2776 Speer Blvd., Denver, Colorado
Denver is not the only alleged birthplace of the cheeseburger—Pasadena, California, and Louisville, Kentucky, also make the claim—but it is the city that went to the trouble of erecting a granite monument to commemorate the landmark culinary event. Louis Ballast, proprietor of the now-defunct Humpty Dumpty Drive-In, tried to trademark the word “cheeseburger” in 1935, and he may have succeeded, but he never sued anyone for using his name. Nevertheless, the bickering over the cheeseburger’s origins continues as if the innovation of cheese on a hamburger was akin to atomic fission and not just a major step for the U.S. in its remarkably successful campaign to become the most obese nation in the history of the world.
Denver is not the only alleged birthplace of the cheeseburger—Pasadena, California, and Louisville, Kentucky, also make the claim—but it is the city that went to the trouble of erecting a granite monument to commemorate the landmark culinary event. Louis Ballast, proprietor of the now-defunct Humpty Dumpty Drive-In, tried to trademark the word “cheeseburger” in 1935, and he may have succeeded, but he never sued anyone for using his name. Nevertheless, the bickering over the cheeseburger’s origins continues as if the innovation of cheese on a hamburger was akin to atomic fission and not just a major step for the U.S. in its remarkably successful campaign to become the most obese nation in the history of the world.
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