🇺🇸 United States · Rocky Mountains
Denver is the gateway to the Rocky Mountains and one of the American cities with the best quality of life and the most relaxed atmosphere. They call it the 'Mile High City' because it sits exactly one mile up, with the spectacular Rockies cut out against the horizon to the west. It is a young, sporty, outdoorsy city, with blue skies almost all year, one of the best beer scenes in the country and a mix of Old West past and modern, tech-driven present.
The historic heart is LoDo (Lower Downtown), with its gold-era brick buildings, the beautiful Union Station turned into a dining epicenter, and the 16th Street corridor (recently renovated). Around it, neighborhoods with personality are flourishing: artsy RiNo (River North) with its murals and breweries, bohemian Highlands, the Santa Fe Arts District. And half an hour from downtown, the Red Rocks amphitheater offers one of the most impressive concert settings in the world, carved out of red rock.
This guide covers Denver with a practical eye: what to see in the city, how to combine urban life with escapes into the Rockies, where to try the best craft beer, how to handle the altitude, how to get to Red Rocks and Rocky Mountain National Park, how to pay for transport and when to go depending on whether you are after skiing or summer in the mountains. Denver is the ideal base camp for discovering Colorado.
For centuries the area was the territory of peoples such as the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, who hunted bison on the plains at the foot of the Rockies. Denver was born all at once in 1858, when gold was found at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, setting off the Pikes Peak gold rush ('Pikes Peak or Bust'). A prospectors' camp founded that year was named Denver City in honor of James Denver, governor of the Kansas Territory. The city grew as a supply center for miners and, despite not being on the main line of the transcontinental railroad, managed to connect to it in 1870, securing its future. Silver and then a diversified economy established it as the great city of the Rockies and the capital of Colorado (a state since 1876, the 'Centennial State'). In the twentieth century Denver grew with industry, the federal government, energy and, later, technology. The construction of the enormous international airport in 1995 reinforced its role as a hub. In recent decades, the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado (2014), the craft beer boom and the appeal of the outdoor lifestyle have made Denver one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Rocky Mountain state: land of the Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho, of the ancestral ruins of Mesa Verde, forged by the gold and silver rushes, today a skiing mecca with Aspen and Vail and home to a fast-growing Denver.
Read the history of Colorado →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the gold prospectors arrived, the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains where Denver stands today were the territory of Indigenous peoples such as the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, who lived from hunting bison and moved across the region. For them, the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River was a place to pass through and camp.
Everything changed in 1858, when gold was found at that very confluence. The news set off a new gold rush, the Pikes Peak rush, which drew tens of thousands of prospectors with the cry of 'Pikes Peak or Bust!'. In November 1858 a group of speculators founded a camp they called Denver City, in honor of James W. Denver, governor of the Kansas Territory (to which the area then belonged), hoping to win his favor.
Denver initially competed with rival camps in the same area, such as Auraria, until the communities merged. The city did not arise because of its own gold — which soon ran out — but because of its strategic position as a supply and trading point for the miners heading up into the mountains in search of veins. That role as a 'service town' would be the key to its survival.
Denver's survival was in doubt in its early years. Floods, fires, conflicts with Indigenous peoples and the instability of mining all threatened the young settlement. But the most serious blow came in the late 1860s, when the transcontinental railroad, linking the east and west of the country, decided to run through Cheyenne (Wyoming), to the north, leaving Denver off the main route.
Far from giving up, Denver's leaders reacted with energy: they organized and financed the construction of a branch line, the Denver Pacific Railroad, which in 1870 connected the city to the transcontinental line at Cheyenne. That connection saved Denver and secured its future as the region's commercial and transport center.
With the railroad came growth and prosperity. Silver mining in the nearby mountains (in places like Leadville) generated great fortunes that were invested in Denver, raising mansions, hotels such as the Brown Palace (1892), theaters and commercial buildings in what is now LoDo. When Colorado became a state in 1876 — the centennial year of U.S. independence, hence its nickname the 'Centennial State' — Denver was chosen as its capital.
The silver boom ended abruptly with the financial panic of 1893, when the government stopped buying silver and prices collapsed, hitting Colorado and Denver hard. The city had to reinvent itself and diversify its economy beyond mining.
Through the twentieth century, Denver leaned on several pillars: the farming and ranching of the plains (with its famous National Western Stock Show, a big annual livestock fair), industry, and a growing role as an administrative center. The federal government installed numerous agencies and offices in Denver, making it one of the largest centers of federal employment outside Washington. The proximity of military installations and, later, the energy industry (oil and gas) and aerospace reinforced its economy.
Denver also lived through dark episodes and struggles. The Sand Creek massacre (1864), in which troops attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho, marked the tragic history of Colorado's Indigenous peoples. In the twentieth century the city was the stage for important civil rights movements, in particular the Chicano activism led by figures such as Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzales, a reflection of its significant Mexican American community.
Modern Denver transformed at a rapid pace from the late twentieth century on. One milestone was the opening, in 1995, of the new Denver International Airport (DEN), one of the largest in the world by area, which established the city as a major air hub for the interior of the country and an engine of its economy.
In parallel, downtown went through a remarkable revitalization. The historic LoDo (Lower Downtown) neighborhood, once run down, recovered with the construction of Coors Field baseball stadium (1995) and the restoration of Union Station, which reopened in 2014 as a vibrant dining and social center. Neighborhoods such as RiNo (River North) went from industrial zones to art districts full of murals, breweries and restaurants.
Two phenomena especially shaped contemporary Denver. One is craft beer: Colorado became one of the great craft beer centers of the United States, and Denver hosts the Great American Beer Festival. The other is the legalization of recreational cannabis in Colorado in 2014, a first in the country. Added to its sunny climate, its closeness to the Rocky Mountains and its outdoor culture, all of that turned Denver into one of the fastest-growing and most appealing cities in the United States in the twenty-first century, though with challenges such as the rising cost of living and pressure on housing.
Two very different revolutions helped define the identity of contemporary Denver, and both have specific dates and protagonists. The first is craft beer. In 1988 a young geologist named John Hickenlooper, who had lost his job in the oil crisis, opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company in an abandoned building in the then depressed LoDo area, one of the first brewpubs in the west of the country. The place not only thrived: it helped revitalize the whole neighborhood and lit the fuse of a beer scene that today makes Colorado one of the great craft hubs of the United States. Hickenlooper, moreover, ended up as mayor of Denver, governor of Colorado and senator. Since 1982 the city has hosted the Great American Beer Festival, the country's biggest beer competition and festival.
The second revolution came at the ballot box. In November 2012, Colorado voters approved Amendment 64, which legalized recreational cannabis use for people over 21; the world's first legal shops for recreational use opened on January 1, 2014 in Colorado, with Denver as the epicenter. The measure, a global first, transformed the city's economy and image, drew tourism and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, though it also opened debates about regulation and public health that are still going on.