Hampden

Hampden is one of Denver's official neighborhoods, in the southeast part of the city. Think of it as the stretch between Yale Avenue on the north and Hampden Avenue on the south, starting at I-25 and running east toward the Cherry Creek corridor. Glendale is off to the northwest, and Hampden South picks up across Hampden Avenue. The residential pocket most people call Hampden Heights fills a big share of it.

Split-levels, ranches and streets that won't stay straight

Most of the houses here are split-levels from the late 1960s and early 1970s, mixed with wide ranch-style houses. The grid gives up once you're off Yale and Hampden. South Dayton Street, South Dayton Court, South Willow Court and East Dartmouth Avenue all bend and loop, and a small neighborhood path, the Hampden Heights trail, cuts through with houses on both sides. Just over half of the housing units in the neighborhood are renter-occupied.

If you want to step out the back gate onto a trail, look at the blocks around South Willow Court. A green footbridge crosses the High Line Canal right into Hampden Heights there.

Bible Park and the canal

James A. Bible Park, at 6802 E. Yale Ave., is the big one at 66 acres. It's named for a Denver Parks and Recreation maintenance worker and has a baseball and softball complex, a football field, tennis and basketball courts, a playground, a fitness zone and some natural areas, and the High Line Canal Trail runs along it.

Hampden Heights Park, 32 acres at 3301 S. Clinton St., has a soccer field, ball fields, a playground and a basketball court. Golden Key Park on South Syracuse Way is a small one, under 3 acres, with a playground and a court. Follow the canal east and you get a strange bit of plumbing: the High Line Canal goes under Cherry Creek.

Cherry Creek and the Babi Yar memorial

At the east end, Paul A. Hentzell Park covers 59 acres along Cherry Creek at 10300 E. Yale Ave., mostly natural area with the Cherry Creek Trail running through it. That trail goes from downtown, where the creek meets the Platte, to south of Cherry Creek Reservoir. Between it and the High Line Canal, you can ride onto more than 300 miles of regional trail along the Front Range without crossing town in a car.

Next door, at 10451 E. Yale Ave., is Babi Yar Park, a memorial to the 1941 to 1943 Nazi massacre at Babi Yar in Kyiv. Lawrence Halprin and Satoru Nishita designed it, and it was finished in 1982. The path is laid out as a Star of David. A grove of 100 linden trees stands in a grid, and a bridge with tall black wooden walls, meant to recall the train cars, crosses a ravine on the west side. A 2011 renovation brought back the prairie planting.

Delis on Hampden Avenue

East Hampden Avenue handles the errands with its big-box stores, and it has two long-running delis. The Bagel Deli, at 6439 E. Hampden Ave. just east of I-25, has been on Hampden since 1971 after starting on Colfax, and it got a turn on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. New York Deli News, at 7105 E. Hampden Ave., opened in the summer of 1989 and brings in its corned beef and pastrami cured in New York, with the rye and bagels shipped par-baked and finished each day. It's open daily until 8 p.m.

Getting around

I-25 runs down the west edge, and Yale and Hampden are the east-west roads. Southmoor station, at 3737 S. Monaco Parkway, is the nearby light rail stop, served by the E and T Lines, with 788 parking spaces and RTD buses 35, 40, 46, 65 and 105. You reach it from Monaco Parkway through a pedestrian tunnel under I-25. If you plan to commute by train, check how you'd get from a house you like to that Monaco Parkway entrance before you get attached. Buses also run along Yale, including the 27 near Bible Park and the 83L near Babi Yar.