Denver

Denver, the largest city in Colorado and the state capital, also serves as the transportation, distribution, and financial hub of Colorado and the surrounding states. Nearby gold and silver deposits brought Denver its first notoriety and shaky prosperity. Word of the city's healthful climate and beautiful setting brought more lasting growth, thanks to increased population and tourism. Today, the Mile High City is also a center for sports, music, literature, and the visual and performing arts.

Landscape

Denver is located approximately one mile above sea level, giving the city its most famous nickname. It is built along the South Platte River on a series of plateaus twelve miles east of the Rocky Mountains' Front Range. On clear days, the mountains' snow-covered peaks crown the Denver horizon. Modern glass and steel office buildings, tourist centers, and arts complexes dominate the city center. Elsewhere are landmark districts preserving and reusing industrial buildings, parks, tree-shaded residential areas, bustling market districts, and newer housing developments carved from the early irrigated farms surrounding the city. On its perimeters, Denver sprawls across the plateau.

Denver's climate is dry, relatively cool in summer and warm in winter, and sunny three hundred days of the year. Although snowfall is frequent and can come early and late in the season, the snow is usually dry and melts in a few hours, thanks to warm chinook winds. Likewise, although summer days may be hot, the dry air cools comfortably in the evening.

Automobile traffic approaching or leaving Denver from any direction is eased into the ring of freeways forming the Valley Highway, which surrounds the town and provides efficient and organized access, although it is subject to congestion.

Two important city streets are Colfax Avenue (US Route 40) and Broadway. Colfax crosses north Denver from east to west and provides access to the major state and city buildings. Broadway, running north and south, crosses Colfax at the Civic Center and forms a boundary. Among the diagonal streets that start at Broadway north of Colfax is 16th Street, a mile of which has been transformed into a pedestrian shopping and sightseeing mall.

Denver maintains one of the largest city park systems in the United States. Mountain parks west of the city account for 20,000 acres of Denver's park space. Many of these parks are linked by the scenic Denver Mountain Park Circle Drive.

People

Although Denver's founders firmly displaced their Native American predecessors, and its historic neighborhoods reveal a history of tacit segregation, the modern city appears generally untroubled by racial or ethnic tension. In 2022, Denver had a total population of 713,252; 53.9 percent of Denver residents were White, 29.2 percent were Hispanic or Latino, 8.9 percent were African American, 3.6 percent were Asian, and 0.8 percent were Native American.

Mexican restaurants abound in the city, many street signs are bilingual, and the Museo de las Americas hosts changing exhibits featuring the art and culture of Latin America. Denver's African American heritage is preserved in neighborhoods such as Clement's Addition Historic District and in Zion Baptist Church, established by freed enslaved people in 1865.

Economy

Denver's architecture reflects its three greatest periods of growth. The city features Victorian architecture from the silver boom of the 1890s, early twentieth-century structures from the Cripple Creek gold rush, and glass and steel office and arts complexes from the 1970s energy boom.

After each of these periods of prosperity, Denver experienced troubling degrees of retrenchment. During the 1980s fuel crisis, crude oil prices dropped from $39 to $9 a gallon, and Denver's economy deflated fast. The amount of vacant office space rose to the highest in any US city. Denver remains a center for energy-related enterprises, not only for traditional oil and gas companies but also for research agencies exploring alternative energy sources.

By the 1970s, the industrial plants along the Platte had fallen into disuse, but the city has transformed them into tourist-friendly shops, restaurants, and condominiums. Tourists come to Denver for the city's cultural treasures and professional sports teams as much as for its proximity to mountain sports, such as skiing.

As the transportation hub for the mountain and plains states, the city has invested heavily in Denver International Airport, which opened in 1995. With a controversial design covering 52 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan, it is the nation's largest airport by land area.

Denver's professional sports teams include the NFL's Denver Broncos, who play at Empower Field at Mile High, and the National League Colorado Rockies baseball team, which plays at Coors Field. The NBA's Denver Nuggets and the NHL's Colorado Avalanche both play at Ball Arena. In 2023, the Nuggets won the NBA championship.

Denver has numerous golf courses, tennis courts, and readily available facilities for swimming, and boating. Facilities for hunting and fishing are within traveling distance. In winter, a ski train provides easy access to the slopes, and each January, one of the world's largest rodeos takes place in Denver at the National Western Stock Show.

Landmarks

Denver is home to scores of parks, museums, sports complexes, historic houses and buildings, churches, theaters and concert halls. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, carved out of 500-foot-high sandstone cliffs, is a 9,000-seat outdoor arena overlooking the city of Denver and the plains beyond.

The Denver Zoo, with 4,000 animals from more than 600 species, is a world class facility, with especially noteworthy exhibits of primates. Five billion coins are made each year at the US Mint, which is also a storage facility for US gold bullion. Coors Field offers fans a tour including the concourse areas, the press box, the visitors' clubhouse and the visitors' dugout. The Downtown Aquarium, formerly known as Colorado's Ocean Journey, simulates the changing ecosystems of two rivers as they flow to the sea.

The 23-acre Denver Botanic Gardens, just one of the city's hundreds of public gardens, includes historic, native, and exotic gardens of all kinds. The Colorado History Museum makes effective use of dioramas in telling the story of Plains Indians, hunters and trappers, soldiers, miners, and settlers in the historic Old West. The State Capitol, erected in 1908, is a Corinthian-style building with a dome gleaming with Colorado gold leaf. Inside, the wainscoting is faced with Colorado rose onyx, the only such stone ever found.

The Denver Art Museum, a twenty-eight-sided building covered with faceted glass tiles, holds seven floors of art collections. Art historians consider the museum's collection of Native American art the finest anywhere. The Denver Performing Arts Complex, one of the largest American performing arts centers, houses eight theaters with a combined seating capacity of 10,800. Easily accommodating Broadway plays and touring orchestras, it is the home of the Colorado Symphony and Opera Colorado.

History

In 1858, prospectors found gold where Cherry Creek joins the South Platte River. Nearby, they pitched a mining camp of tents and shacks. In the gold boom (and bust) that followed, the mining camp split in two: Auraria (for gold) and Denver City (named for Kansas Territory governor James Denver). Another gold strike was made at Cripple Creek, and thousands of adventurers poured into Auraria and Denver City, which merged in 1860 under the name Denver. In 1861, the US government created the Colorado Territory, and named Denver its capital.

Before the gold rushes, the land around the Platte had been home to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. After Denver's leaders pressured territorial authorities, these inhabitants were dispossessed.

Denver itself was destroyed twice, by fire and flood, but the city rebuilt and prospered. Wealth generated by gold and silver finds helped bring railroad networks to Denver beginning in 1870. Railroads made Denver the distribution hub for all Colorado and its neighboring states—the regional center for not only gold and silver and banking but also for agriculture, as meatpacking plants, breweries, seed and feed suppliers, barbed wire manufacturers, and makers of windmills sprung up throughout the area.

Colorado became a state in 1876. Between 1870 and 1890, Denver's population grew from 4,759 to almost 107,000. It became, next to San Francisco, the largest city in the western United States.

Hard times came to Denver in the 1890s when the silver market collapsed, but another discovery of gold, this time in Cripple Creek, brought another boom. After that, the city relied less on boom-and-bust mining interests and more on its less colorful contributions to the surrounding region.

During the twentieth century, Denver became the regional center for oil and gas distribution, and an important hub for highway and airline networks. City and state leaders successfully promoted Denver as an ideal tourist destination for those interested in skiing, mountain climbing, and rock climbing. They also convincingly advertised the health-giving benefits of Denver's climate. Job seekers came to Denver to stay. Office buildings, hotels and shopping centers rose skyward, and metropolitan Denver spread far beyond the limits of Denver County.

In 2008, the city of Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention, at which Illinois senator Barack Obama officially accepted the party's nomination for the US presidency.

Bibliography

“Denver (City), Colorado.” QuickFacts, United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/denvercitycolorado/PST045222. Accessed 19 Feb. 2024.

Goodstein, Phil H. Denver from the Bottom Up: From Sand Creek to Ludlow. New Social Publications, 2003.

Leonard, Stephen J., and Thomas J. Noel. Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis. UP of Colorado, 1990.

Noel, Thomas J. "Denver." Colorado Encyclopedia, 22 Dec. 2018, coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver. Accessed 19 Feb. 2024.

West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado UP of Kansas, 1998.