Denver Public Schools · Est. 1960 · The Spartans
Home of the
Spartans.
Thomas Jefferson High School, TJ, is a brown-and-gold community in southeast Denver where a big-school roster feels like a close family.
- 1960
- Year founded
- 1,375
- Students · Grades 9–12
- 18:1
- Student–teacher ratio
- Brown & Gold
- School colors
Identity
A big school that runs like a family.
Brown & gold, since day one
Thomas Jefferson opened its doors in 1960 and took its colors, brown and gold, from the original Denver Broncos uniforms of that same year. Six decades on, the palette still reads across the building, the field, and the crowd.
Students and staff call the school TJ, and they describe the culture the same way year after year: a large, diverse student body that somehow stays close-knit. The mascot is the Spartan; the ethos is belonging.
Mascot since 1960 · brown & gold · Spartan Athletics →
“TJ is a big family, everyone finds their people here.”
Academics
The newsroom that made TJ famous.
Center for Communication Technology Magnet
Launched in 1994, the CCTM is TJ's signature: a four-year magnet program with industry-standard training in robotics, software engineering, web applications, 3D design, and broadcast journalism, taught across seven computer labs, robotics workshops, and digital studios.
Students can earn up to 21 college credits at no cost before they graduate. Around the magnet sits a college- and career-readiness core with a broad AP catalog open to any student ready to push.
CCT magnet founded
College credits available through CCTM, free
AP participation rate
Community
Drawn from all of Denver.
Diversity is the default
TJ pulls students from neighborhoods across the city, and the result is a genuinely mixed hallway. Two of every three students identify as students of color, and the school serves a large share of families who qualify as economically disadvantaged.
Staff treat that mix as the point, not a footnote. The range of backgrounds is what makes the “big family” feel real.
Students of color
Economically disadvantaged
Total enrollment · 2023–24
Athletics
Spartan sport, dawn to Friday night.
Fifteen-plus programs
The Spartans field a full slate across the seasons, enough that most students who want to compete can find a team. Brown and gold show up on the turf, the mat, the court, and the track.
The Neighborhood
Southeast Denver, best explored on two wheels.
Bible Park & the High Line Canal
TJ sits in the Southmoor Park neighborhood, quiet, tree-lined streets tucked between Hampden Avenue and I-25. Pedal a few minutes north and you're in James A. Bible Park: open fields, cottonwoods, and the High Line Canal Trail running straight through it, 71 miles of car-free riding across the metro.
Riding electric? Class 1 and 2 e-bikes are welcome on Denver's park trails (class 3 too, since 2020). Keep it under the 15 mph trail limit and call your passes. Rosamond and Southmoor parks are minutes away, the light rail at Southmoor Station takes bikes, and Cherry Creek State Park's reservoir loops make a perfect weekend mission.
Miles of High Line Canal Trail
mph, trail speed limit for e-bikes
Minutes by e-bike to Cherry Creek State Park (approx.)
Two Neighborhoods
Virginia Village to Southmoor Park.
One street links them
The house and the school sit almost exactly north and south of each other, about 3.3 miles apart on nearly the same line of longitude. That line is South Holly Street. Leave the front door, turn south, and you are pointed at the building, with the canal greenbelt shadowing the road most of the way.
They are two versions of the same idea, both laid out as Denver spread southeast after the war: curving residential streets, low brick houses, mature trees planted by people who would not live to see them get big, and a park never more than a few blocks off.
Virginia Village
About five miles southeast of downtown, held between Colorado Boulevard, Mississippi Avenue, Quebec Street and Evans, with Cherry Creek running along the northeast edge. It is postwar Denver at its most characteristic: ranch houses and townhomes on quiet curving streets, with shopping plazas and taller apartment and office blocks gathered along the big roads.
Holly Street splits the neighborhood in two, the Ellis community to the west and Cook Park to the east. Garland Park and Cook Park do the heavy lifting for green space, and Goldsmith Gulch threads between them.
- Address
- 5495 Nebraska Way, Denver, CO 80246
- Character
- Postwar ranches, townhomes, plazas on the arterials
- Green space
- Garland Park, Cook Park, Goldsmith Gulch
- Transit
- Colorado Station light rail
- To school
- 3.6 miles, about 22 minutes by e-bike
Southmoor Park
The far southeast corner of the city, tucked into the pocket between Hampden Avenue and I-25. Quieter and leafier than the map suggests, because the through traffic stays on the arterials and the residential streets bend back on themselves rather than carrying anyone anywhere.
The High Line Canal is the organising feature. It runs northwest through James A. Bible Park a few minutes up Holly, and it is the reason a student here can cross this part of Denver without ever taking a lane from a car.
- Address
- 3950 S Holly St, Denver, CO 80237
- Character
- Low brick homes, bending streets, heavy tree cover
- Green space
- Southmoor Park, Bible Park, the High Line Canal
- Transit
- Southmoor Station light rail, bikes welcome
- To Grandma's
- 5.3 miles, about 23 minutes by e-bike
Visit
Find TJ in southeast Denver.
- Address
- 3950 S Holly St
Denver, CO 80237
- Phone
- (720) 423-7000
- Contact & staff
- Reach the office →
- District
- Denver Public Schools
Grades 9–12
- Official site
- tjhs.dpsk12.org →
- Events & calendar
- See what's on →
- Athletics
- Spartan Athletics →
- Mascot & colors
- Spartans · Brown & Gold
- Founded
- 1960
- Get directions
- Open in Maps →
- The proposed family home
- 5495 Nebraska Way
Denver, CO 80246
View the listing →
- Grandma's
- 1939 S Quebec Way, #602
Denver, CO 80231
Fourteen, and already independent
Put a fourteen-year-old at 5495 Nebraska Way and the three places that make up his week stop depending on anyone's calendar. School is 3.6 miles south, about 22 minutes on a class 1 e-bike, and most of it is the High Line Canal Trail rather than Holly Street traffic. Colorado sets no minimum age for class 1 and 2 e-bikes, so this is a ride he can legally make himself, today, without a licence and without a lift.
Grandma's at 1939 S Quebec Way is the shorter hop, 3.0 miles and roughly 15 minutes east. From school it is 5.3 miles, near enough 23 minutes, which means a Tuesday afternoon at her place is a decision he makes at the last bell instead of a favour somebody has to drive. The dashed lines on the map are those three trips.
That is the quiet argument for this corner of Denver. A battery and a trail turn a fourteen-year-old's radius from wherever a parent can drop him into a genuine triangle of home, school, and family, at fifteen miles an hour, mostly away from cars, and entirely on his own terms.