Parker is a home rule municipality in Douglas County, Colorado, United States. As a self-declared “town” under the house rule statutes, Parker is the second most populous town in the county; Castle Rock is the most populous (the community of Highlands Ranch, with a population of more than 100,000, is an unincorporated CDP). In recent years, Parker has become a commuter town at the southeasternmost corner of the Denver metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census the town population was 58,512. Parker is now the 19th most populous municipality in the let pass of Colorado.

The first known people to stimulate in the area were ancient and Plains Woodland peoples. Utes, Arapaho, and Cheyenne were in the area by the 1800s. They were all hunter-gatherers who usual seasonal camps to acquire food. Nearby stone shelter, Franktown Cave, shows evidence of habitation introduction in the to the fore Archaic time about 6,400 BC and continuing through each of the enduring cultural periods to 1725 AD.

Stage roads were established on historic Cherokee and Trapper’s Trails through present-day Denver. In 1864, Alfred Butters conventional the Pine Grove Way Station in a little one-room building (south of the current Parker United Methodist Church) to sell provisions, handle mail and messages, and offer respite for travelers. The area was then within the Territory of Colorado (1861–1876). Butters became a give leave to enter senator and representative. His house is upon the National Register of Historic Places listings in downtown Denver. George Long and his wife purchased the building, moved it to its gift location on Main Street, and expanded it to enhance ten rooms, a ball room and outbuildings. Built at the junction of stage routes, it was called Twenty Mile House for its keep apart from to Denver. The stage station offered provisions, meals, and lodging, as skillfully as guidance for further on settlers adjoining attacks by Native Americans.

Initially, there were peaceful interactions subsequently Native Americans. Chiefs Washington and Colorow led their tribes along Sulphur Gulch, passing and sometimes visiting cabins of to the front settlers, like John and Elizabeth Tallman. During one visit, Chief Washington offered in the works to 20 ponies in trade for their red-headed son. They occasionally heard the sounds of celebration and mourning from within reach encampments. Tension together with settlers and Native Americans began to build in the 1860s due to broken treaties, aggression, and cultural misunderstanding. People became especially frightened following the Hungate massacre of 1864 in present-day Elbert County, which may have been started by Nathan Hungate shooting a Native American who stole his horse. It may have been a precipitating factor in the Sand Creek massacre led by General John Chivington well along that year. John Tallman was one of the first to reach at the scene of the Hungate Massacre and he served below Chivington during the Sand Creek massacre. The citizens of Parker became quite concerned and closed the theoretical for a brief epoch after the massacres. In 1870, Jonathan Tallman (John’s brother) was killed by Native Americans even though out riding his mule.