The Mile High City, capital of Colorado, began as a settlement of gold seekers, many of them unsuccessful. In its early years, Denver almost lost out to several booming mountain mining centers in becoming the state’s major city. In 1858, the community consisted of some 60 raffish cabins, plus Colorado's first saloon. With the onset of the silver rush in the 1870s, Denver came into its own. By 1890, the population had topped 100,000. Nourished by the wealth that poured in from the rich mines in the Rockies, Denver rapidly became Colorado’s economic and cultural center. It boomed again after World War II and in the 1990s; there were a few financial busts along the way as well.

Today, with the Great Plains sweeping away to the east, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains immediately to the west, and a dry, mild climate, Denver is a growing city with 2.5 million people in the metropolitan area. A building boom in the 1990s resulted in a new airport, a downtown baseball park surrounded by a lively nightlife district dubbed LoDo (“lower downtown”), new football and basketball/hockey stadiums, and a redeveloped river valley just west of downtown with an aquarium, amusement park, and shopping district. Once economically hitched to the ebb and flow of the market for Colorado’s natural resources, Denver now boasts one of the most diverse economies in the United States and is entrenched as a hub for the cable and telecom industries.

Parks have long been a point of civic pride in Denver, and the Denver Mountain Park System is a unique land-management arrangement in the Rocky Mountain foothills (beyond the city limits). It covers 13,448 acres, scattered over 380 square miles. The chain begins 15 miles west of the city at Red Rocks Park (the site of a renowned musical venue) and extends to Summit Lake (perched 12,740 feet above sea level), 60 miles to the west.

Suburbs Boulder, Central City, Englewood, Evergreen, Golden, Idaho Springs, Lakewood