Blood, guts and lore: Denver’s weirdly competitive walking-tour scene is back with a vengeance

On a gusty, bitingly cold Monday afternoon on the Auraria Campus last month, Jared Ozga paused outside what he called “Denver’s architectural crown jewel,” a 137-year-old, red-brick residence known as the Knight House.

“Our slow part of the year is almost over,” said the founder of Tell Me More Tours, 35, clad in a burnt-orange corduroy cap and red cowboy boots. “Mine is all-in-one and focused on history, but you have to know what you want to see in Denver to get the most out of these.”

Walking tours of Auraria’s Ninth Street Park, preserved and restored by Historic Denver, are nothing new. (See a self-guided booklet produced in 1976, available digitally from Denver Public Library.)

But the explosion of themed, commercial walking tours in Denver over the last five years — which has paralleled the city’s population growth and gentrification — has created a surprisingly competitive, at times confusing field of players battling for the same customers.

With spring and summer on deck, the competition among these two-dozen or so players is poised to become stronger than ever, operators say, pushing them to get more outrageous, overstuffed and gory to stand out from their peers.

“The challenge is that walking tours are in the vertical with the fewest barriers to entry and a low amount of cash needed to start up … that is why there are so many of them,” said Shane Whaley, who runs the Tourpreneur podcast, which reaches about 3,500 tour owners and operators.

“The ones that are common are competitive,” said Kevin Pharris, owner of Denver History Tours. “(But) I have more than 50 different walking tours … most folks don’t come to Denver saying, ‘Hey, I really want a tour of the Baker Neighborhood.’ ”

After Historic Denver Inc. watched its walking tours plummet from 150 in 2019 to 63 in 2020, according to the nonprofit’s data, it gave a whopping 181 last year — and number that could jump even higher in 2022. But the pandemic has still halved the size of many tour parties, for both safety and comfort.

“Since the pandemic began we have seen more local guests visiting in smaller groups,” said Alison Salutz, Historic Denver’s director of community programs, echoing a common industry sentiment. “It’s a great activity, since we do keep our capacities low, and almost everything is outdoors.”

Historic Denver’s tours of the Molly Brown House, haunted mansions and civic gems have long been the city’s gold standard, attracting about 12,000 attendees over the last eight years, Salutz said. But they’re sleepy compared to some of the newcomers.

Many tours embrace the city’s fast-growing food, drink and recreational cannabis scene. But some of the most popular ones emphasize Denver’s seedier side with historical inspiration and few actual details, their narratives slathered with creatively licensed tales of sex, death and crime. They range widely in tone and quality, from spooky to boozy to gory, always with the aim of selling Denver as a mysterious, maze-like pioneer town.

“One of my favorite (tours to give) is Ghosts of Cheesman Park,” said Phil Goodstein, a Denver historian and author who has conducted about a thousand walking tours since the early-to-mid 1980s. “There’s this rich folklore of architecture and bizarre events, particularly ‘The Changeling’ at 13th and Williams (streets).”

That 1980 horror film of the same name, written by Russell Hunter, was supposedly inspired by paranormal events at 1739 E. 13th Ave.

Denver’s ghost tours sport vaguely similar, search-engine-friendly names such as Denver Terrors, Nightly Spirits, Denver Ghost Tours and Dark Side of Denver (that’s Goodstein’s), in addition to innocently named outfits like Best Tours of Denver, which also offers ghost tours.

“I’ve actually been on a lot of other people’s tours because I like to know what’s going on around me,” said Billy Bradshaw, owner and operator of Best Tours of Denver. “What sets us apart is that we’re more like moving theater than a script-based (tour). We do a lot of engagement and improvisation.”

That engagement comes in different forms, however ghoulish.

“This will turn red when you come into the presence of spiritual energy,” said a guide for Denver Terrors, referring to the “ghost-detecting equipment” visitors can rent for its tour of Capitol Hill’s most sickening murders and suicides.

I’m withholding the name of the tour guide because my 9-year-old son, who took the nighttime tour with me last week, was so freaked out that he bailed after only two stops (even with his handy EMF Detector, a $5 add-on that glowed green the whole time). Although this particular, $20-per-person tour was billed as family-friendly, our guide didn’t hold back with details of beheadings, slit wrists, torrid trysts and bathtubs full of blood.

“He was sick, though,” my son said — meaning he really liked the guide.

The Colorado Tourism Office does not track the number of walking tours in the state but pointed to self-guided options such as Mural Trails, launched last year with Colorado Creative Industries (see colorado.com for more). There’s not much city data on the topic, either, wrote a spokesman for Visit Denver, but the Tours page on its website received an average of 4,000 views per month in 2021, and the city’s tourism arm still maintains about 120 tour partners.

It’s no surprise that each of Denver’s commercial tours bills itself as the definitive one, boasting 5-star customer ratings and expert tour guides. That’s just marketing to bump up their revenue, sponsorships and promotional deals they’ve brokered with local food, drink and cultural partners, but given the wall of options online, it often works.

The scene has gotten so big that U.S. News & World Report in 2021 listed its Top Ten picks for Denver’s best tours — not all of them walking tours — naming Nightly Spirits, Historic Denver, Best Tours of Denver, Denver Local Tours and Denver Microbrew Tours among the pedestrian-friendly options.

Most of these tours are led by white men, whose perspective on the city’s marginalized populations and history is largely from the outside. There are hardly any guided, in-person tours aimed specifically Denver’s Black, Latino and LGBTQ histories.