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1908 Democratic National Convention

In 1908 the Democratic Party held its national convention in Denver to nominate candidates for president and vice president. The 1908 convention was the political culmination of a half-century of development in the city and the last time Denver would…

Alan Berg

Alan Berg (1934–84) was an outspoken Denver radio broadcaster in the 1970s and 1980s known for his unapologetic attacks on the far right, religious extremism, and white supremacy. At the time of his assassination by the white supremacist group The Order…

Barney Ford

Born into slavery in 1822, Barney Ford escaped to freedom and moved to Colorado in 1860. He soon became a successful businessman and an influential civic leader who pushed for Colorado statehood with suffrage for all. Ford died in Denver in 1902 and has…

Barney Ford's People's Restaurant

In 1863 the black pioneer Barney L. Ford built the People’s Restaurant at 1514 Blake Street in Denver. The success of the restaurant helped make Ford into one of the the state’s most influential black business and civic leaders. Although the building has…

Bonfils Memorial Theatre

The Bonfils Memorial Theatre on East Colfax Avenue was built by Helen Bonfils for the Denver Civic Theatre in 1953. As the first theater for live performances built in Denver in forty years, the cream-colored building staged more than 400 productions…

Brown Palace Hotel

Financed by and named after the early Denver developer Henry C. Brown, the Brown Palace Hotel opened on Broadway in 1892 in an elegant triangular building that was the tallest in the city at the time. For much of the twentieth century the hotel was owned…

Buckhorn Exchange

Located at 1000 Osage Street, just south of Lincoln Park, the Buckhorn Exchange is Denver’s oldest operating restaurant. Established by Henry H. Zietz in 1893, the restaurant has occupied the same building for more than 120 years and is known for its…

Caroline Bancroft

Caroline Bancroft (1900–85) was a prominent author, journalist, organizer, and socialite in twentieth-century Denver. Bancroft’s extensive writings on Colorado’s local history established the importance of the genre and served as an example for…

Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception

Completed in 1912, the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, on East Colfax Avenue in Denver, was the result of decades of effort on the part of the city’s early Catholic community. Sometimes called the “Pinnacled Glory of the West,” the…

Cheesman Park

One of the jewels of Denver’s park and parkway system, Cheesman Park (1601 Race St, Denver, CO 80206) sits on land that originally served as the city’s first cemetery. In 1890 the cemetery was closed, many—but not all—graves were relocated, and a park…

Church of the Holy Redeemer

Located at the southeast corner of East Twenty-Sixth Avenue and Williams Street in Denver’s Whittier neighborhood, the Church of the Holy Redeemer is a 1910 Gothic Revival building designed by the Denver architects Fisher and Fisher. The church was…

City Park

Established in 1882, City Park is Denver’s largest urban park, occupying nearly 320 acres between East Seventeenth and East Twenty-Third Avenues from York Street to Colorado Boulevard. Designed primarily by civil engineers Henry Meryweather and Walter…

Civic Center

Named a National Historic Landmark in 2012, Civic Center is a complex of parks, civic buildings, and cultural institutions stretching between the State Capitol and the City and County Building in the heart of Denver. Plans for the complex, which was…

Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche, based in Denver, is the only National Hockey League (NHL) team in Colorado, competing in the Central Division of the league’s Western Conference. Formerly the Quebec Nordiques, the team arrived in Denver in 1995 and won the…

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

In Colorado, water is a valuable and limited resource, and competition is only becoming more of a challenge. That’s why the Colorado Foundation for Water Education (CFWE), a non-advocacy nonprofit organization, works statewide to promote increased…

Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is the state agency that manages wildlife and oversees outdoor recreation in Colorado. The agency operates the state park system, administers hunting and fishing licenses, conducts research on chronic wasting disease and…

Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies arrived in Denver in 1993 and is the only professional baseball team in the Rocky Mountain West. The Rockies compete in Major League Baseball’s National League West Division. Having made the MLB playoffs three times in their short…

Croke-Patterson-Campbell Mansion

The Croke-Patterson-Campbell Mansion at 420 E. Eleventh Avenue in Denver is one of the oldest still-standing residences in the city. It was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth…

Daniels and Fisher Tower

Rising 330 feet above Sixteenth Street, the Daniels and Fisher Tower in Denver was based on St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice and opened in 1911 as a beacon drawing shoppers to the adjacent Daniels and Fisher department store. The Daniels and Fisher…

Denver

Denver is the capital of Colorado and the twenty-first largest city in the United States, sprawling over six counties and 3,497 square miles of the High Plains and the Rocky Mountain foothills. Centered at the confluence of the South Platte River and…

Denver Broncos

Denver is home to many professional sports teams, but the city and state’s major sports obsession is without question the Denver Broncos, its professional football team and three-time champions of the National Football League (NFL). The Broncos play home…

Denver Mint

Established by Congress in 1862, the Denver Mint operated for more than four decades as an assay office, determining the quality of bullion but not producing any coins. In 1895 Congress authorized the mint to produce coins and also provided for a new…

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) is the largest natural history museum between Chicago and the West Coast of the United States. Incorporated on December 6, 1900 as the Colorado Museum of Natural History, the museum was known as the Denver…

Denver Nuggets

The Denver Nuggets, Colorado’s professional basketball team, compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as part of the Northwest Division in the association’s Western Conference. While an amateur-league team named the Denver Nuggets competed in…

Denver Orphans’ Home

The Denver Orphans’ Home (DOH) was organized in 1881 to help alleviate the critical problem of supporting dependent children by offering short-term shelter to the offspring of families of limited means in crisis, as well as caring for orphans and other…

Denver Tramway Strike of 1920

The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 typified the active militancy of many labor unions during the early 1900s. The strike brought the conversation surrounding labor relations to the forefront of Denver politics and would influence the larger labor…

Denver’s Capitol Hill

The Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver is bounded by Broadway Street, Downing Street, Colfax Avenue, and Seventh Avenue. It contains the Capitol Building and many other landmarks, including the Molly Brown House. The history and development of the…

Denver’s Chinatown

For economic reasons, as well as to protect themselves from an Anglo-American culture that mostly viewed them with contempt, Denver’s Chinese residents established an ethnic enclave in the city around 1870. The neighborhood endured decades of racially…

Doud House

Located at 750 Lafayette Street in Denver’s East Seventh Avenue Historic District, the Doud House was built in 1905 and occupied by the Doud family from 1906 to 1960. It is significant for its association with Dwight and Mamie Doud Eisenhower, who were…

Dr. Florence Rena Sabin

One of the preeminent medical and scientific minds of the early twentieth century, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin (1871–1953) was a public servant devoted to improving public health. As the first woman to receive a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University…

Ellis Meredith

Standing less than five feet tall and weighing around 100 pounds, Ellis Meredith was a tiny woman, but she took large strides to improve life for the women of Colorado. The daughter of a well-known suffragette and pioneer resident of Montana, Emily R…

Emmanuel Shearith Israel Chapel

Located at what was once the corner of Tenth and Lawrence Streets in the middle of the Auraria Higher Education Center, Emmanuel Shearith Israel Chapel is the oldest surviving religious building in Denver. Built in 1876–77 as the Emmanuel Episcopal…

Five Points

Bordered roughly by the South Platte River to the northwest, Thirty-Eighth Street to the north, Downing Street to the east, Park Avenue and East Twentieth Avenue to the south, and Twentieth Street to the southwest, Five Points is a historic neighborhood…

Fort Logan National Cemetery

Fort Logan National Cemetery is located at the intersection of South Sheridan Boulevard and West Kenyon Avenue in southwest Denver. It started in 1889 as the small post cemetery at Fort Logan. The fort was closed after World War II, but in 1950 the…

Four Mile House

Named for its location four miles from the intersection of Broadway and Colfax Avenue in Denver, Four Mile House was built in 1859 and served in the 1860s as the last stage stop before the city along the Smoky Hill Trail. When railroads replaced…

Frank P. Marugg

Frank Marugg (1887–1973) was an inventor who developed the “Denver Boot,” a device that immobilizes a vehicle for ticketing purposes. Despite a lifetime of pursuits in various other industries, the boot remains the most notable achievement of Marugg’s…

Governor’s Residence at Boettcher Mansion

Located at 400 Eighth Avenue in Denver, the Governor’s Residence at the Boettcher Mansion was originally built in 1908 for the Cheesman family. In 1924 Gladys Cheesman Evans sold the Colonial Revival residence to Claude K. Boettcher, who lived there with…

Gray Goose Airways

Denver’s history is full of innovation and success associated with the emergence of air travel, but perhaps just as many ventures failed. Though Gray Goose Airways was ultimately unsuccessful, founder Jonathan Edward Caldwell was doggedly persistent in…

Gumry Hotel Explosion

On August 19, 1895, a steam boiler exploded in Denver’s Gumry Hotel, killing twenty-two people and injuring dozens. Hotel fires were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Colorado, but the Gumry explosion was the worst hotel disaster in Colorado history and…

Hannah Marie Wormington

As a pioneering woman in a field dominated by men, Hannah Marie Wormington (1914–94) carved a scholarly niche for herself on the frontiers of American archaeology. She was a larger-than-life figure whose impact went far beyond the dozens of publications…

Harry Buckwalter

Photojournalist, radio reporter, and film producer Harry Buckwalter (1867–1930) is considered Colorado’s first photojournalist. He was also one of the great technological innovators of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West, known for…

Harry Tuft

Harry Tuft (1935–) is a Denver businessman, music promoter, educator, and proprietor of the long-standing Denver Folklore Center. As one of Denver’s enterprising musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, Tuft brought the genre of folk music and its culture to…

Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell

Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell (1859–1946) was a prominent artist and author active in Denver’s social scene during the early to mid-1900s. In addition to her artistic success, she was a Denver socialite. Today, Bromwell’s legacy is her writings and artwork…

Holy Ghost Catholic Church

Located at 1900 California Street in Denver, Holy Ghost Catholic Church is known for its long tradition of ministering to downtown Denver’s poor and homeless, as well as for its Renaissance-style church building designed in 1923 by Jules Jacques Benois…

Justina Ford

Justina L. Ford (1871–1952) was a medical pioneer and Denver’s first licensed African American female doctor. Ford is best known for her obstetrics and pediatric work in Denver’s Five Points community. Patients knew Dr. Ford as “the Baby Doctor,” and it…

Justina Ford House

Built in 1890 at 2335 Arapahoe Street in Denver, the Justina Ford House served for forty years as the home and office of Colorado’s first black woman physician. In 1984 the house was moved to save it from demolition, and after renovations it opened at…

Larimer Square

Located in the heart of downtown Denver, Larimer Square refers to the 1400 block of Larimer Street, which was named for the city’s founder and served as its main street for more than three decades. By the 1890s, Sixteenth Street became the city’s top…

LoDo (Lower Downtown Denver)

Officially known as the Union Station neighborhood until The Denver Post’s Dick Kreck first referred to it as LoDo (as in Manhattan’s SoHo) in a 1983 column, Lower Downtown Denver has become a national model of how a decaying core city neighborhood can…

Mari Sandoz

Mari Sandoz (1896–1966) was a popular author in the early- to mid-twentieth century whose works of both fiction and non-fiction focused on life in the Rocky Mountain West. Sandoz’s work represents some of the most widely read literature concerning the…

Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino

Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino (1865–1936) was a newspaperwoman, candidate for political office, and lifelong suffragette in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. She played an important role in the women’s suffrage movement in Colorado and worked…

Philadelphia Toboggan Company Carousel #6

Built in 1905 for Denver’s Elitch Gardens amusement park, Philadelphia Toboggan Company Carousel #6 has operated at the Kit Carson County Fairgrounds in Burlington since 1928. It is the oldest working carousel in Colorado, and its 1909 Wurlitzer organ is…

Rita Brady Kiefer

Rita Brady Kiefer has published two full-length poetry collections—Nesting Doll, finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and Crossing Borders—and three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Face to Face (New…

Robert Cooperman

Robert Cooperman is the author of many collections of poetry, most recently, City Hat Frame Factory.  In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. Poems At the Denver Botanical…

Robert S. Roeschlaub

Robert Roeschlaub (1843–1923) was Colorado’s first officially licensed architect, working in Denver during the early settlement era. Roeschlaub played a central role in defining the city’s building code, which has affected the development of Denver’s…

Rossonian Hotel

The most prominent building at the Five Points intersection in Denver, the Rossonian Hotel opened in 1912 as the Baxter Hotel. Renamed the Rossonian in 1929, its lounge acquired a reputation as the best jazz club between the Midwest and the West Coast,…

Ruth Underhill

Ruth Underhill (1883–1984) was a prominent anthropologist in the mid- to-late twentieth century, and one of the first female anthropologists to reach the stature regularly enjoyed by male colleagues. As a professor at the University of Denver later in…

Saco Rienk DeBoer

Saco Rienk DeBoer (1883–1974) was a prolific Denver-based landscape architect and city planner in the early twentieth century. DeBoer played a significant role in the development of Denver’s built environment, particularly the city’s parks and the…

South Platte River

The South Platte River flows from its headwaters in the Mosquito Range west of South Park across Colorado’s northeastern plains. From downtown Fairplay to the Nebraska border at Julesburg, its course through Colorado is approximately 380.3 miles.
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St. Cajetan’s Catholic Church

Located at what was once the corner of Ninth and Lawrence Streets (101 Lawrence Way, Denver, CO 80204) in the Auraria Higher Education Center, St. Cajetan’s Catholic Church was built in 1926 to serve the Latino community of west Denver. The first church…

St. Luke’s Hospital

St. Luke’s Hospital was a Denver fixture for over a century, serving the community as one of several hospitals in the capitol. St. Luke’s role in training several generations of doctors and nurses garners historical significance for the building complex…

Stapleton International Airport

Stapleton International Airport opened as a small municipal airport in 1929–30 and went on to become Denver’s primary airport for sixty-five years, until it was replaced by Denver International Airport in 1995. The airport played a major role in Denver’s…

State Folk Dance

The Square Dance was adopted as the official state folk dance on March 16, 1992 by an act of the General Assembly. Square dancing is the American folk dance which traces its ancestry to the English country dance and the French ballroom dance, and which…

Telephone Building

Completed in 1929, the Telephone Building at 931 14th Street in Denver served for fifty-five years as the headquarters of Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph. Designed by architect William N. Bowman in a combination of Art Deco and Gothic Revival…

The Denver Woman’s Press Club

The Denver Woman’s Press Club is an organization for women newspaper writers and authors founded in 1898. At the time of its founding, the club demonstrated the new social and political power of women through its involvement in a range of causes,…

The First National Western Stock Show

The origins of Denver’s annual National Western Stock Show, today one of the city’s biggest tourism draws, date to 1898, a time when American cities competed for the attention of various national organizations in the hope of hosting conventions to bring…

The Hilltop Bomber Crash

In 1951, a B-29 Superfortress taking off from Lowry Air Force Base crashed in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood.  As the smoke cleared, the deadly crash illustrated the need for better safety procedures at military bases near residential areas and the…

Treat Hall

Located near the intersection of Montview Boulevard and Quebec Street on the east side of Denver, Treat Hall is a Richardsonian Romanesque academic building that served as the original home of Colorado Women’s College. Completed in 1909, the building was…

Tremont House Hotel

The Tremont House Hotel was established in the fall of 1859 near Cherry Creek in Auraria (later West Denver) and soon became one of Denver’s top hotels. In the 1880s, the hotel declined as flood-prone West Denver became home to immigrants and industry…

Union Station

Union Station, located in Lower Downtown Denver (LoDo) on Wynkoop Street between Eighteenth and Sixteenth Streets, is downtown Denver’s main transportation center. It opened in 1881 as the city’s first consolidated railroad depot, and a renovation…

Washington Park

Developed in the 1890s and early 1900s, Washington Park is a scenic recreational area occupying about 160 acres southeast of downtown Denver. Designed around a portion of City Ditch by landscape architects Reinhard Schuetze and Saco DeBoer, the park…

William Larimer, Jr.

General William Larimer, Jr. (1809–75), was a prominent nineteenth-century town promoter, prospector, and legislator in the Kansas and Colorado Territories. He is known for establishing the city of Denver. Larimer’s life serves as an example of the…

Wonderbound

Based in Denver, Wonderbound was established in 2002 and has quickly grown into the second-largest professional dance company in Colorado. Originally called Ballet Nouveau Colorado and affiliated with a Broomfield-based dance school of the same name, in…

Zion Baptist Church

Organized by former slaves on November 15, 1865, Zion Baptist Church is the oldest black congregation in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West. Since 1913, the church has occupied a large Romanesque Revival building at 933 East Ogden Street in Five Points…
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