Chapter 6: July 19, Denver

Denver was born from its broad spaces.  For decades it was the sole metropolis from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Great Plains to the East to the Tall Rockies to the West, North to Wyoming or South to New Mexico. It is where people came to rondezvous; to forget the lonely, vacant expanses of the North American wilderness to be among the company of people again.

Cowboys, merchants, bankers, artists, artisans, all races, all peoples from all lands with all creeds, all huddle together, and cling to each other in the hollow of this city; a sanctuary against the cold, arid, peopleless void of the Great American West. It is a new city without pretence or sentimentality, born to serve the needs of miners and cattlemen shortly before the civil war. It boasts no monuments to dead empires. It is a young man, striking out from home with its whole life ahead of it; a blank sheet, a fresh start.

So much of Denver is simple and unadorned. But on this blank canvas its people painted with bright colors and youthful abandon.