Cherry Hills Village

Cherry Hills Village incorporated in 1945, and the reason still shapes the city today. Denver was growing fast, annexing land and subdividing it into smaller lots, and the large landowners south of University Boulevard wanted a different future for their acreage. Incorporating let them write their own zoning code instead of Denver’s, and they wrote it around large lots. Most of the city still requires a minimum of two and a half acres per home. A 1962 Colorado Supreme Court case, Nopro Co. v. Town of Cherry Hills Village, upheld that large-lot zoning against a developer’s challenge, and it has stood ever since. Eighty years later, this is still one of the only places in the Denver metro where you can buy several acres and know your neighbor’s fence line is a genuine walk away.

No stores, no restaurants, no gas stations

Here is the part I tell every buyer before they fall in love with the acreage. Cherry Hills Village has no commercial zoning anywhere within its borders. Not a coffee shop, not a gas station, not a grocery store. That is not an oversight. It is the same land-use philosophy that gave the city its large lots, and it means everyday errands mean a short drive into Cherry Creek North, University Hills or Greenwood Village. Most residents consider that a fair trade for the privacy. A few do not realize it until they have lived here a year and gotten tired of the drive. I would rather you know going in.

The golf course that put this city on the map

Cherry Hills Country Club, founded in 1922, is the reason a lot of people outside Colorado have heard of this city at all. It has hosted three U.S. Opens, including the 1960 championship where Arnold Palmer drove the first green and shot a final-round 65 to come from seven strokes back and win, one of the most famous rounds in golf history. It has also hosted a PGA Championship and multiple USGA amateur events. Membership is private and the waitlist is not short, but living inside the city, or along the streets closest to the course, is its own kind of proximity.

Kent Denver School, a private day school for grades six through twelve, sits inside city limits and draws families from across the south metro. For public school families, Cherry Hills Village is zoned into Cherry Creek School District, one of the stronger districts in the state. The High Line Canal Trail, built along an 1883 irrigation canal that once carried water 71 miles from the South Platte, cuts through the city as Segment 13, a quiet, tree-lined path that is more useful for a walk today than the canal itself ever was for irrigation.