New History Colorado exhibit captures vibrancy of Denver’s Vietnamese community
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DENVER — History Colorado earlier this week unveiled its newest exhibit, “Big Dreams in Denver’s Little Saigon,” a celebration of Vietnamese contributions to the Denver metro area. The exhibit showcases the foods, traditions, fashion, history and memories of the community that began emerging in Colorado in the 1970s and 1980s after the end of the Vietnam War and the mass exodus that followed.
For Mimi Luong, the public display is one more dream realized for her family. Her dad and his family escaped communist rule in Saigon in 1975 and came to America in haste, eventually establishing several businesses in Denver, including two grocery stores, a gift shop and the Far East Center, a Vietnamese outdoor shopping mall in Denver’s Westwood area. Her family, once successful bank owners in Vietnam, were among the first Vietnamese refugees to step foot in Denver and came with nothing but what they could carry on their backs.
“This feels like a full circle moment for me and my family,” she said at the exhibit’s opening night.
Today, the Vietnamese community in Colorado numbers about 34,000 people. In Denver, its heart is in the one mile stretch of Federal Boulevard between Alameda Avenue and Mississippi Avenue, known as the Little Saigon Business District. While Vietnamese immigrants make up just 3 percent of the total immigrant populations in the state, Vietnamese culture and traditions are rich and vibrant.
“They’re a silent community,” said History Colorado’s Museum of Memory director Yadira Solis. “They celebrate their accomplishments sort of silently, but they’re the most giving and colorful community that I’ve worked with.”
With this exhibit, Vietnamese cultures, traditions and accolades are made more visible.
The museum exhibit is one of several big recognitions in recent years for Colorado’s Vietnamese Community. Earlier this year, the state officially recognized April 30, 2025, as the 50th Anniversary of Vietnamese Remembrance and Resilience Day. In 2024, the Far East Center shopping mall was added to Colorado’s State Register of Historical Properties. The shopping center is one of only three Asian American and Pacific Islander locations to be added to Colorado’s historic registry, and the only family-owned property with architecture representing the cultures it serves. And in 2023 Lunar New Year became a state recognized holiday.
“Big Dreams in Denver’s Little Saigon,” is the result of the museum’s partnership with Colorado’s Vietnamese community, led by Colorado Asian Pacific United (CAPU).
“This was a grassroots effort of creating something together where normally in museums you don’t find this co-creation,” said Solis. “Their insight and input was valued.”
In 2023, CAPU worked with the museum to start capturing dozens of oral histories of its community members, ranging in age from kids to elders, to document their experiences and histories in America.
In 2024, CAPU and History Colorado held two community workshops where they asked participants how they would like their stories shared and captured. The biggest request was for a documentary, which will be released next year, and a public exhibit at the museum.
Jane Ly, 24, was one of the volunteers who collected the oral histories and helped translate them into English. Ly moved to Denver from New York City at age nine and found Denver’s Asian community and culture far less vibrant compared to New York’s. But she quickly found refuge in Little Saigon.
“The area I lived in was predominately white and it was hard to feel connected to my culture and be able to speak Vietnamese proudly,” she said. “So being in Little Saigon and being able to go there every weekend made me feel like I least had some part of me that was still connected to my roots.”
She said the native candies and toys she found reminded her of her childhood in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood, where hundreds of Chinese and Vietnamese shops, markets and restaurants dotted the area.
“I remember going [to the Far East Center in Denver] and getting breakfast at dim sum, and then going to each of the markets to get everything we needed,” she said — from fresh seafood to meats to specialty sauces.
Ly was also one of three artists featured in the exhibit. She transformed photos of her trips to Little Saigon into paintings on wood panels resembling stamps, which she calls the Little Saigon Stamp Book. One of the stamps documents the dancing dragons and lions at the Lunar New Year and mid-Autumn Festivals; another paints the produce aisle of the Tri Ocean grocery store.
“I hope that the whole exhibit encourages a lot of more people to come to Little Saigon and see what we have to offer,” she said. “I really hopes it bring more business to Little Saigon so that it can expand event further.”
The Vietnamese community came to the U.S. in large numbers following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
The U.S. government evacuated 125,000 Vietnamese citizens in 1975, most of whom had close ties to the U.S. military and were at risk of persecution by the new Communist government. That figure number included Luong’s dad, grandpa and 17 other of their family members. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the number of Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S. grew rapidly, to nearly 1 million in 2000, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Community development happened slowly in Denver, and new immigrants faced many challenges in the decade after the war, including language barriers.
Decades later, Ly said growing up as a kid in Denver, she tried to mask her identity and lost parts of the Vietnamese language in her largely non-Asian school and community. Today, though, she said she is embracing it more, refreshing her language skills on Duolingo, and contributing to her community through organizations like Asian Girls Ignite and the History Colorado memory project. Today, she said she wears her identity proudly.
“Little Saigon is just a small part of exploring it,” she said. “It gives [me and my Vietnamese friends] the area to feel like we can connect with our culture.”
“Big Dreams in Denver’s Little Saigon” is open now at History Colorado and runs through October 2026.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.