The White Way Grill has eight seats. It was built in 1948 and named for the bright lights of the Fox Theatre in Aurora. It fed people who had just moved to the Denver area and travelers taking Colfax to the mountains after World War II. Today the diner sits at 801 S. Yarrow St., a short drive from the shops at Belmar. It is one of 15 historic buildings at Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park, a site the city says holds more than 40,000 artifacts.
The museum turned 50 this year, and the anniversary left something useful behind. Each historic building now has a new interpretive sign, so you can walk the grounds and understand them without a guide. Taken in order, those buildings tell Lakewood's story as a sequence: a hobby-farm estate, then working farms, then the motel-and-gas-station strip along Colfax that I-70 later bypassed. The one anniversary piece that is temporary is the exhibit that explains how the site came together. It closes Saturday, November 28.
What the anniversary added, and what leaves on November 28
A City Council proclamation on May 11 recognized the museum's 50th anniversary, alongside America's 250th and Colorado's 150th. The city then hosted a series of events through the year. It named three of them as the "culminating dates": the August 1 birthday party, Cider Days on October 3 and 4, and Lakewood Lights on December 3. Two of those have already happened.
The exhibit, "50 Years of Heritage in Lakewood," is in the Visitor Center's temporary gallery. It's free and open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The city's listing says it explores why and how the museum began, what stories it tells about the community, and what may happen on the site in the future. The public listing doesn't preview those future concepts, so the gallery is the place to see them.
The signs will stay after the exhibit leaves. That makes the exhibit a good first stop: it explains the site's origins, and the signs carry that story out to the individual buildings.
Start in the barn where the museum started
The site began with a vote. According to the city's Heritage Lakewood master plan, the idea for a heritage center grew out of a 1972 referendum to buy what is now Belmar Park from the estate of May Bonfils Stanton. Under her will, her mansion was demolished. Several estate outbuildings survived, including the calving barn, tractor shed, auction house and caretaker's cottage.
The museum opened in 1976 as the Belmar Museum, inside that rehabilitated calving barn. The barn had once housed Bonfils Stanton's prize-winning sheep and bulls. The city groups these estate structures as the Belmar Hub, covering the 1910s through the 1930s:
- Calving Barn, circa 1910. Original to the Bonfils hobby farm and first painted white to match the outbuildings around it.
- Auction House, circa 1930s. The office May Bonfils and her husband, Charles Stanton, used when they sold sheep and cattle.
- Tractor Sheds, circa 1930s or earlier. Two white pole buildings from the estate, now holding vintage vehicles.
- Caretaker's Cottage, circa 1910. A farmhouse from before the Bonfils era that later housed the farm's caretaker. It is now a public research space.
- Kountze Lake and Boat House. The lake was enlarged for May Bonfils's boats. The city describes its paths as popular with dog-walkers and birdwatchers.
The mansion itself, called Belmar, stood where the Irongate Offices are today. Its 1937 gates have been taken down to protect them, and the city says they are being moved to a permanent display at Belmar Park.
That estate is also behind the park's current name. In January 2020, Patch reported that Lakewood Heritage Center was being renamed Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park. The city's reasons were to separate it from the nearby Lakewood Cultural Center, give it a stronger identity, and honor the Belmar estate's namesake.
The farm years: water, turkeys and a church moved from Arvada
From the barn, the Agricultural Hub moves to Lakewood before the estate era and before the postwar boom. Several of these buildings were moved here, and each one is presented as it would have looked in a particular decade:
| Structure | Built | Shown as | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Country School | 1860s | 1920s | Built as a Methodist Episcopal Church in Arvada, later a one-room school; a second classroom was added in 1919 |
| Farmhouse and Turkey Coop | 1880s | 1930s | A Depression-era home for a turkey-farming family |
| Streer-Peterson House | 1880s | 1920s | Home of Morris and Sophia Streer, a young Jewish immigrant family from Russia, from 1918 to 1921; the Cason Howell Windmill of 1922 pumped water from a well |
| Glen Creighton Pump House and Matthews Water Tower | 1919 and 1932 | Original | Water storage from a time when there were no local water companies |
| Red Barn | 1990s | City-built | Storage for vintage tractors |
The pump house and water tower are easy to walk past. They show what Lakewood households did before local water companies existed: they stored their own water. The museum's collection page lists more than 33,000 objects and 9,000 photographs, covering subjects from domestic life to toys to textiles. Some of what the collection documents only makes sense once you've seen the farmhouse kitchens these buildings preserve.
The Colfax that I-70 bypassed
The Colfax Hub covers the 1940s through the 1960s, and it is the part of the site most residents will recognize. Colfax was once the main route to the mountains. These buildings show what lined it before the interstate pulled the traffic away. A short loop in order:
- Wide Acres Interurban Stop. Built in the early 1900s and used until 1950, it stood on the interurban rail line that ran from Denver through Lakewood to Golden.
- Peerless Gas Station. Built in the 1930s or 1940s and shown as it looked in 1954. The city notes that stations like this fell out of use once I-70 took traffic off Colfax.
- Estes Motel. Built in 1949, it was part of a larger motel complex the Estes family ran in the 1950s for travelers heading to the mountains.
- 88¢ Variety Store and Ethel's Beauty Salon. Built in 1948 as a laundry and cleaners, it became a five-and-dime in the 1950s. In the 1960s Gil and Ethel Gomez ran a beauty parlor and barbershop there, and many of Ethel's original fixtures are still in the back room.
- White Way Grill. The eight-seat diner from 1948.
The route traces one road's rise and decline. A rail stop gave way to car travel, car travel brought gas stations and motels, and then the interstate made both less necessary. Anyone who drives West Colfax today is looking at what came after that last step.
December 3 brings the whole site back to life
Lakewood Lights is the last of the year's culminating events. It runs Thursday, December 3, 2026, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park. There will be a lighting ceremony with holiday carols at the gazebo. Hot cocoa and cookies are free in the diner, with a suggested $1 donation. So the White Way Grill, built to feed postwar travelers on Colfax, will be serving cocoa at the anniversary's final named event.
The park's events don't stop there, though. That evening falls in the middle of a busy holiday stretch on the city's Holiday Events and Happenings calendar. A few dates tie back to the park or sit close by:
- November 7: The Winter Salon opens at Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Pkwy., with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The show of works under $500 runs through January 2, 2027.
- November 23–25: Thanksgiving break camps at Lakewood Cultural Center and Heritage Lakewood.
- December 8: A Holiday Scents and Soapmaking class at Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park.
- December 12: The Holiday Pottery Sale at Washington Heights Arts Center.
If you walk Belmar Park on the way in, the paths are open again. Stormwater work in the park, tied to the private development at 777 S. Yarrow St., was finished by July 8. Some fencing stays up while the area is reseeded, and the city says every other area is open to the public.
There are two easy ways to catch the anniversary before it wraps up. On any Tuesday through Saturday before November 28, visit the exhibit first and then walk the three hubs with the new signs. Or skip the exhibit and come the evening of December 3 for the lighting ceremony and cocoa in the diner. The signs will still be there in January.
At Live Grand Team, we love seeing a city put its own history on display, and Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park packs Lakewood's story into one walkable loop. If you're already planning a fall visit or a Lakewood Lights evening and want to talk about the west side, Let's Connect.