The Mile High City — America's gateway to the Rocky Mountains, where a semi-arid high-altitude capital reinvented itself around craft beer, outdoor adventure, and the world's largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Denver (715,000; metro 2.9 million) sits at exactly 5,280 feet (one mile) above sea level on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains — the city's elevation, marked by a brass plaque on the State Capitol's west steps, gives Denver more sunny days per year than Miami or Honolulu. Founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Gold Rush (1858), the city grew into a regional commercial hub and is now known for its outdoor recreation access (Rocky Mountain National Park 90 minutes away, 25+ ski resorts within 3 hours), its craft brewing scene (350+ breweries in the metro, the most per capita in the…
Denver was founded in November 1858 by gold prospectors near the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River; the original settlers were mostly men who had rushed west after reports of gold discoveries along the Front Range. The city was named after James W. Denver, the Governor of Kansas Territory, in a (futile) attempt to win the governor's support for the settlement. The construction of the transcontinental railroad bypassed Denver in 1869 — citizens responded by funding their own spur line to Cheyenne, Wyoming, connecting Denver to the transcontinental system and saving the city…