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Its skyscrapers marking the final transition between
the Great Plains and the American West, DENVER
stands at the threshold of the Rocky Mountains
. Despite being known as the " Mile High City ,"
and serving as the obvious point of arrival for travelers heading
into the mountains, it is itself uniformly flat. The majestic
peaks are clearly visible, but they only begin to rise roughly
fifteen miles west of downtown, and Denver has, during the last
century, had plenty of room to spread out.
Mineral wealth has always been
at the heart of the city's prosperity, with all the fluctuations
of fortune that this entails. Though local resources have been
progressively exhausted, Denver has managed to hang on to its
role as the most important commercial and transportation nexus
in the state. Its original "foundation" in 1858 was
by pure chance; this was the first spot where small quantities
of gold were discovered in Colorado. There was
no significant river, let alone a road, but prospectors came streaming
in, regardless of prior claims to the land - least of all those
of the Arapahoe , who had supposedly been confirmed
in their ownership of the area by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.
Various communities had their own names for the settlement; with
the judicious distribution of whiskey, one faction persuaded the
rest to agree to "Denver" in 1859. The hope was to ingratiate
themselves with the governor of the Kansas Territory, James Denver,
but it turned out he had already resigned. The newspaperman Horace
Greeley passed through in the early days, and described the place
as a "log city of 150 dwellings, not three-fourths completed
nor two-thirds inhabited, nor one-third fit to be."
There was actually very little gold in Denver itself;
the infant town swarmed briefly with disgruntled fortune-seekers,
who decamped when news came in of the massive gold strike at Central
City. Denver survived, however, prospering further with the discovery
of silver in the mountains. All sorts of shady
characters made this their home; Jefferson "Soapy" Smith,
for example, acquired his nickname here, selling bars of soap
at extortionate prices under the pretence that some contained
$100 bills. When the first railroads bypassed Denver - the death
knell for so many other communities - the citizens simply banded
together and built their own connecting spur.
These days, Denver is a welcoming and enjoyable,
though conservative city. Tourism is based on getting out into
the wide open spaces rather than on sightseeing in town, but somehow
its isolation, a good six hundred miles from any conurbation of
even vaguely similar size, gives its two-million population a
refreshing friendliness; and in a city which is used to providing
its own entertainment there always seems to be something going
on
