My Life in Denver

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Denver, a city in north-central Colorado at the juncture of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, and the capital of the state. Denver is the largest metropolis in the Rocky Mountain West, an area of more than 400,000 square miles (1,036,000 sq km). The city sits on relatively flat land at an altitude of 5,280 feet (1,610 meters), giving it its nickname, "Mile High City." Rolling foothills quickly give way, 15 miles (24 km) west of the central business district, to lofty mountains with peaks reaching more than 14,200 feet (4,330 meters) in elevation. The most prominent mountains are Mount Evans to the west and Longs Peak to the north. Climate and Water. Major Stephen Long, for whom the above-mentioned peak is named, explored the region in 1820 and concluded that it was a desert. With around 55 inches (1,400 mm) of snowfall and less than 16 inches (406 mm) of rainfall a year, Denver must import much of its water from the mountains. The Denver water board gets nearly half its supply from Dillon Reservoir, 60 miles (100 km) west of the city. With much of it going to irrigate trees and lawns that would not naturally grow in the area, maintaining an adequate water supply has long been one of the city's greatest challenges. An average August temperature of 72° F (22° C) and a February average of 33° F (1° C), coupled with more than 300 at least partially sunny days per year, give Denver a generally pleasant climate. It is subject to temperature extremes ranging from winter lows of less than -10° F (-23° C) to summer highs of more than 100° F (38° C). Although it occasionally experiences a tornado and on rare occasions minor earthquakes, the city has historically seen far more damage from intense hail storms and heavy snows. Great snows fell in 1913 and 1946, and the Christmas Eve storm of 1982 dumped more than 2 feet (0.6 meter) of snow on the city in 24 hours. The dams that created Cherry Creek Lake on Cherry Creek and Chatfield Lake on the South Platte River were designed to check floods, such as the one that scoured the South Platte Valley in June 1965. Demographics. In 1940 Denver counted 322,412 people, with an additional 61,960 living elsewhere in the metropolitan area. By 1970 Denver's population had reached 514,678, but the suburbs that year contributed more than 700,000 people to the metropolitan area's population. The interstate highway system allowed people to spread out far beyond the city's limits. Old towns, such as Aurora, Arvada, Littleton, and Westminster, gradually expanded their boundaries and became big cities. And new towns, among them Thornton and Northglenn to the north and Greenwood Village and Centennial to the southeast, were founded. In 1950 Denver's population of 415,786 far exceeded the combined population of its surrounding counties, Arapahoe, Adams, and Jefferson. In 2000 those counties, with most residents living in Denver's suburbs, reckoned over 1.3 million people while Denver counted 554,636. Aurora, east of Denver, a town of 11,421 in 1950, tallied 276,393 in 2000, making it Colorado's third largest city. Denver's relatively slow growth compared with its suburbs was linked to the 1974 Poundstone amendment to the Colorado state constitution, which made it difficult for the city to annex land. That amendment reflected suburbanites' fears that their children would be bused to schools to achieve racial integration if their homes were annexed to Denver. For much of its history Denver was a segregated city. Most of its African Americans were confined to the Five Points district and its eastward extensions northeast of downtown, and much of its Hispanic population lived in older parts of the central city. In 1974 the United States Supreme Court ordered the city's schools to desegregate, which led to more than 20 years of school busing. Between 1963 and 1995 the number of Anglo children in Denver's schools dropped by more than 70% while African American children increased by more than 40% and the Hispanic number more than doubled. To accommodate burgeoning enrollments, the suburbs built large schools, such as Columbine High School in Jefferson county. In 2000, 11% of the city's population was black and nearly 32% was Hispanic. Most of the suburbs, Commerce City and parts of Aurora being two notable exceptions, tended to be less ethnically diverse than was Denver and as Republican in their politics as Denver was Democratic. Government. Displeased with its often inefficient and corrupt city government, Denver reorganized early in the 20th century by separating from Arapahoe county and forming the coterminous city and county of Denver. The city charter of 1902 established a mayor-council government that granted the mayor extensive power. Despite a few modifications and a short period of commission government (1913–1916), the strong-mayor system persisted into the 21st century. Quigg Newton, the mayor from 1947 to 1955, transformed city government again by largely ridding it of its patronage-based employment system. The mayor, however, retained the power to appoint top administrative personnel. In 1983 Denver elected its first Hispanic mayor, Federico Peña. When he left office in 1991, the city selected Wellington E. Webb as its first black mayor. Although the Denver regional council of governments provides a framework for cooperation among the many jurisdictions that make up the metropolitan area, comprehensive regional planning has long been an elusive goal. The creation of Broomfield county to Denver's north in late 2001 added another element to the already complex governmental maze serving more than 2.5 million people in the Denver-Boulder-Greeley metropolitan area. Parks and Culture. Robert W. Speer, the first mayor elected under the strong-mayor charter of 1902, took office in 1904 and soon embarked on a city beautification campaign, which included the creation of the Civic Center, a park immediately to the west of the capitol grounds. The City and County Building opened its doors there in 1932. On the Civic Center's southern fringe, a new Denver Public Library was opened in 1956, and that building was incorporated in the 1990s into a larger structure by architects Michael Graves and Brian Klipp. East of the library the state in 1977 opened the Colorado Heritage Center, containing the Colorado Historical Society's museum. West of the library, the Denver Art Museum largely replaced its low-rise galleries in 1971 with a seven-story castlelike fortress by architects Gio Ponti and James Sudler. An addition to the museum, the Frederick C. Hamilton building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, was completed in 2006; it is a separate building that is joined with the existing museum by an glass-enclosed walkway. Speer also spruced up and added to Denver's parks, promoted the development of tree-lined parkways, and backed the creation of mountain parks. A century later Denver contained more than 4,500 acres (1,820 ha) of parkland, including City Park, the site of the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Cheesman Park, situated a mile southwest of City Park and graced by Denver's version of a Greek temple, is immediately to the west of the Denver Botanic Gardens. The latter, besides holding thousands of plants, features the Boettcher Conservatory, designed by Victor Hornbein and Edward White. Several parks along the South Platte River near downtown revitalized that area, which was once carpeted with rail tracks and scented by a sewage treatment plant. Denver also retained nearly 14,000 acres (5,700 ha) outside the city, including Red Rocks, a spectacular outdoor amphitheater framed by huge sandstone formations; Winter Park, a ski area; the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum on Lookout Mountain, site of the old scout's grave; and Genesee Park, where buffalo and elk roam. Also west of Denver, the Colorado Railroad Museum displays old engines and rail cars. Another Speer project, the City Auditorium at 14th and Champa streets, was completed in 1908 in time to host that year's Democratic National Convention. By the 21st century the auditorium was only a small part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, a multibuilding assemblage including the Boettcher Concert Hall, home of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra; the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater, venue for traveling stage shows; and the Helen Bonfils Theater, with its own resident theater company. To the southeast of the performing arts complex sits the Colorado Convention Center. Higher Education. To the southwest of the Colorado Convention Center, the 0.25-square-mile (0.65-sq-km) Auraria Campus houses Metropolitan State College, the University of Colorado at Denver, and the Community College of Denver. Other institutions of higher learning in the metropolitan area include the University of Denver in south Denver; the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado's Health Sciences Center; Regis University, a Jesuit institution, in north Denver; the Colorado School of Mines in Golden; and the University of Colorado in Boulder. An extensive community college system and a variety of proprietary educational institutions also serve the city. Communications. Unlike many places its size, Denver supports two major morning newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News, founded in 1859, and the Denver Post, founded in 1892. They compete with over a dozen broadcast television channels, including two Public Broadcasting System outlets, and dozens of radio stations, among them Public Broadcasting news and music stations. Transportation. Cut off by mountains and long distances, Denver was relatively isolated until the first railroads arrived in 1870. With the addition of other rail lines between 1870 and 1890, Denver emerged as the transportation and supply center for much of the Rocky Mountain region. Denver took to the automobile quickly, and the city has one of the highest rates of automobile ownership in the country. The 1960s brought the interstate highway system, with the north-south I-25 and the east-west I-70 intersecting at Denver. The system, however, allowed for both suburban sprawl and traffic congestion. The Regional Transportation District, responsible for operating the metropolitan area's bus network, initiated a light rail system in 1994. In a 2004 referendum voters approved an ambitious 119-mile (192-km) expansion of the rail system into a regional commuter network. The city's first municipal airport opened in 1929 and was named for Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton in 1944. By expanding it, Mayor Quigg Newton brought Denver into the jet age. In 1995 Stapleton was closed and replaced by the multibillion-dollar Denver International Airport (DIA), located on 53 square miles (137 sq km) of land 23 miles (37 km) east of Denver's business district. With a 1.5-million-square-foot (139,500-sq-meter) main terminal, DIA routinely handles more than 100,000 passengers a day. Economy. Denver is the financial, administrative, distribution, and transportation center for much of the Rocky Mountain region. Traditionally, Denver has been heavily dependent on the health of the region's extractive industries, including metal mining; coal, oil, and natural gas production; and ranching and farming. The city's economy often rose and fell with the volatile fortunes of those activities. Its smelters, important in the late 19th century, declined in the early 20th century, and its stockyards gave it cause to host the annual National Western Stock Show beginning in 1906 and continuing through the 20th century. In nearby Golden, the Coors brewery pumped out millions of gallons of beer a year. Denver's reputation as a healthy place attracted tuberculosis sufferers in the 19th and the early 20th century and assured the city a legacy of nationally known hospitals, including National Jewish Medical and Research Center. The city also enjoys the economic stability provided by large numbers of city, state, and federal employees. Many of the latter work at the Denver Federal Center, an office park, in suburban Lakewood. Denver's branch of the United States Mint, located immediately west of the City and County Building, began stamping out coins in 1909. More recently Denver has become a center for high technology industries, including aeronautics and electronics manufacturing. Tourism also is important, and Denver serves as a gateway to a large number of far-flung Colorado ski resorts. History. Dinosaur tracks visible near Red Rocks, west of Denver, indicate that prehistoric creatures roamed the region more than 70 million years ago. Prehistoric peoples slaked their thirst at the base of the Rockies more than 11,000 years ago. Two hundred years ago the Cheyenne and Arapahoe dominated the area. Seeking buffalo robes and beaver pelts, European American traders built forts along the South Platte in the 1830s. By the 1850s the fur trade was in decline, and one traveler described the area as a "howling wilderness." Early Development. Gold discoveries on the South Platte attracted town promoters, who founded Denver on Nov. 17, 1858. They named it for James W. Denver, governor of the Kansas Territory, which included much of the eastern part of Colorado at that time. Tens of thousands set out for the Rockies during the 1859 gold rush. Finding little gold in Denver, most of them returned home or went into the mountains. Denver survived as a supply, service, and transportation hub for the scattered mountain mining camps. By securing rail connections to the rest of the nation in 1870, Denver laid the foundation for explosive growth. When Colorado became a state in 1876, the city became the temporary capital, a prize made permanent in 1881. By 1900 the capitol building, dominating the city from its perch on Capitol Hill, was substantially complete and Denver, home to 133,859 people, was the nation's 25th largest city. By the early 20th century, Denver could boast of its excellent public schools and its extensive electrified tramway system. It proudly showed visitors its Capitol Hill mansions, which opulently sheltered the newly rich. Some of those houses survived into the 21st century, including the Molly Brown house, home of Titanic survivor Margaret Tobin Brown, which has become a museum, and the Boettcher mansion, which in 1959 became the Colorado governor's executive residence. Defense Industries. Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton, first elected in 1923, served, except for a one-term interruption, until 1947. He saw Denver through World War II, during which the local economy recovered from the Depression, owing to massive federal expenditures on defense factories, such as the Remington arms plant, which made munitions west of the city; the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, to the northeast, which manufactured incendiary bombs and nerve gas; air bases, such as Lowry, where bomber crews trained; and other federal installations, including Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora. After World War II Denver continued to attract defense-related industries. The city's inland location helped it secure the Atomic Energy Commission's Rocky Flats plant, a secret facility manufacturing plutonium for nuclear bombs. Both Rocky Flats, occupying 11 square miles (28 sq km) of Jefferson county land, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal were long regarded as boons to the economy. Even the May 11, 1969, fire at Rocky Flats, which threatened to release deadly plutonium into the air and cost more than $48 million to clean up, did not seem to cause Denverites much concern. Closed in the late 1980s, Rocky Flats and the more than 14 tons of plutonium it housed presented monumental cleanup challenges. More to Denver's liking were defense industries such as Martin-Marietta (later, Lockheed-Martin), which began manufacturing missiles south of the city in the mid-1950s. Redevelopment. Between 1950 and 1990 Denver's central business district lost much of its retail business to shopping malls, including the upscale Cherry Creek, a few miles southeast of the city's center, and large malls in the suburbs. Despite competition from malls and office parks such as the Denver Technological Center, 15 miles (24 km) southeast of downtown, however, the city's core flourished. Part of the staying power of Denver's downtown area is due to the razing of many of the older buildings by Denver's urban renewal authority in the 1960s, making way for a largely new downtown, a collection of skyscraper boxes more clean than interesting. By organizing Historic Denver, a group dedicated to protecting historic buildings, preservationists helped assure that some intriguing, venerable structures survived, such as the Brown Palace Hotel, the Union Station, the Daniels and Fisher Tower, and a block of old buildings on Larimer Street that was redesignated Larimer Square. The pedestrian-friendly 16th Street Mall also helped keep downtown lively. Beginning in the late 1990s the 26-block lower downtown historic district, dubbed LoDo, flowered as entrepreneurs converted warehouses and industrial buildings into lofts, galleries, restaurants, and sports bars. West of LoDo, South Platte bottomlands beckoned developers and allowed Mayor Wellington Webb to follow in Robert Speer's footsteps as a maker of parks. Along the river south of downtown, new attractions sprang up, including an amusement park. Sports palaces helped assure the city's prosperity. Mile High Stadium, a couple miles southwest of downtown, home since 1959 to the Denver Broncos, was replaced in 2001 by Invesco Field, a 76,125-seat football facility, near the old stadium, which was torn down. Northwest of the Auraria Campus, the Pepsi Center gives both the Denver Nuggets, the city's basketball team, and the Colorado Avalanche, its hockey team, a place to play. A mile (1.6 km) to the Pepsi Center's northeast, Coors Field, which opened in 1995, provides more than 50,000 seats for baseball fans to watch the National League's Colorado Rockies. The traditional design of Coors Field's facade mirrored the sensitivity of some Denverites to their city's historical roots. Reacting to the development mania that gutted large parts of downtown in the 1960s and later threatened residential neighborhoods, Denver gradually began to appreciate what remained of its past. The city council, acting on recommendations from the Denver Landmark Commission, has protected thousands of buildings and homes by granting them individual historic designation or placing them in historic districts. The oldest, Four-Mile House, southeast of the central business district, dates back to the city's 1859 origins, when stagecoach passengers refreshed themselves there before coming into town. In the downtown area Civic Center, Speer Parkway, LoDo, Larimer Square, and Ninth Street Park on the Auraria Campus have all been designated historic districts. High Technology Industries. When Mayor Webb took office in 1991, Denver was in one of its periodic economic slumps. Falling oil prices in the 1980s had hit the economy hard and had induced many residents to leave, but the city rebounded with the high technology boom of the mid- to late 1990s. Boom times led to skyrocketing housing prices and congested highways. By the start of the 21st century, although Denver continued to be a trade and service center and a nexus for oil, gas, and mining concerns, it was also home to numerous communications and other technology companies established and financed by entrepreneurs such as Philip Anschutz and cable and satellite promoters such as Bill Daniels, Bob Magness, John Malone, and Charles Ergen. After the closure of Stapleton Airport, Fitzsimons Army Hospital, and Lowry Air Force Base, thousands of acres in Denver and Aurora became available for residential, research, hospital, and recreational developments. Certain residential projects, in and around the downtown core, increased the number of residents close to their work. Some of them were thus able to avoid the congestion that sometimes turned highways into parking lots. Population: metropolitan area, 2,581,506; city, 554,636.