Denver

The American Guides Project

Railroad Stations: Union Station, 17th and Wynkoop Sts., for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry., Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R., Colorado & Southern Ry., Denver & Rio Grande Western R.R., Rock Island Lines, and Union Pacific R.R.; Moffat Depot, 2101 isth St., for Denver & Salt Lake Ry.

Bus Stations: Union Terminal, 1700 Glenarm PI., for Colorado Motorways, Greyhound Lines, and Union Pacific Stages; Bus Terminal, 501 17th St., for Burlington Trailways, Cardinal Stage Lines, Denver-Colorado Springs-Pueblo Trailways, Denver & Interurban, Denver-Salt Lake-Pacific Trailways, Rio Grande Trailways, and Santa Fe Trailways.

Airport: Municipal, 8100 E. 32nd Ave., for Continental Air Lines and United Air Lines; taxi 75¢ if arranged through air lines.

Street Order and Numbering: Broadway is the dividing line for E. and W. thoroughfares; Ellsworth Ave. for N. and S. streets.

Accommodations: 150 hotels; auto camps on main highways entering city; Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A.; also for Negroes.

Information Service: Conoco Travel Bureau, 18th St. and Glenarm PL; Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau, 1633 Court PI.; Motor Club of Colorado, 1629 Broadway; Rocky Mountain Motorists (AAA), 1509 Cheyenne PI.; Texaco Tourist Service, 210 14th St.

Radio Stations: KFEL (920 kc.), KLZ (560 kc.), KOA (830 kc.), KPOF (880 kc.), KVOD (630 kc.).

Theaters and Motion Picture Houses: Auditorium, 14th and Champa Sts., concerts, conventions, road shows, and athletic events; Elitch Gardens Theater, 4620 W. 38th Ave., summer stock; 36 motion picture houses, including one for Negroes.

Golf: Case Municipal Course, W. 49th Ave. and Tennyson St., 18 holes, greens fee 50¢, weekends and holidays 75¢; City Park, 2500 York St., 18 holes, greens fee 50¢; Overland Park, S. Santa Fe Dr. and W. Jewell Ave., 9 holes, greens fee 35¢.

Swimming: Berkeley Park, W. 46th Ave. and Tennyson St.; Curtis Park, 31st and Curtis Sts.; Washington Park, S. Marion Pkwy. and E. Virginia Ave.; all free.

Annual Events: Elks Amateur Boxing Tournament, National Western Stock Show, Jan.; Folk Festival, May; Semiprofessional Baseball Tournament, Summer Outdoor Opera, July; City Band Concerts, July-Aug.; Civic Symphony Concerts, Nov. through Apr.

DENVER (5,280 alt., 287,861 pop.), "Queen City of the Plains" the State's capital and largest community, radiates a wide influence throughout the Rocky Mountain region as a commercial, financial, and tourist center. Here a mile above the sea, on fifty-eight square miles of high plains at the junction of Cherry Creek and the South Platte, lives almost a third of all Coloradoans. Eastward, and to the north and south, stretch the tawny plains as far as the eye can see. Some twelve miles to the west abruptly rise the brown and green foothills of the Rockies: beyond them towers the snow-capped Front Range, visible on clear days from Pikes Peak on the south to Longs Peak on the north, a distance of 150 miles.

In the older section of the city, close to the creek and river, lies the wholesale district with rough brick-paved streets, faded brick buildings, and dingy rooming houses. The business and shopping district, its skyline dominated by a department store observation tower and a fifteen-story office building, is laid out at a 45-degree angle to the streets of the residential areas, no doubt because the founders wisely fitted it into the angle formed by the South Platte and Cherry Creek.

Many of the downtown thoroughfares have their distinguishing features. Larimer Street serves roughly as a dividing line between the older and newer business districts. Denver's Broadway when the old Windsor Hotel was in its glory, it is today a down-at-the-heels street of shabby brick and granite structures housing innumerable pawnshops, saloons, second-hand stores, upstairs hotels, and employment offices. Along its uneven sandstone sidewalks congregate cowmen, miners, and ranchers in from the hills and prairies, and derelicts from the four points of the compass. Just off Sixteenth Street, its faded lettering still discernible high on the facade, stands the brick structure that housed the noted Delmonico's of the West, which often served banquets at $100 a plate, with beaver-tail soup as the specialty. Northeastward along the street live Orientals, Spanish-Americans, and Negroes; jogging southwestward across Cherry Creek, Larimer Street looks down from a broad viaduct upon a maze of railroad sidings, junk yards, and the Platte before merging with West Colfax.

Along Sixteenth Street stand the large department and chain stores, smart shops, and larger motion picture houses. For a stretch of two blocks Curtis Street until recently blazed as the local Rialto and the most brightly lighted thoroughfare in the West, but has declined to a midway of small picture theaters, shooting galleries, penny arcades, soft drink and sandwich shops. Seventeenth Street, known as the Wall Street of the West, runs a short course from the Union Station to Broadway. Here, between Curtis Street and Broadway, are the large banks and brokerage firms of the "17th Street Crowd," many of whom are descended from pioneers. Along the street also are travel bureaus, bus stations, railroad ticket offices, headquarters of sightseeing companies, and a plethora of curio shops. Broadway, the principal north-south thoroughfare and the route of two U. S. highways, extends southward from lofty hotels and gleaming cocktail lounges to split the broad lawns of the Capitol and the Civic Center and become neon-lighted Automobile Row.

East of the Civic Center, in the old Capitol Hill residential section, ornate sandstone dwellings have long since been abandoned by their wealthy builders and converted into rooming and boarding houses. Their "mounting blocks" along the curbing and their cast-iron curb hitching posts in the form of jockeys have gone the way of their stables. Many of the houses have been torn down to be replaced by apartment buildings and small hotels. The better residential sections today lie in the Cherry Hills and Country Club districts, and east of City Park.

North of Capitol Hill live the majority of the city's 7,000 Negroes, employed for the most part as laborers and domestic servants. The settlement has two weekly papers, seventeen churches, and a motion picture theater. Nearby is the Spanish-American settlement, with its small stores, restaurants serving native dishes, recreational centers, newspapers, and the Teatro Mexicala, which presents Mexican-made films. Residents here hold to their Latin characteristics and colorful fiestas. Spanish is the common tongue and most shop-window signs are in that language. Many of the 15,000 inhabitants of this area leave the city during summer to work in the beet fields.

Jewish people early settled along West Colfax Avenue west of the Platte. Their kosher restaurants, poultry stores, and shops line the streets in this section, and they have their own newspapers and motion picture houses. The Jews have contributed much to the development of Denver; through their efforts the first large, free, non-sectarian tubercular hospital in the United States was established here in 1899.

The highlands north across the Platte from the business district have a large Italian population, which has retained many Old World customs, including gay feast days and the use of community ovens for the weekly baking of bread. The small well-scrubbed houses of other groups—Poles, German-Russians, and Austrians—cluster around Globeville in extreme north-central Denver, where a smelter, railroad yards, stock yards, packing plants, and pipe and clay manufactories provide employment for the majority of the residents. Like the Spanish-Americans, many of these families migrate to the beet fields in summer. The Globeville district has eight churches but no theater.

The State's transportation system pivots upon Denver. Seven major railroad lines have their terminals here; more than sixty passenger trains enter and leave the Union Station daily during summer; it has been estimated that 4,000,000 travelers pass through the station annually, while an average of thirty interstate busses roll in and out of the many terminals every twenty-four hours. Four main highways converge here, and the majority of tourists visiting the State pass through the city and usually remain a few days before scattering to the many mountain resorts.

Denver's greatest asset is its summer climate and its proximity to beautiful mountain playgrounds. With country-wide motor travel there came into existence a large number of small hotels, furnished cottages and apartments, auto camps, and sight-seeing companies with fleets of busses. This commerce from June through August constitutes one of the city's chief sources of revenue. During these months the streets are thronged with cars from every State in the Union; visitors in gay sports attire, in khaki, in overalls, throng the shopping centers and hotels, and tax to capacity the parking lots in the heart of the city. Restaurants hang out signs to welcome tourists, with the invitation: "Come in as you are." Booklets, maps, and racks of picture postcards are everywhere displayed. Shop windows are filled with Indian silver jewelry, beads and blankets, ore specimens, playtime clothes, and hunting, fishing, and camping equipment. Newcomers from the East exclaim over silver dollars given them in change for paper bills, and usually carry away several newly minted "cart wheels" as souvenirs. But vacationing and outings are not alone for tourists. With dozens of mountain resorts, lakes, trout streams, and camp grounds within a few hours' drive, Denverites pour out of the city on every summer weekend and holiday.

Denver's forty municipal parks contain almost 2,000 acres, and the city, one of the first in the United States to establish a chain of mountain parks, has twenty-five natural playgrounds, many with camping facilities; these embrace more than 121,000 acres scattered through the Front Range and adjoining mountains, all easily accessible by improved highways.

The character of the city has been influenced by the establishment of more Federal Government offices here than in any city but Washington, D. C. Denver is proud of being known as "the western Capital." Four large Federal buildings house the activities of more than sixty-four Federal units; others, chiefly of an emergency nature, are quartered in downtown office buildings. Among the more important are the national office of the Supervisor of Surveys; the regional offices of the Forest Service, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Farm Security Administration, and the Veterans Bureau; and the field offices of the Bureau of Reclamation. Denver has one of three U. S. coinage mints, and near by is an Army post, an Army hospital, and an air corps technical school.

With its dry air and its sunshine Denver continues to attract health-seekers, although in diminishing numbers, and some health institutions have been closed since the World War. The city has nine large hospitals, two of which are tax-supported. Several large sanatoriums, specializing in the treatment of respiratory diseases, have attained prominence for their laboratory experiments and clinical care—among others, the $4,000,000 Fitzsimons General Hospital established by the Federal Government in 1918.

The first settlers did not build for permanency as few expected to remain. Their houses, stores, and offices were flimsy structures, and few erected before 1870 still stand. The city's architecture records the stages of its growth. The weathered stone office buildings, churches, and clubs still standing in the business district date from the 1880's, as do the brick and sandstone houses in the once-fashionable residential sections. Massive government structures of granite and marble, neoclassic memorials, the increasing use of tile and glass brick in the business area, and the Romanesque design of public school buildings mark the trend since the World War. The better new houses, usually of brick or stucco, are in Georgian Colonial Tudor, and variations of Mediterranean design.

Since 1886 fire ordinances have restricted Denver buildings to masonry construction and moderate height, and constant rebuilding imparts a new, bright aspect to the city. 'Wide, straight, shaded streets, many parks, and rows of trim brick houses with well-tended lawns and flower gardens create a cool and spacious pattern. The thousands of oaks, maples, elms, and poplars that border residential streets and shade the parks, and all of the lilacs, snowballs, roses, bridalwreath, and shrubbery that ornament front lawns, represent an incalculable amount of patient care and labor, for the city was built on desolate hills and bluffs, with only a scattering of cottonwoods and willows along the watercourses. Denver has changed vastly since Isabella Bird, English journalist, recorded her impression of it in 1872: "I looked down where the great braggart city lay spread out, brown and treeless, upon a brown and treeless plain which seemed to nourish nothing but wormwood and Spanish bayonet. .. . I saw a great sand-storm which in a few minutes covered the city, blotting it out of sight with a dense brown cloud."

Water is and always has been a precious commodity here. The supply from the eleven great mountain reservoirs, some more than 100 miles distant, depends wholly upon snowfall; the heavier the snow on the ranges, the greater is Denver's rejoicing. Novel to many is the sight of householders lovingly sprinkling their lawns and shrubbery both mornings and evenings. No newspaper reports are scanned more attentively than the edicts of the Denver Water Board governing the hours of irrigation. Residents pay a flat rate based upon the number of outlets on their property; automobile owners pay an additional 50¢ quarterly.

No one man or group of men was solely responsible for the founding and development of Denver, which, in a sense, just "growed," like Topsy. It was not the first white settlement in Colorado. The site was and still is well away from the main overland routes of commerce. Other towns were nearer the gold and silver strikes, or were in more prosperous agricultural districts. Yet, in spite of this, Denver has thrived from the start. One after another, boom towns challenged its supremacy in the Territory and then in the State; one after another, they were outdistanced; Colorado City, Silver Cliff, and Golden were serious rivals in the race to become the State capital, but eventually Denver triumphed.

Louis Vasquez, a fur trader, built a post in the vicinity in 1832, but settlement did not begin until September, 1858, when a party from Lawrence, Kansas, who had spent the summer prospecting around Pikes Peak, were drawn north by reports that Green Russell's party of Georgians had discovered gold here along the South Platte. The Kansans built several log cabins on the eastern bank of the river at what is now West Evans Avenue, naming their settlement Montana City. The "City" was short-lived, for a number of the Lawrence men soon sought a more desirable site, joining forces with John Smith and William McGaa, two white traders living near the mouth of Cherry Creek and presumed to have influence with the Indians. This influence was important, for the local Arapaho and Cheyenne had been granted all of the surrounding territory "in perpetuity" by treaty with the Federal Government. Notwithstanding, the entrepreneurs platted the township of St. Charles on the eastern bank of Cherry Creek near its confluence with the Platte, and elected officers on September 28, 1858.

Believing there would be no great immigration to the Rocky Mountain region before spring, they set out for the Missouri River towns to advertise their paper city. This was a grievous error, for other expeditions of gold-seekers were making their way westward toward Cherry Creek and the Platte. Some of the Russell party, returning from the mountains, built cabins on the opposite bank of Cherry Creek. Smith and McGaa, apparently ready to ally themselves with each such venture, suddenly lost interest in the St. Charles project and joined the new arrivals in platting a second townsite, named Auraria for a mining town in Georgia. When word of this reached the St. Charles men on their way eastward, Charles Nichols returned in frantic haste to protect their claims. A third town company was organized with the arrival of another party of Kansans, led by General William Larimer and three Arapahoe County officials appointed by Territorial Governor James W. Denver of Kansas. Larimer's practiced eye recognized the potential value of the St. Charles site, which he and his associates proceeded to "jump," scorning the strenuous protests of Nichols. According to some historians, Nichols was threatened with violence unless he chose to acquiesce, which he reluctantly did. Later, the St. Charles promoters were compensated with shares in the new enterprise, and the Denver City Town Company was organized on November 17, 1858. Larimer shrewdly chose its name in hope of favors from Governor Denver, unaware at the time that he no longer held office.

General James W. Denver remains an almost unknown figure to the city that bears his name. Born in 1817 at Winchester, Virginia, he taught school and practiced law in Ohio, and later edited newspapers in several small Midwestern towns. After service in the Mexican War, he joined the gold rush to California, where he became a State official and a member of the U. S. House of Representatives. He later served as commissioner of Indian affairs and Governor of Kansas Territory. During the Civil War, as a brigadier general, he commanded troops from Kansas. On his death in 1892, he was buried at Wilmington, Ohio.

By the end of 1858 Denver City had some twenty cabins and Auraria twice that number, including Colorado's first saloon, established by Richens ("Uncle Dick") Wootton, one of the great frontiersman, who drove in with a wagonload of goods on Christmas Day and won the good will of the settlement by dispensing free drinks from a barrel of "Taos Lightning," a peculiarly potent whisky. A second saloon, later known as the Hotel de Dunk, soon began business, its proprietor being a minstrel named Duncan. Early the next year the log-and-mud Eldorado Hotel, the town's first, was opened by a certain Smoke and "Count" Murat, its sign a white silk flag floating from a tall pine pole. In May 1859, two stagecoaches of the Leavenworth and Pikes Peak Express, the first on regular schedule, arrived with mail, valuables, and nine passengers after a nineteen-day trip from Kansas. Among the early arrivals was Professor 0. J. Goldrick, who appeared upon the scene in plug hat, frock coat, and lemon-colored gloves. Goldrick opened the first school in Colorado, with thirteen pupils from Denver and Auraria, and organized the Denver and Auraria Reading Room Association, with one book. Religious services were first held in a cottonwood grove and in the log cabin of Smith and McGaa, but arrangements were soon made for the use of a room above a gambling hall; usually the players courteously refrained from making too much noise while services were in progress.

Exaggerated reports of gold discoveries inspired a head-long rush into the region early in 1859, which flooded the Cherry Creek settlements with excited men. The majority traveled in covered wagons, but one hardy adventurer came pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with a meager supply of flour, coffee, and sugar, having accepted a boarder en route to help defray expenses. Stores, mills, and hotels sprang up overnight. An intense rivalry existed between Denver and Auraria. Diplomatically, the Rocky Mountain News built its office on piles in the middle of Cherry Creek, the boundary between the two camps. Here, on April 23, the first edition of the News was published by William N. Byers and Thomas Gibbons, appearing half an hour in advance of the Cherry Creek Pioneer, which was immediately sold to its rival.

While officials of the townsite companies were elated at the growth of population, they had cause for worry. No one knew exactly where to look for gold, and when the insignificance of the first strikes became evident, hungry men seethed angrily about town, cursing and threatening to hang those whose glowing tales had lured them westward. The price of staples soared to fantastic heights; flour sold at $20 to $40 a hundred pounds; sugar, coffee, tobacco, and whisky commanded almost impossible prices. Hundreds of gold-seekers abandoned hope and started the long journey back to "America," spreading news of the "Pikes Peak Hoax." The first white child born in the community was named Auraria, and father and daughter were given several town lots for their "enterprise" in helping to populate the community; the mother held so poor an opinion of the gifts, however, that the family soon departed for Oregon.

Word of Gregory's famous strike on the North Fork of Clear Creek, May 6, 1859, brought immense relief to the Cherry Creek settlements, along with certain forebodings to their promoters, for it seemed that the rush to Gregory Gulch might depopulate both Denver and Auraria overnight. But not everyone could find a foothold in the "diggings," and with additional gold-hunters pouring in daily, there remained in Denver and Auraria through the winter of 1859-60 more than 1,000 persons.

In its first extra on June 11, 1859, the News published Horace Greeley's letter on the gold fields. On his way to the diggings Greeley had stopped in Denver to deliver a lecture on temperance and had found, so he said, "more brawls, more pistol shots with criminal intent in this log city of 150 dwellings, not three-fourths of them completed, nor two-thirds of them inhabited, nor one-third fit to be, than in any community of equal numbers on earth." Blake Street, the principal thoroughfare, was lined with business and gambling houses, including the Denver House, soon known as the Elephant Corral, where play went on day and night to the accompaniment of clinking glasses and a screechy orchestra.

The first city hospital was opened that year; Baltimore oysters were offered at $16 a gallon; and a stranger from Kansas, equipped with an ax for cutting buffalo chips, bought himself a buckskin bag and started for Pikes Peak to scoop up gold. The first banking firm was established by Turner and Bobbs, with interest rates on loans ranging from 10 to 25 per cent a month, depending upon the collateral security. Clark, Gruber & Company soon established a private mint, later sold to the Federal Government. Although gold coins circulated, gold dust remained the principal medium of exchange. A pinch between thumb and forefinger represented 25¢; larger amounts were weighed on small scales. Freight charges by ox or mule train from the Missouri River ranged from 10¢ to 20¢ a pound; letter postage was 25¢. Although livestock were few, a farmer whose crops had been damaged by roving cattle warned in the News that "eny kows that gits into my medders shal have tale cut off by me, Obadiah Rogers."

On April 3, 1860, Denver and Auraria were consolidated under the name of Denver City; at an election in January 1861, 1,291 votes were polled in the settlement, indicating a population of at least 6,000. For some years Denver's fortunes rose and fell with those of the gold camps. As richer surface diggings were exhausted, population dwindled. Travel across the plains was rendered hazardous by raiding parties of Indians who frequently killed and pillaged to the outskirts of the town.

An unexpected flood of usually shallow streams caused a major disaster. The bed of Cherry Creek, normally a mere trickle of water, had been laid out in lots, with buildings erected on piles driven into the sand. On the night of May 19, 1864, heavy rains resulted in a flood that cost twenty lives and great property damage. "Nature shook about us," wrote "Professor" Goldrick in a fine fury in the News. "The azure meads of Heaven were darkened as in death and the fair Diana with her starry train, though defended by the majesty of darkness all around her, and by batteries of thick clouds in front, looked down in shuddering silence dimly, as if lost in the labyrinth of wonder and amazement at the volume of the vast abyss into which all of us expected to be overwhelmed." Denver has ever retained a due respect for Cherry Creek and built no more in its channel; the disaster eclipsed the great fire of a year before that had reduced half the business section to ashes.

Preoccupied with its own urgent affairs during the Civil War, the struggling settlement was only indirectly touched by the conflict, although passions of both Northern and Southern supporters ran high. The Confederate flag was raised above a Larimer Street warehouse one April morning in 1861. Unionists angrily demanded its removal, and a compromise was arranged when bloodshed threatened; the flag was to fly until sundown and never again to be raised. Three regiments organized in Denver for the Union Army spent much of their time pursuing Indians and guarding the overland trails, participating in the Sand Creek Massacre (see Tour 8a), which caused fierce Indian uprisings that isolated Denver from the East for months. "Cheyenne scalps are getting as thick here now as toads in Egypt," reported the News on the troops' return from Sand Creek. "Everybody has got one, and is anxious to get another to send east."

Gradually the high cost of living fell. "Owing to the low price of butter, the fall of Charleston, and other causes," one enterprising merchant advertised, "I have put down the price of coal oil to $5 a gallon." In 1866 Denver's first hook and ladder was hauled across the plains, to be received by a welcoming committee. Late in 1867 the legislature, meeting at Golden, selected Denver as the permanent seat of government. The community was gradually brought into closer communication with the rest of the country. A telegraph line was strung across the plains in 1863, but service remained inadequate for several years, for buffalo herds frequently rubbed down the poles and wires were stripped away by Indians. Disappointed when the Union Pacific Railroad, pushing west from Julesburg, chose easier mountain grades through Wyoming, local promoters financed the construction of the Denver & Pacific Railroad to connect with the transcontinental system at Cheyenne; the first train puffed into Denver on June 24, 1870. The Kansas Pacific Railroad, now part of the Union Pacific System, advanced into the city from the Missouri River two months later. Farmers settled along the railroads and prospered.

"Peltry shops abound," wrote a traveler of the day, "and the sportsman, teamster, and emigrant can be completely rigged out at 50 different stores. ... At Denver people who come from the East to try the 'camp cure' now so fashionable, get their outfit of wagons, driver, horses, tents, and bedding and start for the mountains. Invalids who cannot bear the rough life in the mountains fill the town's hotels and boarding houses." Many Indians added to the harlequin appearance of Denver streets. Women were few; Isabella Bird saw but five in a day, but "there were men in every rig; hunters and trappers in buckskins; men of the Plains with belts and revolvers, in great blue cloaks, relics of the war; teamsters in leather suits; horsemen in fur coats, caps, and buffalo-hide boots; Broadway dandies in yellow kid gloves; and rich English sporting tourists, supercilious-looking."

In 1873 a band of Ute Indians, poaching on Arapaho hunting grounds to the east, encountered a party of Cheyenne, their traditional enemies. Slaying and scalping a Cheyenne warrior, the Ute hastily beat a retreat to Denver, pitching camp on the outskirts of the city. Enterprising showmen quickly persuaded the Indians to stage a war dance with the scalp, and had their handbills printed before police intervened.

Until 1880 doubt clouded Denver's future. From the time of the earliest gold strikes at Gregory Gulch, Gold Hill, California Gulch, and Buckskin Joe, much of the mineral wealth of the hills had found its way to the community, which had also profited from its trade with ranchers and farmers. But gold mining at best was a sporadic and uncertain venture, and Colorado agriculture was still in its infancy. It remained for the great silver discoveries at Leadville, Aspen, Caribou, Georgetown, and in the San Juan Mountains to give substance to the dream of early promoters who had envisaged a great metropolis at Cherry Creek and the South Platte.

The growth of Denver in the era of the great silver camps was phenomenal. Between 1880 and 1890 population increased from 35,629 to 106,713. Building progressed so rapidly that piles of structural materials blocked the streets. Large business buildings, foundries, machine shops, and two smelters were built. Manufacturing which had averaged about $5,000,000 annually between 1880 and 1885, more than tripled in 1886. The wealth that poured in from the silver districts founded banks and business enterprises, and Denver became the world's chief producer of mining machinery.

The celebrated Tabor Grand Opera House opened in 1881 with all of Denver society in attendance. A great mining and industrial exposition of Colorado products and resources was held the following year. But water was still sold as a staple commodity as late as 1881, and public hangings attracted many spectators. Lawrence Street became the fashionable shopping district in 1888, in which year the first cable cars began running on Larimer and Sixteenth Streets; at 1649 Lawrence Street stood the famed Silver Dollar Saloon, with silver dollars embedded in the tile floor.

Bonanza kings moved from the mountains to Denver and rivaled the cattle barons in building imposing brick and sandstone mansions. "The distinguishing charm of Denver architecture," wrote a visitor of the period, "is its endless variety. Everyone is ambitious to build a house unlike his neighbor, and is more desirous that it shall have some novel feature than that it shall be surpassingly beautiful." Tabor outdid his contemporaries as usual by purchasing an entire block on Capitol Hill and erecting an "Italian villa," encompassed by a magnificent lawn embellished with cast-iron dogs and deer.

Gaiety during this sparkling period centered at the Windsor Hotel, where the Colorado senate, awaiting the building of a capitol, occasionally held its sessions. The "Windsor Hotel Crowd" was a term broadly applied to the free-spending throng that dashed about the city in costly carriages and fancy buggies, creating the traffic hazard of their day. Gold, silver, smelter, cattle, and railroad kings, the politically and socially ambitious—all were inviting targets for Eugene Field, who, from his desk at the Tribune, recorded their doings with a caustic pen.

Political progress lagged somewhat behind the city's development in other fields. Although Denver was the State capital, its citizens grumbled at finding themselves under a form of State administration imposed by the legislature—a situation popularly ascribed to the desire of rich mine and railroad owners to retain control of the capital city. The governor had appointive power over the Public Works and the Fire and Police Boards. These bureaus, free of local control, assumed great authority, even to the issuance of public improvement bonds on their own responsibility. Constant agitation for "home rule" finally succeeded in 1902 when a constitutional amendment gave cities of 2,000 population or more the right to manage their own affairs.

The prosperity of the 1880's proved sufficient to carry Denver through the dark years of the early 1890's, when a world panic added its gloom to the crash of the silver markets. The great mining camps, with the exception of Cripple Creek, were in distress, and hundreds of families crowded into Denver for relief. By 1895, however, the city had sufficient optimism to celebrate the "end of the depression," and in October of that year staged an elaborate carnival, the Festival of Mountain and Plain, patterned in part on the Mardi Gras at New Orleans and continued annually until 1911. For one week the city gave itself up to unrestrained celebration and merriment, with balls, parades, and street dancing.

The growth of the city since 1900 has been steady. Denver County was created in 1901 from parts of Adams and Arapahoe Counties, and the city and county were consolidated in 1902. Robert W. Speer, the first mayor under the home rule amendment, instituted a broad program of municipal improvements. New streets and boulevards were laid out with an eye to beauty as well as utility; steel and concrete viaducts were constructed across the Platte and the railroad yards; the frequently flooded channel of Cherry Creek was walled and lined with landscaped drives; the park system was greatly improved and extended with the acquisition of land in Jefferson County, the beginning of Denver's mountain parks system, now the second largest in the country. Denver experimented briefly with the commission form of government in 1913, but found it unsatisfactory and returned Speer to office under a new charter granting the mayor unusually broad powers.

In July 1907, the Denver Juvenile Court, perhaps the best known of the city's institutions, was established with Benjamin Barr Lindsey as judge. While not the first of its kind in the country, the methods of this pioneering court attracted wide notice, and Judge Lindsey did more perhaps than any other individual in directing the world's attention to the problem of juvenile delinquency, insisting that most errant youths were guilty only of mistakes resulting from environment. Although highly praised, the court also had its enemies who charged that its leniency encouraged youthful criminals. In 1927 Judge Lindsey failed to be re-elected to office and is now (1940) a superior court judge in Los Angeles, California. But the juvenile court continues its work, and Denver continues to be identified in the minds of thousands as the home of Judge Lindsey.

Relations between employers and employees in Denver have seldom been attended with violence, but an exception occurred during the depression and general unrest that followed the World War. Clashes in 1920 between striking employees of the tramway company and strikebreakers from other cities resulted in nine deaths and much property damage. Federal troops from Fort Logan were called in to restore order. The tramway employees' union failed to win its demand for higher wages.

An ambitious school building program was initiated in 1920 and complemented other civic improvements; by 1938 thirty-one new school-houses had been constructed and seventeen additions made to older buildings. Denver's public school system consists of sixty-one elementary schools, ten junior high schools, and five senior high schools. The Emily Griffith Opportunity School, established in 1916, has had a wide influence in other communities.

Completion of the Moffat Tunnel in 1928 gave Denver a direct short route to the Pacific Coast and opened up undeveloped trade territory; that year natural gas was piped into the city from the Texas fields, 400 miles to the south. In 1939, $3,500,000 was appropriated by the Federal Government for improvement of Lowry Field, established in 1937 as a technical school of the U. S. Army Air Corps; the field with its bombing range occupies almost 65,000 acres. In the same year two city markets were established; served by five railroads, they are among the largest west of the Mississippi River. Rapid transportation has ended Denver's comparative isolation. In 1860 it took stagecoaches nineteen days to travel the distance from the Missouri River to the mountains. The steam engine reduced the time considerably. Today (1940) Diesel-powered locomotives haul streamlined trains between Chicago and Denver, more than 1,000 miles, in little more than fifteen hours.

A glance backward reveals that the industrial phase of Denver's development ended with the decline of the silver camps, symbolized by the closing of the Omaha-Grant Smelter after a strike in 1903. Subsequent growth has been largely along commercial and financial lines, although a number of local plants manufacture mining machinery, metal products, office supplies, household articles, furniture, tires and rubber goods, brick and tile, and tents and awnings. The Denver Union Stockyards, one of the more important in the country, supplies several large local meat-packing plants. Products of local greenhouses reach wide markets; some 20,000,000 carnations, it is estimated, are grown annually in the vicinity, some being shipped as far as the London market.

Denver is predominantly "a white collar city"—a commercial, financial, political, and tourist center, with increasing interest in the amenities of life. The city, among the first in the country to institute an annual Music Week, has a Civic Symphony Orchestra, a Cathedral choir, and many active musical groups. Concerts are given during the winter in the Municipal Auditorium, and outdoor operas and daily band concerts are heard during the summer in the city parks. In the Elitch Gardens Theater, Denver has one of the country's important summer theaters; here for a half century the latest plays have been presented with talented casts of stage and screen stars. The city is justly proud of the Denver Art Museum and Chappell House, with their large permanent exhibitions of the works of American and foreign artists, and their frequent showing of distinguished traveling exhibits.