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A Confluence of Cultures: An Introduction to the Community Section

Added by yongli on 09/13/2017 - 15:27, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
One popular vision of Colorado presents a region of open spaces where a lone man rides into the setting sun. He is strong, silent, and through individual effort manages to save the girl, bring in the cattle, and haul the “bad guys” off to jail, all before the credits roll. This is the individualist...

Alan Berney Fisher

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 08:18, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 08:19
Alan Berney Fisher (1905–78), the son of architect William E. Fisher, was an important modernist architect in twentieth-century Denver . Alan received early training in his father’s office before finishing his education at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

Bison

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/19/2022 - 09:57, last changed on 11/21/2022 - 09:26
The American Plains Bison ( Bison bison ) are large mammals in the Bovidae family, recognizable for their large head, shaggy coats, pronounced hump, and close association with the American West. Bison are commonly and incorrectly referred to as "buffalo," which are Asian and African animals. North...

Bison Reintroduction

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 08:10, last changed on 02/19/2023 - 17:36
Conservation efforts and reintroduction of the American bison ( Bison bison ) in Colorado began in Denver during the early twentieth century. By that time, the bison population had declined precipitously since the mid-nineteenth century because of overhunting and the development of cities,...

Chauncey Billups

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 16:30, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
Chauncey Billups (1976–) is a retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player who played for seven teams, including the Denver Nuggets , before he retired in 2014. A Colorado native, Billups was a star player at the University of Colorado–Boulder before he was drafted into the NBA, where he...

Cheesman Park

Added by yongli on 05/19/2017 - 15:45, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
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 designed by Denver’s first landscape architect...

Clara Brown

Added by yongli on 08/20/2019 - 14:48, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 12:41
Clara Brown (c. 1803–85) was an ex-slave who became a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and humanitarian in Denver and Central City . She is said to be the first African American woman to have traveled West during the Colorado Gold Rush . While in Central City, she established Gilpin County ’s first...

Colorado Gold Rush

Added by yongli on 05/06/2016 - 14:50, last changed on 11/29/2022 - 22:42
The discovery of gold near present-day Denver in 1858–59 drew thousands of people to present-day Colorado, prompting the political organization of first a US territory and later a state. Many current cities and towns, including Denver , Boulder , Black Hawk , Breckenridge , and Central City , were...

Colorado in World War I

Added by yongli on 09/13/2017 - 14:17, last changed on 08/27/2022 - 08:12
As Europe stumbled into war in late July and early August 1914, Coloradans viewed the conflict with mixed emotions. Some favored the English, French, Italians, Russians, and their allies. Others preferred the Germans and Austrians and their friends. The divisions were predictable. The 1910 federal...

Colorado State Capitol

Added by yongli on 05/18/2022 - 13:35, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 09:53
Colorado’s iconic, gold-domed Capitol looks out over the city of Denver from atop Brown’s Bluff, exactly one mile above sea level. Built between 1886 and 1908, the Capitol’s exterior remains largely original, but the interior has been subject to modernization and modification. The Capitol is part...

Colorado: An Overview

Added by yongli on 06/19/2018 - 12:08, last changed on 03/23/2023 - 21:41
Colorado, “the Centennial State,” was the thirty-eighth state to enter the Union on August 1, 1876. Its diverse geography encompasses 104,094 square miles of the American West and includes swathes of the Great Plains , southern Rocky Mountains , and the Colorado Plateau. Colorado has an average...

Denver

Added by yongli on 08/03/2016 - 15:33, last changed on 01/26/2023 - 07:42
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 Cherry Creek , the city and county of Denver...

Denver City and County Building

Added by yongli on 10/11/2021 - 16:59, last changed on 10/11/2021 - 16:59
Facing the State Capitol Building and completing the dominant east-west axis for Civic Center , Denver ’s City and County Building (300 W. Colfax Avenue) is the grandest monument of Mayor Robert Speer ’s City Beautiful efforts. The elegant neoclassical building houses the mayor, city council, many...

Denver International Airport

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 16:36, last changed on 09/03/2022 - 11:34
Located on a 52.4-square-mile site 25 miles northeast of the city, Denver International Airport (DIA) is the largest airport in North America by land area and the second-largest in the world. This vast airport with a spectacular tented terminal makes Denver one of the nation’s top air hubs. Since...

Denver Ordnance Plant

Added by yongli on 04/27/2017 - 11:21, last changed on 10/07/2019 - 12:12
The Denver Ordnance Plant in Lakewood produced ammunition during World War II . The plant was the largest federal project in Colorado history before its conversion into the Federal Center , which today houses dozens of government agencies. Beginnings The federal government announced plans for a...

Denver Special Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 11:05, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 12:40
The Denver Special Agency was established to provide goods and services to the Ute Indians visiting the plains of Colorado between 1871 and 1875. The agency served Utes who were accustomed to collecting supplies from Denver’s Middle Park Agency during the 1860s but had been reassigned to a...

Denver Tramway Strike of 1920

Added by yongli on 08/11/2016 - 13:15, last changed on 02/14/2020 - 15:25
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 landscape for decades to come. Today the strike is...

Denver, Laramie, & Northwestern Railroad

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 12:15, last changed on 11/11/2019 - 10:52
The Denver, Laramie, & Northwestern Railroad Company (DL&NW) was a small firm that planned to link Denver and Seattle by rail in the early twentieth century. The company’s history serves as an example of the pitfalls of running a small railroad company in the western United States at a time...

Denver’s Chinatown

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 11:27, last changed on 08/27/2022 - 08:16
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 motivated violence and other forms of abuse,...

Diana DeGette

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 15:03, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 06:42
Diana DeGette (1957– ) is a lawyer and politician who has represented Colorado’s First Congressional District —the city of Denver —in the US House of Representatives since 1997. A member of the Democratic Party , DeGette is known for her ardent support of reproductive and civil rights,...

Early Irrigation in Denver

Added by yongli on 08/11/2016 - 15:16, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
Like most places in the arid American West, Denver could not possibly sustain itself without water from irrigation systems. While easy to overlook, disputes over water rights began with the onset of irrigation and persist to the present day. Today, though most of Denver’s original canals have been...

Edwin Carter

Added by yongli on 01/08/2019 - 11:49, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 09:00
Edwin Carter (1830–1900) was a prospector turned naturalist whose Colorado wildlife collection became the founding exhibit of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). Originally from New York, Carter prospected in the Rocky Mountains during the 1860s, but he quickly gave up mining to collect...

Four Mile House

Added by yongli on 10/24/2016 - 15:41, last changed on 08/14/2022 - 20:06
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 stagecoaches in the 1870s, the property became a...

Frank P. Marugg

Added by yongli on 08/31/2016 - 11:28, last changed on 11/07/2019 - 12:26
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 professional career. Still, his life story...

Great Fire of 1863

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:35, last changed on 01/30/2021 - 09:42
In the early morning hours of April 19, 1863, a fire raged through Denver , reducing much of the town’s business district to ash. As in most frontier towns of the American West, fire had been a concern for Denver citizens since the town’s founding in 1858, because flammable structures and almost...

Harry Tuft

Added by yongli on 03/31/2017 - 14:51, last changed on 10/08/2019 - 12:40
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 Denver and was responsible for some of Red...

Hose Company No. 1

Added by yongli on 06/21/2018 - 11:45, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 08:45
One of Denver ’s earliest firehouses, the Hose Company No. 1 building was built in the 1880s and has since served as a print shop, welding shop, and storage facility. It will soon reopen as a restaurant for a new hotel. The preservation of Hose Company No. 1 is an example of Colorado’s dedication...

Immigration to Denver, 1920–Present

Added by yongli on 02/08/2021 - 15:57, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 22:40
Beginning in the 1920s, immigration to Denver underwent several significant changes owing to war, economic depression, and evolving civil rights legislation and related social tensions. Movements of people due to World War II , Japanese internment, changing agricultural landscapes, the Civil Rights...

John Elway

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 11:21, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
John Elway (1960–) is a former National Football League quarterback and general manager of the Denver Broncos . Elway won two Super Bowls as a Broncos player (1997 and 1998) and a third (2015) as the team’s general manager. As perhaps the most popular and most accomplished player in Broncos history...

John Hickenlooper

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 17:15, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 08:47
John Wright Hickenlooper II (1952– ) is a Colorado businessman and politician who served as mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and forty-third governor of the state from 2011 to 2019. In 2020 Hickenlooper was elected to the US Senate. In 1988 he founded Wynkoop Brewing Company , Denver’s first...

Max Goldberg

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 16:08, last changed on 11/04/2019 - 11:41
Max Goldberg (1911–72) was a pioneer of early television broadcasting and a television personality in the 1950s and 1960s. Goldberg worked to promote the growth of television in Denver , and his weekly talk show On the Spot set the stage for television’s early success in the local market. Today,...

Michael Hancock

Added by yongli on 07/08/2020 - 15:56, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
Michael Hancock (1969– ) is the forty-fifth mayor of Denver , elected in 2011. Currently in his third term, Hancock succeeded fellow Democrat John Hickenlooper and interim mayor Guillermo Vidal. Widely seen as a pro-growth mayor, Hancock is credited with boosting the city’s economy by investing in...

Middle Park Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 12:09, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 14:40
The Middle Park Agency was established in 1862 for the Grand River, Uinta , and Yampa Utes . One of many federal Indian agencies established in Colorado during the 1860s, the Middle Park Agency mostly operated from Denver . After the Treaty of 1868 established a reservation for the Utes west of the...

Panic of 1893

Added by yongli on 02/16/2021 - 14:16, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 13:43
The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to the abrupt collapse of the silver industry...

Rita Brady Kiefer

Added by yongli on 12/12/2018 - 16:26, last changed on 02/13/2019 - 13:41
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 York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Hunger...

Riverside Cemetery

Added by yongli on 10/16/2020 - 11:43, last changed on 11/24/2022 - 04:44
Riverside Cemetery was established along the South Platte River in 1876, making it the oldest surviving cemetery in Denver . It is the final resting place for many prominent early Coloradans, including John Evans , Augusta Tabor , Miguel Otero , and Barney Ford . The seventy-seven-acre cemetery was...

Robert Cooperman

Added by admin on 09/26/2018 - 08:24, last changed on 02/13/2019 - 10:47
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 Gardens Beth and I have come early to view the on-loan Calders: whimsical bolted metal...

Robert S. Roeschlaub

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 15:04, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 11:42
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 built environment through the present. Today,...

Robert W. Speer

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 16:00, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 07:47
Robert Walter Speer (1855–1918) served as mayor of Denver for two terms, from 1904 to 1912, then was reelected in 1916, serving another two years as mayor before passing away in 1918 during the Spanish influenza pandemic. Speer is remembered primarily for implementing the City Beautiful plan that...

Sadie Likens

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 15:16, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:09
Sadie Likens (c. 1840–1920) was a prominent officer of the court in Denver ’s formative period, served as Colorado’s first prison matron, and was also known for her charitable work on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other women’s organizations. Before losing her job as prison...

Sakura Square

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 10:03, last changed on 03/09/2023 - 13:42
Located in the historic heart of Denver ’s Japanese community, Sakura Square is bounded by Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets and Larimer and Lawrence Streets in the Lower Downtown district, or LoDo . The square, named for the Japanese word for “cherry blossom,” was built in the early 1970s as part...

Sixteenth Street (Denver)

Added by yongli on 05/01/2020 - 15:16, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Sixteenth Street has been Denver ’s main street for shopping, commerce, and celebrations since the late nineteenth century. Starting from Broadway just north of Civic Center , it stretches about 1.75 miles northwest to Tejon Street in Highland. To help revive downtown commerce and relieve...

Ski Industry

Added by yongli on 09/13/2017 - 14:40, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Colorado’s ski industry anchors the state’s thriving tourist economy. Built primarily on national forest lands, the state’s numerous ski resorts attract upwards of 12 million visitors annually, generating billions in revenue. Introduced to the state in the late nineteenth century, downhill skiing’s...

South Platte Flood of 1965

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 13:48, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
The South Platte River flood of June 16, 1965 was one of the worst natural disasters in Denver ’s history. It was part of a statewide flooding event that claimed a total of twenty-four lives across the Arkansas and South Platte River basins. The flooding in Denver caused extreme damage but resulted...

St. Luke’s Hospital

Added by yongli on 10/06/2016 - 16:52, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 11:44
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. Today, only one of the hospital’s buildings...

The Denver Woman’s Press Club

Added by yongli on 06/21/2016 - 14:53, last changed on 03/19/2022 - 08:11
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, including the women’s suffrage movement in the early...

Tremont House Hotel

Added by yongli on 05/05/2017 - 12:04, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
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 while wealthy residents moved to new...

Union Station

Added by yongli on 02/22/2017 - 09:58, last changed on 01/19/2023 - 12:39
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 completed in 2014 reinvented the station as a...

Western Federation of Miners

Added by yongli on 01/21/2021 - 15:17, last changed on 01/04/2023 - 04:38
Founded in 1893, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was one of the largest and most active labor unions in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West. The union was involved in some of the most important labor disputes in Colorado and American history, including the 1894...
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