looking from the South-East is available from the Denver Public Library as call nuber X-24266.