Abandoned Gas: Weaver's Automotive - Denver, Colorado


There’s nothing notable about this recently closed gas station, at Evans and Milwaukee. Never once patronized the place in all my years of driving by. My memories of the station were limited to noticing how busy it always was when I drove past. In early April of this year, a routine drive by revealed that it was now fenced off from the public.

That means it will be gone soon...


That means I need to get over there and photograph the property before it becomes condo-licious...

Upon finishing my work week, in the early morning of April 30, 2017, I was going to get pictures of this place before moving on to other usual targets. The night before my planned photo tour, the Denver Metro got a coating of snow. Most of it had melted away by morning, but there was still some left by picture time.


I went back two months later for dry ground pictures. But I ended up liking the snow pictures more... The color and clarity was better in that light. Overcast days are so much better than sunny days for urban decay pictures...


Originally built in 1950, Weaver Automotive purchased this building in June of 1998, and sold it in March 2017. After closing their shop, they moved to a new old gas station building, a few blocks away.


Look at those cute little ancient security cameras... If you haven't noticed, I'm not saying much about these pictures... They speak for themselves... Since I have no personal experience with this gas station, all I can really say is, here it is...


The new owner of the land, RB Observatory Park Two, LLC, purchased the property in March 2017 for $1 million. It’s existence on a busy thoroughfare, crossing a major residential area, makes it a logical candidate for removal...

Surely some luxury apartments would fit right in here…


This sign looks older than the gas station...


Two of the service bay doors were poorly applied by plastic tarps, obviously covering something up... Unfortunately that fence kept me away. I really would have liked to take some through the window shots, seeing as they were uncovered. This story would have been more interesting if I could have...


The underground fuel tanks had been removed back in April, but my pictures of that were just white snow covering the dirt. So this picture is from June 11, 2017.


Here is the west facing side of the building, Back when there was snow...


Another picture from June 11, 2017, taken from the median on Evans Avenue, between traffic. You get a lot of strange looks from drivers when out taking pictures of abandoned buildings...

Screw you, it's art!


Notice the poorly applied tarp had fallen off one of the garage bay doors, so here is what was being covered up... My compliments to the tagger, that's a striking shade of blue against the dingy glass. The fallen Conoco sign peeking through is a nice touch as well...


Safeway is down a shopping cart! This was parked just outside the fenced off entrance. Oddly enough, it had an empty can of RockStar Punched in the top basket. A sugary drink that I'm way too fond of... The nearest Safeway is about a mile and a half to the west, so I guess they needed the energy to make it this far with the stolen cart...


This sign was a little worse for wear...


In addition to being a service center and food mart, Weaver's was also a U-Haul truck rental, and sold packing boxes. With the D.U. campus just a few blocks to the west, I'm sure that was a big part of their business.

As I said, I wish I could have gotten interior pictures from the open windows. If you look closely at the red banner inside, it reads: Cold Drinks Juice Gum Thank You.

I like that...


The east side entrance to the store. Door flyers reading "We're Moving!!!" and "There is NO CASH in registers." That last one always got me. I fully understand the anti-robbery motives behind that message, but a cashier working with a cashless register sounds like the recipe for a terrible shift.

And I have worked MANY terrible shifts in a gas station...


And there you have it. The former location of Weaver's Automotive. I don't know how much longer it will stay here, but as of two weeks ago, it still looked exactly like this...

******

As I was editing the photos for this story, I messed up the cropping on one of them, and needed to go back to the original on my external storage drive. While looking for the picture, I found this blurry shot of Weaver's Automitive, that I took on October 31, 2015.


I'm going to drive by it in a few days to see if it's still standing. After all, I've got several other future stories in the area that I'm keeping my eye on...

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