1883 Victorian mansion with 90% original furnishings where staff report apparitions, children's laughter, and moving furniture
1310 Bannock St, Denver, CO 80204
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
General admission approximately $7; guided tour approximately $10
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic Victorian home with interior stairs; partial accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1883 · Home of Rocky Mountain News founder William Byers · Evans family residence 1889–1981 · Denver Landmark and National Register property · Center for Colorado Women's History
William Newton Byers broke ground on the Italianate-style house at 1310 Bannock Street in 1883, two decades after founding the Rocky Mountain News — Colorado's first newspaper — in April 1859. The house stood in what was then a fashionable residential corridor just west of downtown Denver, and Byers equipped it with the domestic comforts appropriate to a man of his civic standing.
In 1889, six years after construction, Byers sold the property to William Gray Evans, son of John Evans, Colorado's second territorial governor and a founder of the University of Denver. William Gray Evans went on to control the Denver Tramway Company and became one of the most influential business figures in early 20th-century Colorado. His wife Cornelia Lunt Gray Evans and their children settled in the house, and in 1900 his widowed mother, former first lady Margaret Patten Gray Evans, moved in with her daughter Anne.
Anne Evans in particular left a significant mark on Denver's cultural life, helping found the Denver Art Museum and advocating for Southwestern Indigenous art at a time when it was little appreciated elsewhere. The house served as a gathering place for Denver's artistic and intellectual circles during the early decades of the century.
The family donated the property to History Colorado in 1981, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. It now houses the Center for Colorado Women's History, focused on scholarship and public programs that expand understanding of women's contributions to Colorado. The interior was restored to the 1912–1924 period and retains roughly 90% of the Evans family's original furnishings — an unusually intact survival for a domestic interior of that era.
Sources
Staff accounts at the Byers-Evans House have circulated for years, describing incidents specific enough to draw institutional attention. The phenomena most often reported are auditory: voices carrying from rooms that are confirmed empty, and the sounds of movement in closed-off areas. Doors open and close without apparent cause, and furniture has reportedly been found displaced from its overnight position.
The visual reports are more striking. Multiple staff members and visitors have described full-body apparitions — figures in clothing consistent with the early 20th century, the period the house is interpreted to represent. The theory favored by those who work there is that members of the Evans family, surrounded by so many of their own belongings, simply never left.
In August 2011, History Colorado acknowledged these accounts publicly by hosting 'Mysteries of the House Revealed,' a behind-the-scenes event in which a guide walked visitors through staff-reported incidents and the unexplained phenomena documented over years of operation. The event was unusual for a state history institution — a direct acknowledgment that the building's reputation was real enough to address formally.
A medium brought in at one point reportedly identified what she described as a portal within the house, through which unaffiliated spirits were said to enter — a claim museum staff have treated with appropriate skepticism, though the core reports of voices and apparitions predate and exist independently of that assessment.
Notable Entities
Docent-led tour of the restored 1883 Victorian home, interpreted to the 1912–1924 period. The house retains approximately 90% of its original Evans family furnishings — one of the most intact domestic interiors from Denver's gilded era. Tours cover the history of both the Byers and Evans families and their roles in Colorado's founding generation.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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