Denver's Eastern European population began with a trickle in the 1870s.  Henry Plonsky was one of the earliest to arrive in 1877.  He helped to establish the Orthodox congregation Ahavey Emunah in 1880 and served as its first president.  Other Eastern European Jews soon joined Plonsky as the American Jewish population was augmented by a major immigration of Eastern European Jews beginning in the 1880s.  Fleeing economic hardships, discrimination and pogroms, they were also attracted to the promise of new opportunities in America, "The Goldineh Medinah."  To alleviate the resulting problems of overcrowding and poverty in major eastern cities, some Jews were encouraged to go west.  In 1882 fifty Russian immigrants arrived in Cotopaxi, Colorado, to pursue their dream of farming, an occupation long denied them in their homeland.  Unfortunately the dream of harvesting their own crops crumbled as they struggled to farm the barren banks of the Arkansas River.   Within two years, the settlement was abandoned, and many of the colonists, including the Grimes, Shames, and Milstein families made their way to the west side of Denver where they settled with other Eastern European Jews.

The area soon resembled the lower east side of New York with its many synagogues, small businesses and adherence to an Orthodox Jewish tradition.  Shul Baer Milstein, the patriarch of the Cotopaxi colony, began as a peddler and later opened his own kosher butcher shop.  His sister-in-law Channah collected charity for the poor.  The Milstein and Altman families were to be associated with the 1887 founding of Zera Abraham, a Chassidic Orthodox synagogue.  Many other small Orthodox and traditional "shuls" soon dotted the west side, along with the larger Hebrew Educational Alliance.

Jacob Boskowitz arrived in Denver in 1896 and soon found work as a baker.  Like so many of the Eastern European immigrants, he saved his money to send for his family in Europe.  In 1906 the Boscoes opened the Star Bakery.  The Schachet Merchantile Company, Goldstein's Bakery, Radinsky's Rag Company and Pelish's Theater were among the better known west side family-owned businesses.