My family moved to Parker from north Denver way back in 1990, when Parker Rd was nothing more than a two lane street, and Safeway, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds were the only major stores in town (you know you're living in a small town when McDonalds and Pizza Hut can be referred to as "stores"). I won't take a stab at estimating the town's population at that time, but I'd have to imagine that Ponderosa High School's average graduating class around then would have numbered at about 100 hicks, hayseeds, and housewives - when I graduated from that same school 10 years later my class was filled out with nearly 500 angst-riddled suburbanites (including one or two Democrats, EEK!). Suffice it to say, I had a front row seat for most of the unregulated growth that this formerly lovely little cow town endured during it's greatest period of population expansion, so I think I've got enough suburban credibility to lay out a few things that I've been wanting to get off my chest ever since we moved out of that place back in 2003.
Parker used to be one of those places where all of the teenagers would sit around and say "man, this place sucks, there's nothing to do", primarily because, well... there was nothing to do in Parker back then. Nowadays unfortunately, the teens sit around and say "man, this place sucks" for no other reason than the fact that they're teenagers and by way of that inherently stupid. Parker has been overrun with more preposterous storefronts and entertainment depots in the past 10 years than the city of Highlands Ranch intends to install in the next 20, and quite honestly I think that's a mere shade short of tragic. Because the thing is, Parker wasn't always like Highlands Ranch, it wasn't planned from the ground up by some ridiculous city planner with delusions of grandeur (rhyme), it used to be an actual town, with actual history. If my memory of a field trip I took in 3rd grade serves me correctly (and really, how could it not?) Parker was actually built around a stagecoach depot called the 20 mile house, which was named as such because it was 20 miles outside of Denver. See? That's called history.
Alright, admittedly it may not be very interesting history, but I'd imagine that 95% of the people in Parker back in 1990 would have known that fact, but only about 5 or 10% know it now, and I think that's telling of the connection the people of Parker have with their land now. Furthermore, I bet half of the people who do know about the 20 mile house are only aware of it because the city council renamed a road in town after it in a vein attempt to install history into the soulless metropolis that unregulated growth had left them with. To commemorate the reopening of this newly named preexisting road, of course, America's corporations promptly plopped down a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Starbucks, Noodles & Company, Fazzoli's, Chipotle, and an EB Games on top of it. Thanks fellas, Parker's founding fathers tip their hats to you!
You see, Parker is no longer a town, it's just a place that people live. It has nothing more than a shred of its history held in tact at this point in time, and I'm pretty sure that shred's being beaten into the ground with a slab of aluminum siding as we speak. Sadly though, such is life in modern America, no?
