Page 32 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Colorado
Denver, the capital city of Colorado
Founded 1858, as Denver City, K.T. Incorporated 1861, as Denver City, C.T. Elevation 5,130–5,690 ft (1,564–1,731 m) Population 600,158
Metro 2,754,258 (US: 21st)
Denver is the capital and largest city in the State of Colorado and is part of the string of cities east of the Rockies that make up the ‘Front Range Urban Corridor’. Denver lies across the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains, and close to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Downtown is where Cherry Creek flows into the South Platte River.
Denver City was a town built entirely due to the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush of 1858. At that time this area was part of western Kansas Territory. During the summer, several groups of gold prospectors founded rough camps which they named. There was Montana City, Auraria, and St. Charles City.
But it was clear from the Gold Rushes of California, that the money was largely to be made from anyone setting up a town, rather than mining. So, on November 22, 1858, General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas Territory, staked a claim on the bluff overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Larimer named the town site Denver City after Kansas Governor James
W. Denver, who might be impressed enough to grant the town the right to become incorporated. However, as it happened, Governor Denver had just resigned from office.
But the site had natural advantages. Larimer sold parcels of land in the town to merchants and miners. As it grew, it was a typical frontier town. The town catered to the needs and tastes of the
Denver flood, 1864, just six years after its foundation. Most rivers flowing from the Rockies are subject to flooding, but this was not known at the time because people had only just arrived in the area.
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