Unbeknown to Stapleton, Cranmer was attempting to persuade the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to quietly go ahead with plans to demolish the rocks with dynamite. He was successful in this, and the rocks were razed. With Stapleton's rock garden removed, the process began of hiring architects to design and oversee the eventual building of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Other projects during Stapleton's tenure as mayor include Denver's water system and the Valley Highway project. Stapleton's career in politics ended when he lost his 1947 mayoral re-election bid to J. Quigg Newton. Stapleton died on May 23, 1950, at his home in Denver. He is the great-grandfather of Walker Stapleton, who was elected Colorado Treasurer in 2010, and the grandfather of Craig Roberts Stapleton, former U.S. ambassador to France and the Czech Republic. In early 2018, Stapleton's great-grandson, Walker Stapleton, a candidate for governor of Colorado, was accused of paying off the History Colorado Center to remove mention of the family's ties with the white supremacy movement and the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan in America from their exhibitions. In June 2020, in the period after the killing of George Floyd the Stapleton Master Community Association (MCA) voted to rename the neighborhood of Stapleton, Denver because of his links to white supremacy and the KKK.