JEFFERSON COUNTY SOUTH
This area is the county's most expensive housing region bordering directly on Denver. The vast majority of residences here are in the area bounded roughly by U.S. Highway 285 on the north, Sheridan Avenue on the east and Colorado-470 on the south and west. Bulging into that area on the northeast corner is the City and County of Denver's Marston neighborhood, which surrounds Marston Lake. It's an unincorporated area, but one with a lot of consciousness of itself as a unique community right on the edge of the mountains. It holds its own community festivals and has its own organization of homeowner’s associations known as the Council of Homeowners Organizations for Planned Environment.
South Jeffco also has some nice housing south and west of C-470, in Ken Caryl Valley on the other side of the Dakota Hogback. Here there's a mix of everything from townhomes to million-dollar mansions. Ken Caryl Ranch is a stable area with lots of horse property, surrounded by Foothills and tucked away from the big city. North from Ken Caryl is Green Mountain, with stunning city views.
The city of Lakewood is the giant of Denver's southwest side and the third-most populous city in Greater Denver after Denver and Aurora. Unlike many suburbs, Lakewood is a major employment center, with the Denver Federal Center, strong retail communities and substantial light industry. At the same time, it has a lot of semi-rural areas right inside the city limits. Lakewood's older neighborhoods lie to the east, where the city meets with about half the entire western border of Denver. On the west, it reaches into the Foothills, where its 6,000 acres of parks include Green Mountain and the surrounding William Frederick Hayden Park. Lakewood touches the City of Morrison, a Greater Denver small town hidden in one of the red rock-rimmed valleys in the Rocky Mountains' first folds.
North of Lakewood is the City of Wheat Ridge, also bordering Denver. Wheat Ridge has that uniquely rural flavor characteristic of many suburbs here, with older homes on larger lots. Foxes come up into the neighborhoods at night from the Clear Creek greenbelt. Deer sometimes blunder into busy Wadsworth Boulevard at morning rush hour. Walkers in serene suburban neighborhoods sometimes see people passing on horses.
Driving west on 32nd Avenue and passing out of Wheat Ridge as you go under I-70, you are on the way to the City of Golden, on the other side of South Table Mountain. Between I-70 and South Table Mountain, however, you notice nicely groomed neighborhoods primarily on the left. You are on the north side of a loosely defined area known as Applewood, which includes bits of Lakewood, Golden and Wheat Ridge but is mostly in unincorporated Jefferson County.
Keep going west on 32nd Avenue, around South Table Mountain, past a row of Adolph Coors Co. subsidiary companies and finally past the brewery itself, and you'll be coming in a sort of back door to Golden. Largely hidden from Denver on the west side of South Table Mountain and with its eastern sides scrunching up against the Foothills, Golden has kept an identity apart from the rest of the metro area. It has an Old West downtown and it is a charming small town. But it's also a big town. Once a Coors-company town, it's now mainly a high technology and university town, largely influenced by the culture of the Colorado School of Mines just up the hill from Washington Avenue, its main street. New neighborhoods have been climbing up the side of South Table Mountain, growing south toward Heritage Square and Morrison and spreading east toward Lakewood. The level of education among Golden's population is one of the highest in the Greater Denver area.
Northeast of Golden and north of Wheat Ridge is one of the larger cities of Denver's west side, Arvada. Looking north from the top of the ridge that is the center of Wheat Ridge, you can see the historic center of Arvada, now known as Olde Town Arvada. Arvada's central area consists largely of homes typically built in the 1950s and 1960s. Arvada is known for its family-oriented lifestyle and its easy access to Boulder and Denver.
