Mark Barnhouse highlights the unfamiliar history of his hometown through writing

June 6, 2024

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Years of research, writing and time spent with physical media helped turn one of local author Mark Barnhouse’s childhood interests into a career sharing obscure aspects of Denver’s history.

Barnhouse has written 10 books that each focus on a theme within the city’s past and is working on his 11th, which will be titled “Denver’s Historic Cemeteries.”

He explained via email that the book will provide a brief history of each highlighted Denver cemetery’s formation, and its chapters will mostly be made up of short biographies of the people who are buried in them.

“Fairmount [Cemetery] alone has over 200 of these; I haven’t done a final count, but I think we’ve written about 500 people, the great and not-great people who have influenced Colorado’s history or are famous for other reasons,” Barnhouse said.

According to Barnhouse, he and his co-author Jim Cavoto, who worked at Fairmount Cemetery for over 30 years, have been putting together this book since the summer of 2022. He described it as the most ambitious book he has worked on.

Barnhouse’s research process has changed with every project. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he did most of his research in person, frequenting places like History Colorado and Denver Public Library’s Central Library.

With DPL’s Central Library being closed for renovations and limited access to physical media collections, Barnhouse has had to work more with online resources. However, he said he prefers the advantages that come with using physical resources, like finding photos to include in his work that haven’t been used before.

“When you scroll through a microfilm reel, you find things that you’re not looking for, and I haven’t been able to do that since 2019. Similarly, I’ve found books and maps and other resources by this serendipitous method of just roaming through the shelves and map drawers,” Barnhouse said.

Barnhouse has been fascinated by the lesser-known parts of Denver's history since childhood. He was born and raised in Denver and said that a Christmas gift he received, a copy of the book “Yesterday’s Denver” by Sandra Dallas, is likely what got him interested in the city’s history.

Barnhouse started college at age 32; he studied English and history at the University of Colorado Denver while simultaneously working at a Tattered Cover Book Store. When he graduated, he began working for a magazine wholesaler, which he still does today.

Barnhouse said that his husband encouraged him to write about Denver history again after years of being away from it.

“My now-husband (we didn’t get married until 2014, but we’ve been a couple since 1993) told me I should get back into researching and writing about Denver history, since my favorite classes when I was at UCD, both taught by Dr. Tom Noel (who calls himself ‘Dr. Colorado’), were on Colorado and Denver history,” he said.

Barnhouse decided to revisit and expand on a research project he did in one of Noel’s classes; years of writing and building on the research he had already done eventually resulted in his first book, “Denver’s Sixteenth Street.”

While Barnhouse enjoys writing and researching, he said the book talks he gives after his work is published are what he finds the most gratifying because they allow him to learn and make emotional connections with his audience.

“Meeting people, or hearing from them through Facebook or some other online way, who find my choices of topics meaningful to them — I love that. I often learn things from these people about my topics that I did not know through all of my researching — that’s fun too,” Barnhouse said.

Barnhouse’s books are sold through many Denver stores as well as national companies, including Barnes & Noble, Tattered Cover, West Side Books and Amazon. Brief descriptions of each book can be found on his Amazon author page.