Bow Mar to gate itself off from Denver, neighboring cities threaten installing gates of their own

Most gated communities are a cul-de-sac or a country club. Bow Mar is gating an entire town. Last Monday, the Board of Trustees of the tiny town of about 950 people, which sits just across Denver’s southwest border, voted unanimously to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on gates at its entrances. Residents will get radio-frequency tags to open them, and guests will get access codes. Everyone else will need to find another way between Denver and Littleton.

Bow Mar says it’s about safety. Residents told town leaders that drivers cutting through were speeding past kids, knocking over mailboxes and, a couple of times this year, ending up in the town lake. About 2,300 drivers come through the Sheridan Boulevard entrance on a typical day, and most of them don’t live in Bow Mar. The town has already tried a 20 mph speed limit and handed out more than 1,260 traffic tickets since 2023, and the cut-through traffic kept coming.

The neighbors are not happy. Denver and Littleton asked Bow Mar to hold off, and the town voted to go ahead anyway. Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn said the plan creates “a significant traffic hazard for us in the course of resolving theirs.” He has even floated a “nuclear option”: Denver could put up its own gate in return. The dispute has gotten big enough for The New York Times to write about it, which is a lot of attention for a town most Coloradans couldn’t find on a map.

The first gate is planned for Sheridan Boulevard at the town’s northern edge. It could be installed by Thanksgiving, but it won’t start operating until early next year. Bow Mar has also approved money for a second gate on Prospect Street and says it will see how the first one works before building that one. If your shortcut runs through Bow Mar, you might want to start learning a new route.