The urban and suburban development of the community known as Lakewood was started in 1889 by Charles Welch and W.A.H.

Loveland, who platted a 13-block area along Colfax Avenue west of Denver in eastern Jefferson County.

Loveland, the former president of the Colorado Central Railroad, retired to the new community of Lakewood after many years of living in Golden.

Lakewood was a community with policing provided by the Jefferson County Sheriff, several volunteer-staffed fire districts, and some neighborhoods without street lights or sidewalks.

[citation needed] As such, Colfax from Harlan west to Kipling and beyond had mostly commercial establishments.

In addition to the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS) for tuberculosis patients, the small, frame Methodist Church, and telephone exchange, by the 1950s grocery and drug stores, gas stations, restaurants and taverns, several motels, branch banks, a movie theater, a roller rink, a bowling alley, and used car lots emerged there.

The Villa Italia Mall on West Alameda Avenue, 20 blocks south of Colfax, reflected the southward expansion of the Lakewood settlement and housed a larger concentration of retail space.

[12][13] Lakewood lies in the Colorado Piedmont on the western edge of the Great Plains just east of the Front Range of the southern Rocky Mountains.

In the northwestern part of the city, Lena Gulch both feeds and drains Maple Grove Reservoir.

[16] It borders other communities on all sides, including Wheat Ridge to the north, Edgewater to the northeast, Denver to the east and southeast, Dakota Ridge to the south, Morrison to the southwest, and Golden, West Pleasant View, East Pleasant View, and Applewood to the northwest.

Companies based in Lakewood include Einstein Bros. Bagels, FirstBank, and The Integer Group.

The three industries employing the largest percentages of the working civilian labor force were educational services, health care, and social assistance (18.4%); professional, scientific, and management, and administrative and waste management services (13.8%); and retail trade (11.9%).

The mayor and the council members assert the policies for the operation of the city government.

Lakewood is represented in the state house by Reps. Chris Kennedy, Kerry Tipper, and Monica Duran.

Light rail service to Lakewood began on April 26, 2013, with the opening of the W Line.

Federal Center station in Lakewood is along Bustang's West Line, which connects Denver to Grand Junction.