Sandwiched between the mountains and the plains are the vast majority of Colorado’s people. The Front Range is most likely the state’s population center because of the laziness of westbound pioneers who saw the ominous silhouette of the Rocky Mountains on the horizon and said, “I don’t know about California, but this place looks okay to me.”
The population and suburban sprawl along Colorado’s Front Range have accumulated more or less continuously ever since those first gold junkies set up camp on the banks of the Platte River. Now the region—stretching from Pueblo to Fort Collins—is home to nearly 80 percent of the state’s residents, most of them living in metro Denver.
Alternately known as the Mile High City and the Queen City of the Plains and Cowtown, Denver was named for James Denver, the Kansas governor who’d quit before the moniker was bestowed, ironic because the hope was he’d grant political favors to the town that bore his name. While James Denver is buried in the history books, John Denver remains well known, another irony inasmuch that the man who took his name from the city has done better in the fame game than the guy from whom the city took its name.
(Bob Denver (Gilligan) places second in the most famous Denver race.)
Regardless of its origins, the name Denver brings to mind mostly images of mountains and cowboys to Easterners, rather than a city complete with graffiti, pollution, and crack. This isn’t to say that urban decay has totally sublimated Denver’s Western charms—it’s only partially sublimated them, a fascinating contrast in my humble opinion.
South of Denver, Colorado Springs is the state’s second biggest city and known mostly as a bastion of conservative Christians, soldiers, and tech geeks. Northward are the college towns, Boulder and Fort Collins, known for more progressive politics, occasional drunken riots, and higher, um, education.
STATS & FACTS
The U.S. Mint in Denver opened in 1906 and struck 167 million coins during its first year in operation. A century later, the facility made that many coins in a week—or 8 billion a year.
Zebulon Pike “discovered” 14,115-foot Pikes Peak in1806, but he never made it to the top. Today, an estimated 10,000 hikers summit the mountain annually.
Thanks to its now-closed dynamite factory—and the occasional DuPont truck filled with nitroglycerin crossing the railroad tracks in town—Louviers, a small town south of Denver, earned the somewhat Satanic nickname of Hellsville
In 1953, the Denver Sherriff’s Department asked Frank Marugg, a violinist with the Denver Symphony and inventor, for help with parking enforcement. Marugg tinkered around and came up with a device to immobilize cars whose owners failed to pay their tickets, a clamp that came to be known as the Denver Boot.
Before Cherry Creek Reservoir, there was Castlewood Canyon Reservoir. Now in ruins, its dam—labeled unbreakable by its builders in 1890—indeed broke in 1933, sending a 20-foot wave straight into downtown Denver.
SEE & HEAR
Read: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, and The First Third, by Neal Cassady; Modern Drunkard Magazine
Listen: Anyone labeled as part of the “Denver Sound,” most notably Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Munly
View: WarGames, Mork and Mindy, Dynasty, and Every Which Way But Loose, shot in part in Denver and starring Clint Eastwood and an ape
TO-DO CHECKLIST
Enjoy a Denver omelet (or a Denver boot if you’re vegetarian)
Have a local beer or three (or six)
Join the Mile High Club (anywhere except the steps at the capitol building)
The population and suburban sprawl along Colorado’s Front Range have accumulated more or less continuously ever since those first gold junkies set up camp on the banks of the Platte River. Now the region—stretching from Pueblo to Fort Collins—is home to nearly 80 percent of the state’s residents, most of them living in metro Denver.
Alternately known as the Mile High City and the Queen City of the Plains and Cowtown, Denver was named for James Denver, the Kansas governor who’d quit before the moniker was bestowed, ironic because the hope was he’d grant political favors to the town that bore his name. While James Denver is buried in the history books, John Denver remains well known, another irony inasmuch that the man who took his name from the city has done better in the fame game than the guy from whom the city took its name.
(Bob Denver (Gilligan) places second in the most famous Denver race.)
Regardless of its origins, the name Denver brings to mind mostly images of mountains and cowboys to Easterners, rather than a city complete with graffiti, pollution, and crack. This isn’t to say that urban decay has totally sublimated Denver’s Western charms—it’s only partially sublimated them, a fascinating contrast in my humble opinion.
South of Denver, Colorado Springs is the state’s second biggest city and known mostly as a bastion of conservative Christians, soldiers, and tech geeks. Northward are the college towns, Boulder and Fort Collins, known for more progressive politics, occasional drunken riots, and higher, um, education.
STATS & FACTS
The U.S. Mint in Denver opened in 1906 and struck 167 million coins during its first year in operation. A century later, the facility made that many coins in a week—or 8 billion a year.
Zebulon Pike “discovered” 14,115-foot Pikes Peak in1806, but he never made it to the top. Today, an estimated 10,000 hikers summit the mountain annually.
Thanks to its now-closed dynamite factory—and the occasional DuPont truck filled with nitroglycerin crossing the railroad tracks in town—Louviers, a small town south of Denver, earned the somewhat Satanic nickname of Hellsville
In 1953, the Denver Sherriff’s Department asked Frank Marugg, a violinist with the Denver Symphony and inventor, for help with parking enforcement. Marugg tinkered around and came up with a device to immobilize cars whose owners failed to pay their tickets, a clamp that came to be known as the Denver Boot.
Before Cherry Creek Reservoir, there was Castlewood Canyon Reservoir. Now in ruins, its dam—labeled unbreakable by its builders in 1890—indeed broke in 1933, sending a 20-foot wave straight into downtown Denver.
SEE & HEAR
Read: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, and The First Third, by Neal Cassady; Modern Drunkard Magazine
Listen: Anyone labeled as part of the “Denver Sound,” most notably Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Munly
View: WarGames, Mork and Mindy, Dynasty, and Every Which Way But Loose, shot in part in Denver and starring Clint Eastwood and an ape
TO-DO CHECKLIST
Enjoy a Denver omelet (or a Denver boot if you’re vegetarian)
Have a local beer or three (or six)
Join the Mile High Club (anywhere except the steps at the capitol building)