Black American West Museum / 3091 California Street

Click for map: Black American West Museum / 3091 California Street / lat 39.759191363155615 lon -104.97422307739497

Call 720-845-5413 extension 33 to hear this dream. 

You are sitting on the sidewalk, mending a jacket with needle & thread. The sleeves have fallen off the jacket & you must reattach them. The needle is so thin & the thread so fine you can hardly see them. You push the needle into the sleeve & pull the nearly invisible thread through, & push the needle back in. Suddenly you feel a huge noise, you feel it through the soles of your feet first, in your chest & belly before you really hear it, a crashing, crunching. Slow heavy thuds that shake the ground. Car alarms squeal & honk. Flocks of startled birds rise from nearby trees & wheel about in the air. Above the roofs of surrounding houses, you see what is making the noise: a steeple lurches into view. It’s the big Cathedral from Colfax. The cathedral walks toward you, heaving one corner forward & then the next, plodding. The cathedral swings its tower from side to side, like a bull swinging his head. It has walked all the way down from Colfax. And then behind it you see another big stone church, & coming from the west you see a big church from downtown. And behind these, more stone churches wobble & crunch their ways toward you. All the big churches are gathering, they have pulled themselves up from their foundations & walked across town. And when about a dozen big churches have all joined together, the museum building rises up, freeing its moorings from the dirt. The museum building is smaller that the churches, more spry, more agile, & it has moved locations before, so it knows how this kind of change works. The museum building twirls & kicks a bit in a little joyful dance, then it steps into the street. The churches all get in line behind the museum, & the parade of buildings move north, crashing & rumbling, heading you know not where, but somewhere they all need to be, somewhere together.