Overland Park Neighborhood is a historical root of the City of Denver and even prior to Denver’s founding was the site of Montana City, the first platted settlement east of the Rockies in what is now Colorado – founded in 1858.
Historically, development here grew along the South Platte River and the thoroughfares of South Broadway and South Santa Fe as a diverse mix of agriculture, rail and road transit, manufacturing, trade, retail, and residence. Our land use today is divided nearly equally between industry, retail, transportation-transit, residence, and riverside recreational green space.
Overland Park Neighborhood Association (OPNA), a Denver Registered Neighborhood Organization, has served these diverse interests for our members – they being any and all who own business or property, work or live in Overland Park Neighborhood – since 1979, acting as a a safe and neutral forum for neighbor-to-neighbor resolution of issues. OPNA is a member of Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation, the “association of neighborhood associations,” and recommends that all such RNOs become Compassionate Neighborhoods. We also partner with city, state, federal and NGO initiatives in evaluating and mitigating impact to our members and the local environment.
Overland Park neighbors have consistently welcomed compassionate operations such as providing shelter for homeless youth and rehabilitation for substance abuse victims, and helped one another in dealing with domestic, substance, financial and health issues, and dealt respectfully with homeless individuals camping by the river.
Along with other activists, neighbors also famously and tirelessly advocated, some of us for 20 years, to successfully remove a radioactive waste storage facility from our neighborhood – the first and only such overturning of a completed Superfund remedy.
Overland Park Neighborhood Association is also highly active in ecologically sound preservation, remediation, enhancement and maintenance of the Platte River and Overland Pond, and has an abiding interest in handing forward a healthy environment to future neighbors.
