Arkansas River in Colorado by the Bureau of Land Management.

Before white settlers arrived, the greater Denver area was inhabited by several Native American tribes, including the Apache, Ute, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho.

Zebulon Pike went up the Arkansas River in 1806. That young man’s simple tale of the things he dared and the sights he saw in his march from the Mississippi River to the lone fort he built on the banks of the Conejos River in the San Luis Valley is charming and adventurous. He was the American pioneer of the future Colorado. Wandering trappers and hunters had preceded him, but none told what they had seen.

Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville.

Captain Benjamin Bonneville, in 1832, vanished from sight in the Northwest for three years, and many others, including Washington Irving, Bonneville’s historian, sought profit, adventure, or knowledge in the new land.

In 1842, John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder, on his first expedition, pushed out nearly to the site of Denver. Five times, he set forth. Once, he camped on the site of Denver, with 160 lodges of Arapaho Indians nearby. Another time, he nearly perished with all his party in the Sangre de Cristo range.

By the terms of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie between the United States and various tribes, the United States defined and recognized Cheyenne and Arapaho territory as ranging from the North Platte River in present-day Wyoming and Nebraska southward to the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado and Kansas.

Stephen Kearny’s military expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the Mexican-American War, Gunnison’s exploration of a railroad route to the Pacific in 1853, and Captain Randolph Marcy’s incredible midwinter march from Fort Bridger in 1857 across the very backbone of the continent south to New Mexico were all great deeds. They all contributed to the knowledge of the still-wild West that brought about its final conquest.

Here was a vast and wonderful country with great deeds by brave and true men, including Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, Father Escalante, Zebulon Pike, Lewis, and Clark, among explorers; and Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, the Bent brothers, Jim Baker, among scouts, trappers, and traders.

When Arapahoe County was created in 1855, it was occupied primarily by Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians with only a few white settlers, and thus, the county was never organized. With no county government and the leaders of the Kansas Territory preoccupied with the violent events of Bleeding Kansas, little time or attention was given to those in Arapahoe County, even by the United States Congress, who were preoccupied with threats of secession by the slave states.

Colorado Gold Mining.

While the Denver area had long served as a gathering point for many cultures, things would change forever in the summer of 1858 when William Green Russell, a miner from Georgia, heard from some Cherokee Indians of gold in the Pike’s Peak region. They came out by the Smoky Hill Trail and camped on June 24, 1858, under the cottonwood trees on the west side of Cherry Creek, at a point where it empties into the South Platte River. The men discovered gold at the base of the Rocky Mountains. Though not much of the precious metal was found, word soon spread.

In the summer of 1858, a group of gold prospectors from Lawrence, Kansas, established Montana City as a mining town on the banks of the South Platte River in what was then the western Kansas Territory. This was the first historical settlement in what would become the city of Denver. However, the Lawrence Party arrived only to find deposits along Dry Creek exhausted, so they moved their “city” to Cherry Creek, renaming it St. Charles. The location was accessible to existing trails and had previously been the site of seasonal encampments of the Cheyenne and Arapaho.

Denver and Auraria City, Colorado, in 1860.

In July 1858, William Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek in the present-day suburb of Englewood that yielded about 20 troy ounces of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region. News spread rapidly; hundreds of men worked along the South Platte River by autumn. In October 1858, Russell and his men established Auraria on the opposite bank of Cherry Creek. Named for the gold mining settlement of Auraria, Georgia, it was formed in response to the high land cost in St. Charles and gave away lots to anyone willing to build and live there. A short time later, a third town, called Highland, was founded on the west side of the South Platte River. Surrounded by steep bluffs and separated from the other two settlements by the river, it was slow to develop.

As news spread, it wasn’t long before tents, tepees, wagons, lean-tos, and crudely constructed log cabins lined the banks of the South Platte River as prospectors and fortune-seekers poured into the area. They came from all over the country, traveling on foot, in covered wagons, by horseback, and even pushing their belongings in wheelbarrows. Pikes Peak, a 14,000-foot mountain to the south of the mining camp, served as both a landmark and a rallying cry for weary travelers. The “Pikes Peak or Bust!” gold rush was full force.

Richens “Uncle Dick” Wooten.

Richens L. Wooton and his family arrived in Auraria on Christmas day, 1858. Wooton brought a large stock of merchandise, primarily contained in barrels. He wanted to make a favorable impression and become popular among his new associates, so he knocked on the head of a barrel and invited his callers to help themselves with tin cups. No method could have been more effective in attaining the desired end than the one he adopted. All Auraria promptly called. News of the unusual liquid refreshments spread like wildfire through the city of Denver, and the inhabitants of that town exhibited their characteristic energy by a lively dash across Cherry Creek. The rivalry and animosity between the two cities were forgotten, for that day at least. Before the night closed down, Richens Wooton was “Uncle Dick” to every man in both towns. He made that Christmas of 1858 a notable one in the annals of Auraria.

Richens Wooton soon began the erection of his famous business block. This was the most imposing and pretentious building in the town. It was a story and a half high, roofed with clapboards. The upper floor was made of boards sawed by hand with a whip-saw and was the first board floor laid in the country. A four-light glass window lighted this room, the city’s only luxury of the kind.

By the end of 1858, population estimates ranged as high as 2,000 in the new mining camps. With the consequent flood of white immigration, Colorado territorial officials pressured federal authorities to redefine and reduce the extent of Indian treaty lands.

Denver, Colorado, in 1859.

It was not until 1859 that a full-scale gold rush finally took place. This time lag was due to many reasons. A financial panic in 1857 developed into a full-scale depression by 1858. The economic crisis especially hit frontier areas of the Mississippi Valley. To revive their sagging businesses, merchants in the Missouri River towns like Leavenworth, Kansas, or St. Joseph, Missouri, took the news of gold discoveries and embellished it. They then had propaganda circulated throughout the United States. These mercantilists no doubt felt that if a rush took place, they would benefit from the increased outfitting business since they were close to the mines. Some towns commissioned guidebooks for the Argonauts. These publications stressed quick wealth, the easy trip across the plains, and unbounded opportunities. Of course, each work suggested specific trails and towns as the “only” route west.  With shady information available, many men in the Midwest spent the winter of 1858-1859 planning their trips to the Rockies. Most of those who participated in the rush were young men in their late teens or early twenties. They found it challenging to start life since the Panic of 1857 closed so many opportunities.

A post office was opened in Auraria in January 1859, serving the 50 constructed cabins. By spring 1859, teams of thousands of gold seekers arrived, and the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush was underway. The Pike’s Peakers, by and large, were too young to have participated in the Mexican-American War and missed this adventuresome opportunity. Others saw the gold fields, especially after reading the promotional literature, as a way to make a quick fortune and then return to settle down. Along the same lines, some went west because they needed a new start or to avoid being caught up in increasing sectional tensions between the North and South. About 100,000 gold seekers flocked to the region in the following two years.

Leavenworth & Pikes Peak Express Office in Denver, Colorado.

In May 1859, Denver City donated 53 lots to the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express Company to secure the region’s first overland wagon route. Offering daily service for “passengers, mail, freight, and gold,” the Express reached Denver on a trail that trimmed westward travel time from 12 days to six. With supplies being delivered to the Denver side of Cherry Creek, businesses began to move there as well. Auraria had 250 buildings by June compared to Denver’s 150, and both cities were growing quickly. With this growth came a need for a more expansive government.

By mid-summer 1859, a movement back to the States took place. It was called the “go-backers”. William Byers, at first, attempted to stem the tide, and then he rationalized that those leaving were undesirable and did not have what it took to build a new empire of the Rockies. Despite him and other boosters, many argonauts returned to their homes after finding gold much harder to come by than their guidebooks claimed. As a popular slogan of the day said: “Having seen the Elephant.”

Horace Greeley crossed the plains in July 1859, looked over the ground carefully, reported favorably on the country in the Tribune, and, in good local phrase, “gave Denver the best advertisement she ever had.” The Apollo Hall theater opened in 1859, followed by notables such as the Denver Theatre, home to the city’s first opera performance in 1864, and the Broadway Theatre, which brought in internationally renowned performers.

Before Colorado became a territory, there was no functioning court system, and the public did justice. These early lawmen had to deal with the Vigilance Committee, often called the Law and Order League, which took matters of law into its own hands. A judge presided, and a group of his peers tried the offender. Once given, the decision was final. Between 1859 and 1860, 14 men were accused of murder and were brought before a jury of 12 men and at least one judge presiding. Six of the 14 men were sentenced to death.

Before 1861, Denver was technically part of Arapahoe County, Kansas. However, because the county was never organized, a lack of government services resulted in vendettas, vigilantism, and entrepreneurialism. William Hepworth Dixon, an English traveler, once noted of Denver:

“A man’s life is of no more worth than a dog’s,” but in its people, he saw ‘perseverance, generosity, and enterprise.”

Though Denver surpassed most other cities in Colorado at the time and was transforming itself, it was still considered a frontier town. Churches, lacking permanent facilities, often held their services in public halls or saloons, and children attended paid schools led by teachers of questionable ability. Gold mining declined as miners exhausted the shallow parts of the veins that contained free gold and found that their amalgamation mills could not recover gold from the deeper sulfide ores. Many people left Colorado, and often, those who stayed lacked continuous work during the economic slump, spending their time drinking and getting into fights.

Bent’s Fort Colorado by Kathy Alexander.

On February 18, 1861, six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of the Arapaho signed the Treaty of Fort Wise (Fort Lyon) with the United States at Bent’s Fort near present-day Lamar, Colorado. They ceded more than 90% of the lands designated for them by the Fort Laramie Treaty, including the area of modern Denver. Some Cheyenne opposed the treaty, saying that a small minority of the chiefs had signed it without the consent or approval of the rest of the tribe, that the signatories had not understood what they signed, and that they had been bribed to sign by a large distribution of gifts. Even though the tribal members did not legally ratify the treaty, its terms were ratified. The territorial government of Colorado claimed the treaty was a “solemn obligation” and considered that those Indians who refused to abide by it were hostile and planning a war.

Ten days later, on February 28, 1861, outgoing U.S. President James Buchanan signed an Act of Congress organizing the free Territory of Colorado. President Abraham Lincoln appointed William Gilpin of Missouri as the first governor of the Territory of Colorado, and he arrived in Denver City on May 29, 1861. Afterward, courts were set up, judges were appointed, and laws were created, but mob justice was still common.

Arapahoe County was formed on November 1, 1861. Denver City was incorporated on November 7, 1861, and served as the Arapahoe County Seat from 1861 until It was split. Denver County was created on November 15, 1902.

Auraria, CO 1860.

William Gilpin, Colorado’s first territorial governor, organized Colorado’s volunteer militia and sent them south in February 1862 to fight Confederate Texans at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico. With resources tied up in the war, there was little left over for mines, farms, and infrastructure, and Denver stagnated.

On July 15, 1862, citizens organized a volunteer Fire Department. Unfortunately, almost a year later, carts and buckets were still on order, and firemen were untrained and untried. On April 19, 1863, a fire broke out in the center of downtown Denver. High winds fed the sparks, and in a few hours, most of the wooden buildings in the heart of Denver were destroyed. Losses totaled over $250,000, and although the buildings were of minimal value, the inventory loss devastated many new businesses. Western Union furthered Denver’s regional dominance that year by choosing the city for its regional terminus.

As a result of the fire, new laws were passed to prohibit using wood and other flammable materials to construct buildings. Denver’s new buildings were built with brick, often larger than the original. As the rebuilding progressed, Denver began to look like a town rather than a temporary campground. Then came winter, cold beyond all experience, with many people suffering and cattle dying. The summer following, the plains were burned by a terrible drought.

In these first years, gold seemed to be the only excuse for the white man’s presence in Colorado. Several million dollars were taken out from easily worked placer mines before 1863. The supply then seemed exhausted. All efforts to get the gold from veins were ineffectual. Millions were spent by the overzealous in machinery and mills not adapted to the country’s needs. However, over this, as over all other obstacles, the triumph was sure, and by 1871, new and proper processes of mining and ore reducing had been successfully adopted.

On May 19, 1864, just over a year after the fire, the spring melt combined with heavy rains caused severe flooding on Cherry Creek. The flooding severely affected the low-lying Auraria, destroying the Rocky Mountain News building, the Methodist Church, City Hall, and numerous offices, warehouses, and outbuildings. As the flood rolled down from the divide, 20 people were killed, and it destroyed nearly a million dollars worth of property. Afterward, the water was severely contaminated and threatened a significant epidemic. Despite these overwhelming losses, rebuilding began almost immediately.

By the mid-1860s, the Civil War was over, and Denver had survived many tragedies. The city began to grow again and ended the decade with a population of 4,759. Freeing up capital at the war’s end brought new investment. Denverites began to look toward the next step for growing their city, ensuring that the transcontinental railroad route would pass through Denver.

Sand Creek Massacre by Robert Lindneaux, 1936.

The disagreement on the validity of the Treaty of Fort Wise escalated to bring about the Colorado War of 1864 and 1865, during which the brutal Sand Creek Massacre against Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples occurred. In the summer of 1865, Indian attacks on supply trains and market manipulations drove up prices. With the Indians cutting stage stations and supply lines, Denver had just six weeks of food. The aftermath of the Indian War was the dissolution of the reservation in Eastern Colorado and the signing of the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867, which stipulated that the Cheyenne and Arapaho people would be relocated outside their traditional territory. Thus, by the end of the 1860s, this wholly and effectively cleared the Denver area of its indigenous inhabitants.

Afterward, grasshoppers swarmed through the area, stripping away all the vegetation. Real estate values fell so low that entire blocks changed hands during poker games. Denver’s population shrank from 4,749 in 1860 to only about 3,500 in 1866. Many of the original gold miners and town founders were among those who left.

Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company in Denver, Colorado, about 1865.

In 1867, Denver City became the Territorial Capital. With its new-found importance, Denver City shortened its name to Denver.

That year, Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans and other local business leaders, including David Moffat and Walter Cheesman, partnered with East Coast investors to form a railroad company that would link Denver and the Colorado Territory with the national rail network. The company was incorporated on November 19, 1867, as the “Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company.” The sense of urgency for the Denver boosters was enhanced by the formation of a rival, the Colorado, Clear Creek, and Pacific Railway (later the Colorado Central Railroad), by W.A.H. Loveland and citizens of nearby Golden to link that city directly with Cheyenne and make Golden the natural hub of the territory.

Within several days, the company sold $300,000 in stock but could not raise further funds to begin construction. The efforts seemed to be on the brink of failure when Evans was able to persuade Congress to grant the company 900,000 acres of land on the condition that the company build a line connecting the Union Pacific line in Wyoming with the existing Kansas Pacific line, which then extended only as far west as central Kansas.

The first train arrived in Denver in 1870.

Racing to beat the Golden investors, the company broke ground on its Cheyenne line on May 18, 1868, and took approximately two years to complete. The first train from Cheyenne arrived in Denver on June 24, 1870. Two months later, in August 1870, the Kansas Pacific Railroad completed its line to Denver, and the first train arrived from Kansas. With the completion of the Kansas Pacific line to Denver, the Denver Pacific became integral to the first transcontinental rail link between America’s east and west coasts. While the Union Pacific line had been declared finished in 1869 with the Golden Spike event in Utah, linking it with the Central Pacific Railroad, passengers were required to disembark the train and cross the Missouri River at Omaha, Nebraska, by boat. With the completion of the Denver Pacific line, it was finally possible to embark on a train on the East Coast and disembark on the West Coast.

Finally linked to the rest of the nation, Denver prospered as a service and supply center. The young city grew during these years, attracting millionaires with their mansions and a mixture of crime and poverty of a rapidly growing city.

Soiled doves in Denver, Colorado.

The Denver Pacific Railroad’s rival, the Colorado Central line from Golden, was not completed until 1877. By this time, Denver had established its supremacy over its rival as the population center and capital city of the newly admitted State of Colorado. The railroad brought residents, tourists, and much-needed supplies. In the 1870s, it is estimated that the railroad brought 100 new residents to Denver daily. Population statistics show that Denver’s population soared from 4,759 in 1870 to over 35,000 by 1880. In addition to bringing new residents, it put Denver on the map as a tourist destination and brought 1,067 visitors in its first month of operation. That first month also brought 13,000,000 pounds of freight. Denver now had the people and supplies to flourish and solidify its regional dominance.

Between 1880 and 1895, the city underwent a massive rise in corruption as crime bosses, such as Soapy Smith and Lou Blonger, worked side by side with city officials and police to profit from gambling and other criminal enterprises. There was a range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams such as Mattie Silks and Jenny Rogers to the squalid “cribs” located a few blocks farther north along Market Street. Edward Chase ran card games and regularly entertained many of Denver’s most influential leaders. Gambling flourished, and bunco artists exploited every chance to separate miners from their hard-earned gold. Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly and “crib girls” did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crackdowns satisfied the demands for reform.

Tabor Grand Opera House in the 1920s.

In 1881, Denver City was chosen as the permanent state capital by a statewide ballot. With its newfound importance, Denver City shortened its name to Denver. That year, the Leadville mining millionaire Horace Tabor built a business block at 16th and Larimer and the elegant Tabor Grand Opera House. At its opening, it was said to have been the most opulent building and the best-equipped theater between Chicago, Illinois, and San Francisco, California. It occupied the entire block and was claimed to have single-handedly changed Denver’s image of itself from a frontier boomtown to a world-class city. Union Station was also built that year.

The United Way of America has roots in Denver; in 1887, when church leaders began the Charity Organization Society, which coordinated services and fundraising for 22 agencies.

Around the same time, Colorado gained the nickname “The World’s Sanatorium” for its dry climate, which was considered favorable for curing respiratory diseases, particularly tuberculosis. Many people came from the East Coast looking for a cure, bringing training and skills that expanded Denver’s industrial base. Several Jewish men eventually established two well-renowned hospitals: the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives (now National Jewish Health) and the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society.

The Croke Mansion in Denver, Colorado, was built by Thomas Croke, a state senator, merchant, and landowner in 1891. Today, the building operates as the Patterson Inn.

Splendid homes for millionaires, such as the Croke, Patterson, Campbell Mansion at 11th and Pennsylvania and the now-demolished Moffat Mansion at 8th and Grant, soon followed.

Intent on transforming Denver into one of the world’s great cities, leaders wooed industry and enticed laborers to work in new factories. Soon, in addition to the elite and a large middle class, Denver had a growing population of German, Italian, and Chinese laborers, followed by African-Americans from the deep South and Hispanic workers.

Unprepared for this influx, the Silver Crash of 1893 unsettled political, social, and economic balances, and Denver suffered a depression. Americans were suspicious of immigrants, who sometimes allied with socialist and labor union causes. This laid the foundation for ethnic bigotry, such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Red Scare, as well as corruption and crime.

Denver was already suffering economically due to several successive years of droughts and harsh winters that had hurt the agricultural industry. The withdrawal of foreign investors and the overexpansion of the silver mining industries led to the decline of stock prices, bank closings, businesses failing, and numerous farms ceasing operations. As Denver banks closed, real estate values dropped, smelters stopped working, and Denver Tramway had trouble getting people to ride and pay their fares. The Union Pacific Railroad, which had absorbed the Denver Pacific and Kansas Pacific Railroads in the 1880s, declared bankruptcy.

Capitol building in Denver, Colorado, by Carol Highsmith.

The Colorado State Capitol Building was completed in 1894. Designed by Elijah E. Myers, it is intentionally reminiscent of the United States Capitol. The white granite building has a distinctive gold dome of real gold leaf, first added in 1908, commemorating the Colorado Gold Rush. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Civic Center Historic District in 1974. It became part of the Denver Civic Center National Historic Landmark District in 2012.

The U.S. economy began to recover in 1897, and while jobs slowly began to trickle back into Denver, real estate prices remained depressed through 1900. Throughout the Depression, agriculture was the one constant industry. A developed irrigation infrastructure and increasing crop diversification led to a stable food industry throughout the state. Without the jobs brought by the production and processing of food, the depression in Denver would have been much worse. Denver gained back the population it had lost during the depression, mainly through annexing neighboring towns, and ended the century with a population of more than 133,000.

In 1900, whites represented 96.8% of Denver’s population. The African American and Hispanic populations increased with the migrations of the 20th century. Many African Americans first came as workers on the railroad, which had a terminus in Denver and began to settle there.

In 1904, Robert W. Speer was elected mayor and initiated several projects that added new landmarks, updated existing facilities, or improved the city’s landscape, including the City Auditorium, the Civic Center, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. City leaders went to Washington, D.C., after assuring the politicians there that Denver was no longer a frontier town; they secured the first major party convention in a western state, the 1908 Democratic National Convention.

In 1914, Emily Griffith, a Denver school teacher, opened the Opportunity School, which featured language and vocational instruction as both day classes and night classes so that nontraditional learners would have the opportunity for self-improvement.

Longhorn cattle join the National Western Stock Show’s kickoff parade in downtown Denver, Colorado. Photo by Carol Highsmith.

At this time, Denver’s park system was expanded, and mountain land was acquired for a future mountain park system. Cattle pens began to spring up around the railroad depots as farmers shipped their livestock to the meat-packing industry in Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. Local ranchers wanted to concentrate on raising cattle rather than the logistics of shipping them east, and in 1906, the first National Western Stock Show was held, which quickly became the preeminent livestock show in the region. These events helped raise the national profile of Denver and live up to its nickname, the “Queen City of the Plains.”

Labor unions were active in Denver, especially the construction and printing crafts affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the railroad brotherhoods. After being welcomed at the 1908 Democratic National Convention, the AFL unions, who formed the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly, generally supported Democratic candidates.

Publicizing the right to free speech was the goal of the 1913 Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies. Organized protesters denounced restrictions in Denver to fill the jails; the courts were clogged, so they could not handle anything but free speech cases. Taxpayers complained that they were being forced to feed “whole armies of jailed Wobblies.” The Industrial Workers of the World eventually won the right to speak to workers and, within a year, had formed two Denver branches.

Ku Klux Klan on Laramer Street in Denver, Colorado, 1926.

The Ku Klux Klan had become a powerful group in Colorado by the 1920s, helping to elect Ku Klux Klan members Benjamin F. Stapleton, mayor of Denver, in 1923 and Clarence Morley, Governor of Colorado, in 1925. Roman Catholic immigrants, particularly of Irish, Italian, and Polish descent, and Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were often the targets of Ku Klux Klan discrimination. As these communities became Americanized, the Ku Klux Klan lost influence, especially during Morley’s single scandal-ridden term in office. As Prohibition lingered on, many citizens saw the adverse effects: toxic bootleg liquor, corruption, bribery, and binge drinking. Colorado voters suspended the state’s Prohibition laws on July 1, 1933. While racism and discrimination against a new wave of Mexican immigrants and African-American migrants persisted, the Ku Klux Klan was never again a significant force in Colorado politics.

Denver financed the Moffat Tunnel through the Rocky Mountains in the mid-1920s. When it opened in February 1928, it shortened the distance between Denver and the Pacific coast by 176 miles. The railroad and water tunnel was named after Colorado railroad pioneer David Moffat. In 1979, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated it a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

The same year, Denver received a major natural gas pipeline from Texas, and as more households and businesses switched to gas, the demand for coal fell.

Air travel was advancing around the same period. When Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton opened Denver Municipal Airport in 1929, it was derided as a taxpayer subsidy for the powerful elite who flew for sport. Built northeast of Denver, the Denver Post complained that it was too far from the city center and that the location had been chosen to benefit the mayor’s financial backers. However, with four gravel runways, one hangar, and a terminal, others greeted it as “the West’s best airport.” At the time, unpressurized planes were the norm, and transcontinental flights went through Cheyenne or south through Texas as the mountains were smaller there. Denver Municipal Airport was used mainly for mail service and private pilots. As pressurized planes came into general use, the mountains were no longer an issue, and the advanced airport attracted major airlines, positioning Denver as a central hub for air travel in the region.

In 1929, the national economy crashed, leading to the Great Depression. In 1930, the weather turned dry, beginning the most widespread and longest-lasting drought in Colorado history, a period later referred to as the “Dust Bowl.” The Depression caused industries and mines to close, and their workers were laid off, decimating agriculture.

President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Dry weather, soil erosion, and a depressed economy led to nationwide social upheaval. Many of these unemployed came to Denver for work and a better life. It was estimated that in 1933, one in four residents was out of work. Though President Herbert Hoover’s administration promised that the recession would be over quickly, the economy continued to worsen. However, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election; he promised a “New Deal” that brought funds and jobs to Colorado and Denver. The Civilian Conservation Corps built trails and campgrounds in Denver’s Mountain Parks, and the Works Progress Administration built roads, fixed and built schools, and funded artists to decorate government buildings. The new roads and trails encouraged tourism and, combined with rail and air travel improvements, made Denver a transportation hub.

On August 3, 1933, Denver was struck by a major flood caused by Cherry Creek following the failure of the Castlewood Dam.

The old Rocky Flats site is now home to the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum.

From 1953 to 1989, the Rocky Flats Plant, a Department of Energy nuclear weapon facility formerly located about 15 miles from Denver, produced fissile plutonium “pits” for nuclear warheads. A major fire at the facility in 1957, as well as leakage from nuclear waste stored at the site between 1958 and 1968, resulted in the contamination of some parts of Denver, to varying degrees, with plutonium-239, a harmful radioactive substance with a half-life of 24,200 years. Studies have linked the contamination to an increase in birth defects and cancer incidence in central Denver and nearer Rocky Flats. The area’s significant military and federal presence followed the aerospace industry. Large corporations such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Ball Aerospace, and Lockheed-Martin came to Denver. These businesses brought jobs and money and began to influence the city, displacing the wealthy entrepreneurs and pioneer families that had previously dominated political life.

As Denver’s population expanded rapidly, many old buildings were torn down to make way for new housing projects. The Denver Urban Renewal Authority demolished block after block to accommodate apartments and parking lots. Many of Denver’s finest buildings from the frontier era were demolished, including the Tabor Opera House, as the city expanded upward and outward. By 1950, middle-class families were moving away from the downtown area, seeking larger houses and better schools; the suburbs multiplied as more people moved out of the city.

In 1957, Denver’s original airport, Stapleton International Airport, was the eighth busiest in the nation.

In the 1960s, Victorian homes were considered old-fashioned and unpopular and were targeted for demolition. The destruction of so many of these homes spurred Denver residents to form the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission and Historic Denver, Inc., which raised awareness of the value of these historic buildings and established the local historic preservation movement.

Van Morrison at the Family Dog in Denver, Colorado.

The Family Dog Denver was a music venue opened in 1967 by Chet Helms, Bob Cohen, and Barry Fey. It was a landmark cultural episode in the city’s history as the psychedelic and hippie movement had to Denver, and the Family Dog became the link of that movement. The venue brought in bands like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Howlin’ Wolf, The Grateful Dead, Cream, and Buffalo Springfield for the first time, in addition to the legendary San Francisco psychedelic poster artists doing posters for the shows. The conflict between the city and the venue led to numerous municipal and federal court cases. The ten months the Family Dog Denver was open is seen as a watershed episode when Denver was put on the national music map, and the culture began to change from a mid-20th century western, conservative sensibility to its current, liberal political atmosphere.

Denver Tramway had been responsible for all public transportation in Denver since the turn of the century, but with aging equipment, low revenues, and lackluster ridership, it eventually dissolved. Author Sherah Collins wrote, “… in 1970, Denver had more cars per capita than any other place in the country, which is unsurprising due to the lack of public transit options.” In 1974, the Regional Transportation District took over responsibility for Denver’s public transportation. During this period, a “brown cloud” began to form over the Front Range due to air pollution from the increasing number of cars and people in the area. This cloud of pollution would take more than two decades to get rid of and was a serious concern for people living in the Denver area.

Bear sculpture at the Denver Convention Center by Carol Highsmith.

In 1983, Federico Pena became the city’s first Latino mayor. When the economic downturn happened in the mid-1980s, Pena convinced Denver residents to reinvest billions in their city even though many critics complained that taking loans in the middle of a recession was foolish. Under the leadership of Pena, voters approved a $3 billion airport, the $126 million Colorado Convention Center, a $242 million bond for infrastructure, a $200 million bond for Denver Public Schools, and a 0.1% sales tax to build a new baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies. Many people worried that Denver was on the wrong track when the city’s total bonded indebtedness peaked at over $1 billion. Mayor Pena worked with the surrounding suburbs to market Denver as a vibrant city.

By the mid-1980s, Stapleton International Airport had become the seventh-largest airport globally and the seventh-largest in the United States. When it was initially built three miles east of downtown, it was in the middle of farmland, but as the decades passed, the city began to surround it, and Stapleton no longer had any room to expand. The Colorado General Assembly brokered a deal to annex land from Adams County to Denver County for the new airport, increasing Denver’s size by 53 square miles in the single largest annexation in the city’s history. Despite opening two years late and shuttering a much-hyped automated baggage system, the much-hyped International Airport is a success and has contributed significantly to the region’s economy.

At the end of the 1980s, Denver’s economy started to grow. In 1989, unemployment dropped to 5%, down from a high of 9.7% in 1982. Pollution-control measures came into force, helping to eliminate the toxic “brown cloud” that had hung over the city. “Lower Downtown,” formerly a warehouse district, was renovated and became a focal point for new urban development. With office space in Denver the cheapest in the world, many local companies began locking in long-term leases, keeping those companies in Denver and driving prices back up.

As the business grew, so did the population. Many residents left the city for the greater space offered by the suburbs, but for each citizen lost, others came from out of state to settle in their place. Traffic grew, and many people from the suburbs moved to rural areas. This urban sprawl was a cause of concern, and the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, ranked the Denver metro area among its ten worst offenders.

The Denver Public Library and the surrounding Cultural Complex in downtown Denver, Colorado. Photo by Carol Highsmith.

By 1990, the city’s population had fallen to 467,610, the lowest level in over 30 years.

In 1999, Colorado residents ranked growth as the state’s number one problem. That year, Denver metro area voters approved two property-tax increases to help fund the Transportation Expansion (T-REX) project, which reconstructed congested highways and laid light-rail tracks between downtown and the Tech Center, both of which were made possible through the leadership of the Regional Transportation Districts’ CEO at the time, Clarence William Marsella. Colorado’s population had expanded from 3.1 million at the beginning of the 1990s to over four million by the end, and Denver closed out the decade with more than 554,000 people. At that time, most of Denver’s economy concentrated on a few key sectors: energy, government, the military, technology, and agriculture.

Mile High Stadium of the Denver Broncos. Photo by Carol Highsmith.

Over the next decade, Denver and Colorado attracted new industries, and the Colorado Office of Economic, Development, and International Trade said the state had 14 core industries, including health care, financial services, and tourism. This diversification of the economy helped cushion the city and state from the global recession of 2008-2010. The fact that Denver’s tax base is made up mostly of sales and income tax meant that it felt the economic downturn faster than others. Still, it recovered more quickly, helping Denver weather the recession better than many other U.S. cities relying mainly on property taxes.

Today, Denver continues to be the economic and political heart of Colorado. It is home to the state’s major institutions of government and commerce, and its people and organizations have connected the state’s various regions and the wider world. Its transportation networks have opened the mountain barrier for settlement and commerce, and it has become a hub for the Front Range Megalopolis.

The Denver downtown district is located immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River, approximately 12 miles east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated January 2025.

South Platte River Trail in Denver, Colorado by Carol Highsmith, 2016.

Also See:

Colorado – The Centennial State

Colorado Ghost Towns & Mining Camps

Denver Photo Gallery

Haunted Denver – Mile High Ghosts

Pike’s Peak Gold Rush and Colorado Territory

Sources:

Brown Palace
Denver, the Mile High City
Hill, Alice Park; Colorado Pioneers in Picture and Story, 1915.
National Park Service
Powell, Lyman P.; Historic Towns of the Western States, The Knickerbocker Press, New York, October 1901.
Wikipedia – Denver
Wikipedia – Denver History