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The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the state of Colorado, in the United States. Denver is a consolidated city-county located in the South Platte River Valley on the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Denver downtown district is located immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River, approximately 15 miles (24 km) east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Denver is nicknamed the Mile-High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile, or 5,280 feet (1,609 m) above sea level. The 105th meridian west of Greenwich passes through Union Station, making it the reference point for the Mountain Time Zone. The city of Denver's area is much smaller than that of Colorado's second most populous city, Colorado Springs.
The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Denver was 598,707 in 2008, making it the 24th most populous U.S. city. The 10-county Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2008 population of 2,706,947 and ranked as the 21st most populous U.S. metropolitan statistical area and the 12-county Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area had an estimated 2008 population of 3,049,562 and ranked as the 16th most populous U.S. metropolitan area. It is also the second-largest city in the Mountain West after Phoenix. Denver is the largest city in the Front Range Urban Corridor, a fast growing Combined statistical area stretching across eighteen counties in two states. The population of the Front Range Urban Corridor CSA is estimated at 4,251,663. The city has the tenth-largest central business district in the United States.
When Denver was founded in 1858, the city was little more than a dusty collection of buildings on a long, grassy plain with a few contorted cottonwood and willow trees on riverbanks. As of 2006, Denver has over 200 parks, from small mini-parks all over the city to the giant 314 acre (1.3 km²) City Park. Denver also has 29 recreation centers providing places and programming for resident's recreation and relaxation.
Many of Denver's parks were acquired from state lands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This coincided with the City Beautiful movement, and legendary Denver mayor Robert Speer (1904-12 and 1916-18) set out to expand and beautify the city's parks. Reinhard Schuetze was the city's first landscape architect, and he brought his German-educated landscaping genius to Washington Park, Cheesman Park, and City Park among others. Speer used Schuetze as well as other landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Saco Rienk DeBoer to design not only parks such as Civic Center Park, but many city parkways and tree-lawns. All of this greenery was fed with South Platte River water diverted through the city ditch.
In addition to the parks within Denver itself, the city acquired land for mountain parks starting in the 1910s. Over the years, Denver has acquired, built and maintained around 14,000 acres (56 km²) of mountain parks, including Red Rocks Park, which is known for its scenery and musical history revolving around the unique Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Denver also owns the hill on which the Winter Park Resort ski area is operated in Grand County, 67 miles (110 km) west of Denver. City parks are important places for both Denverites and visitors, inciting controversy with every change. Denver continues to grow its park system with the development of many new parks along the Platte River through the city, and with Central Park and Bluff Lake Nature Center in the Stapleton neighborhood redevelopment. All of these parks are important gathering places for residents and allow what was once a dry plain to be lush, active, and green.
Since 1974, Denver and the surrounding jurisdictions have rehabilitated the urban South Platte River and its tributaries for recreational use by hikers and cyclists. The main stem of the South Platte River Greenway runs along the South Platte from Chatfield Reservoir 35 miles (56 km) into Adams County in the north. The Greenway project is recognized as one of the best urban reclamation projects in the U.S., winning, for example, the Silver Medal Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence in 2001.
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Red Rocks Amphitheatre is a rock structure in Red Rocks Park near Morrison, Colorado (west of Denver), where concerts are given in the open-air amphitheatre. There is a large, tilted, disc-shaped rock behind the stage, a huge vertical rock angled outwards from stage right, several large boulders angled outwards from stage left and a seating area for up to 9,450 people in between. The amphitheatre is owned and operated by the City and County of Denver, Colorado.
Notable recordings
Red Rocks has been a popular venue for live recordings, particularly videos due to the visual uniqueness of the setting. During the 1970s and 1980s, local folk-rocker John Denver recorded several world-televised concerts at Red Rocks. U2's 1983 concert video, Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky, became a best-selling long-form concert video and several songs became popular music videos. Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks released a 60-minute long DVD of her 1986 concert at the amphitheatre, towards the end of her Rock a Little tour.
Other Red Rocks material on CD and DVD includes Dave Matthews Band's albums Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95 and Weekend on the Rocks, The Samples live album, Live in Colorado, John Tesh's Live at Red Rocks and Worship at Red Rocks, the Incubus DVD Alive at Red Rocks, Blues Traveler's Live on the Rocks album, Steve Martin's comedy album A Wild and Crazy Guy, The Moody Blues's A Night at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and Boukman Eksperyans' album "Live At Red Rocks". Widespread Panic's DVD "The Earth Will Swallow You" features a 15 min segment on Red Rocks.
The live Neil Young album, Road Rock Vol. 1 and its accompanying DVD Red Rocks Live was filmed and recorded at Red Rocks in 2000 during the "Silver and Gold" tour. Local Colorado band Big Head Todd and the Monsters released a DVD and live album of a notable 1995 performance in 2003 capturing what has become a local annual early season tradition.
A two-volume 2003 album, Carved in Stone, features live performances by various artists at Red Rocks, including R.E.M., Ben Harper, Coldplay, The Allman Brothers Band, and Phish, with proceeds going towards a fund for preservation of the park and amphitheatre.
Insane Clown Posse released a Bootlegged In Denver' DVD from their 2003 Red Rocks performance on their Hell's Pit album in 2004.Phish front-man, Trey Anastasio, included excerpts from his 2005 performance at Red Rocks on the DVD that accompanied his album "Shine." Country music superstar Gary Allan filmed the music video for his song "Watching Airplanes" during a live sell-out concert at Red Rocks in August 2007. A portion of British rock band Oasis's rockumentary film "Lord Don't Slow Me Down" was filmed at Red Rocks. A Perfect Circle also included one live video recording of their final performance on the CD/DVD aMOTION. Insane Clown Posse came back with Twiztid, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Boondox, the Axe Murder Boyz, Grave Plott, The ROC, and Motown Rage, in May 2008 to Red Rocks in which to perform the 'first annual' Hatchet Attacks Super Show, which they released a video for later that year.
Bluff Lake Nature Center is a 123-acre (0.50 km2) wildlife refuge and environmental education center in Denver, Colorado, located along Sand Creek on the eastern edge of the former Stapleton International Airport. Bluff Lake hosts nearly 40,000 visitors each year, with the majority coming from east Denver neighborhoods and part of school-based and public programs.
Bluff Lake Nature Center offers science education programs in partnership with Denver Public Schools, Aurora Public Schools, and Adams County Public Schools. A summer Fireside Chat series is held in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy of Colorado, and week long Junior Naturalist camps are held in June, July, and August.
Bluff Lake Nature Center is a local leader in the fight against what author Richard Louv has termed a "Nature Deficit Disorder". Bluff Lake Nature Center is free and open to the public, serving a role as unplanned open space for children and families in the nearby neighborhoods. Bluff Lake Nature Center consists of a variety of native habitats including wetlands, short-grass prairie, a riparian zone and wetland woodland. Thanks to its 60 year history as an airport buffer, Bluff Lake has become an urban wildlife refuge for waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors, songbirds, deer, fox, beaver, reptiles, amphibians and other types of wildlife that visit or live at the site.
Winter Park Resort is an alpine ski resort in Winter Park, Colorado in the Rocky Mountains. Located just off U.S. Highway 40, the resort is about an hour and a half's drive from Denver, Colorado.
The mountain opened for the 1939–1940 season as Winter Park Ski Area and was owned and operated by the city and county of Denver until 2002, when Denver entered into a partnership with Intrawest ULC, a Canadian corporation headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, which has operated the resort since then. For nearly 70 years a popular way for Denver residents — many of whom have learned to ski or snowboard at Winter Park over the years — to get there was via the Ski Train, which arrived at the resort's base area though the Moffatt Tunnel. (The Ski Train was terminated by the railroad in spring 2009). It is home to one of the world's largest and oldest disabled skiing programs, the National Sports Center for the Disabled.
The resort consists of three interconnected mountain peaks — Winter Park, Mary Jane, and Vasquez Ridge — which share a common lift ticket. Mary Jane, opened in 1975, has a separate base area and is known for its moguls, tree skiing, hidden huts and generally more difficult terrain. It encompasses the above-tree line terrain of Parsenn Bowl. Vasquez Ridge, opened in 1986, offers intermediate terrain and mogul runs. In 1997, 435 acres (1.76 km2) of backcountry terrain in Vasquez Cirque were opened to skiing, although access required hiking from the top of Mary Jane; the 2006 relocation of the former Outrigger triple chairlift to the Cirque provides lift access to much of that terrain.
Since taking over operation of the resort, Intrawest has made several changes to the mountain's infrastructure, renovating the food services in the West Portal base lodge, opening new lifts in 2005 and 2006, and publicly announcing plans for a new base village to include hundreds of new condominiums, a parking structure, a "Village Pond," and a "family swim center," all accessible via a new open-air gondola to be known as "The Cabriolet." However, while this change has been great for the economic development of the town and the resort, it has also been a threat to the existing historic resort base. The historic Balcony House remains under constant threat of demolition. This historic building was designed in the Googie style of architecture, which was a popular style in the 1940s to the 1960s. This building is a standing memory to the original history of Winter Park.
In an attempt to make Winter Park into a year-round resort, Intrawest operates the lifts during the summer months for mountain biking. The Arrow chairlift also services an alpine slide in the summer, and the base area features miniature golf, a climbing wall, and other diversions. While the Winter Park area is also a popular destination for golf, there are no golf courses located at, or operated by, the resort itself.
