"The Queen City of the Plains " a Denver Travel Page by caffeine_induced78

As you enter Denver for the first time you will probably be surprised that the city is not how it potrays itself. Denver is not in the Rocky Mountains, Denver is not even up against the Rocky Mountains. This city of 2 million citizens is about 15 miles from the foothills on what is called the "high plains." It's a rapidly growing city that has is by far the largest city in what is known as the Rocky Mountain Empire. Towering skyscrapers surround you in the downtown area, and excellent restuarants abound. The sunshine - Denver averages more sunny days a year than both LA and Miami.

Denver City was founded at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in 1859 because of gold that was found and the inevitable promotion of the gold that was spouted by the town founders of Denver City. Across the creek was Auraria City in the area that is now the Auraria campus (where I go to school). The towns eventually merged to become simply Denver. It was a fight to become the biggest city in Colorado, and when you arrive here you might wonder as many before you have "Why is the city here at all?" It has no ports, it's a distance from the mountains, and why here rather than Golden, Boulder, or Fort Collins? In one answer - it was sheer political capital that made Denver what it is today.

A watchman lived in the tunnels underneath the State Capitol building from the day it opened until he died 30 years later. He scrounged for food, wore the same overalls and never openly spent money. He took his pay to the bank each month and exchanged it for silver dollars. When he died, searchers combed the tunnel looking for his silver, but they never found it.

Denver in the 1860s had neither pavement nor trees. There was no railroad and very little agriculture, so basic foodstuffs such as a dozen eggs cost as much as $2, the equal of $40 or $50 dollars in today's currency. Supplies were brought in from Chicago and Omaha by large teams of horses that would haul them over the Great Plains.

Building Denver International Airport, 'DIA', although it's on a relatively level site, required the moving of 110 million cubics yards of earth. That is approximately one-third the amount of earth moved to build the Panama Canal.