Lakewood

Lakewood is a city in Jefferson County, Colorado, west of Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountain foothills. Green Mountain, a grassy mesa on its western edge, is kept as open space with trails that look over the city and the plains.

Charles Welch and W. A. H. Loveland, a railway builder, platted the town of Lakewood in 1889 on farmland west of Denver. Its western edge rises to the Dakota Hogback, a ridge of tilted sandstone where the plains meet the mountains. For most of the 20th century the area was a group of farms, small towns and suburbs without a city government. Farms of the area grew vegetables, fruit and hay for the markets of Denver. In 1969 its suburbs voted to join into one city.

Terumo BCT, a maker of equipment for collecting and processing blood, has its head office in Lakewood. The US Geological Survey has large offices at the Denver Federal Center, where its scientists map the geology and water of the country. The National Park Service also runs its design center for park buildings from the same campus.

Belmar, a downtown of shops, apartments and plazas, was built in the 2000s on the site of an old shopping mall and named after the estate of the Bonfils family that once stood nearby. The Lakewood Heritage Center keeps farm buildings, a schoolhouse and a museum of the 20th century in a park. Bear Creek Lake Park, in the south of the city, has a reservoir, horse trails and campsites along the creek.