The Rocky Flats Lounge has been a landmark on highway 93 for more than sixty years — first as the payroll office for the brand-new Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, then as a dive frequented by bikers riding along the foothills and, for the last two decades, as the metro…
“Or even some famous Colorado brownies.” On the day that Democratic — make that self-labeled “democratic socialist” — Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced that he supports removing marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule 1 drug by the federal government, in effect leaving its regulation up to the states,…
When the University of Denver hosted the presidential debate three years ago, who was the big winner? Not Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, but DU itself, which looked great on national televsion and got a big boost for its new brand (and paid $1.6 million for that boost). And who…
Sandy Widener, co-founder of Westword and the paper’s first managing editor, was killed in a horrific car crash in December 2007 that also took her husband, John Parr, and the couple’s daughter Chase. The only survivor was then seventeen-year-old Katy. But Sandy and John also left behind quite a legacy of…
The ongoing efforts to push History Colorado into the future would make a great subject for a Ph.D. thesis someday. There’s certainly plenty of research material, including minutes of the meetings of the new board that was reduced to nine members by a law passed by the Colorado Legislature this…
KBTV Channel 9 went on the air on October 12, 1952, when few houses in Denver had televisions. But that changed quickly, and the next year the staton moved from its makeshift studio into a spanking-new headquarters at 1089 Bannock Street. OK, MAKE SURE THE SENTENCES ABOVE MATCH WHAT’S IN…
It’s the end of an era. Just over thirty years ago, Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe opened in a storefront at 2005 West 33rd Avenue. And about five minutes after that, an artist whose studio was in the then-decidedly lowbrow Lower Highland neighborhood called Westword to say that he’d just found Denver’s…
The former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant was declared cleaned up — or as close as it was going to get — ten years ago this week, more than fifty years after the facility sixteen miles upwind of Denver started producing plutonium triggers for hydrogen bombs. In 2017, 5,000 acres of…
The northeast Denver community gathered at Holly Square to celebrate the area’s rebirth at two festivals Saturday. But Terrance Roberts — the former member of the Park Hill Bloods who spearheaded the rehab of the shopping center at East 34th Avenue and Holly Street after it was firebombed in a 2008 gang…
Little free libraries — tiny houses where you can leave a book or take a book — are popping up all over town. Some efforts are modest, like the library my father installed in front of my house; others are more elaborate — history-making, even. The Design and Production team…
Do you remember the Lotus Room? So does Robert Autobee, co-author of The Lost Restaurants of Denver, who will be talking about the book with his wife, Kristen, on Monday, October 12, at the History Colorado Center. Since the couple published their history of Denver dining early this year, they’ve…
Jason Bosch’s ArgusFest has been “raising awareness since 2001,” bringing films, speakers and discussions of critical issues to Denver. But above all, films: For the past fourteen years, he’s screened films that might not otherwise be seen here, showing them in venues small and large. But now Bosch, who we named…
I’ve been obsessed with the little libraries popping up all over town for months, in places as prominent as the corner of 12th Avenue and Lincoln in front of History Colorado and as obscure as overgrown alleyways in Sunnyside. The little libraries — where people offer books for trade, for free…
Margaritas for all our friends! It looks like the Breckenridge-Wynkoop group has a deal on the Session Kitchen building at 1518 South Pearl Street, and it should make Mexican food lovers in the Platt Park neighborhood very happy. The property got its start as the first home of Izakaya Den,…
The meeting of the board of History Colorado originally scheduled for this morning was cancelled — no quorum — but that doesn’t mean boardmembers have been inactive since the Colorado Legislature approved a revised structure for the board this past spring, and Governor John Hickenlooper appointed eight members to the…
Jim Bishop will soon be king of his castle again. More than forty years ago, Bishop started building a stone castle in Wetmore, just outside of the San Isabel National Forest, adding rooms, features and height — always height. The castle, which now stands over 160 feet tall, has become…
Art is all around us, and tonight you can immerse yourself in it at the free launch party for the 303 ArtWay crowdfunding campaign at PlatteForum. The campaign will then get moving on Saturday, September 26, during the third annual Northeast Walk Fest at Holly Square, 33rd Avenue and Holly Street, featuring…
Think the wheels of justice turn slowly? Today Denver Public Schools will dedicate the Joe Shoemaker School, an elementary school that opened last month as the Hampden Heights Expeditionary School at 3333 South Havana Street, at the edge of southeast Denver. Meanwhile, a request to return nine acres of land…
In the beginning, there was the taco…and it was good. Very good. So good that a century after the first recipe for tacos appeared in an American cookbook, sixty years after the first Taco Bell rang in California, tacos are still providing plenty of culinary inspiration in this country, for…
Gambling was supposed to create a historic jackpot in Colorado. In 1990, Coloradans approved a constitutional amendment allowing “limited-stakes gaming” in Cripple Creek, Black Hawk and Central City, a proposal pushed as a historic-preservation measure designed not just to save those crumbling mining towns by allowing gambling in their old buildings, and…
Jerry Chubbuck would certainly recognize Jim Bishop’s obsession with looking up. In 1967, he purchased the Wonder View Tower, a roadside attraction that Charles W. Gregory and his partner, Myrtle LeBow, had built in 1926 outside the old railroad/ranching town of Genoa on the eastern plains, on the highest spot…
Forget Hatch chiles. It’s time to celebrate the Pueblo chile — and this is the weekend to do it, since September 5 is Pueblo Chile Day, a new event at the Colorado State Fair. “The Pueblo Chile has been a centerpiece of popular fair foods at the Colorado State Fair, making…
