On Saturday, while thousands of freeloaders hopped on board the new West Line to ride light rail from downtown to Golden and back, members of the Platte Valley & Western Model Railroad club gathered in the dark basement of the shuttered Union Station and started dismantling the layout they’d initially…
The space fills with the sounds of dogs barking, horses galloping, people running, gasping for breath. Red, white and blue lights illuminate quotes on white cloth shrouding the artifacts beyond: a poster calling for Indian fighters, a pair of moccasins, a howitzer. If this were one of the seven other…
Since we broke the sad news yesterday that the two model-train layouts that have been in the basement of Union Station for decades — eight decades, in one case — will not be there when Union Station reopens in 2014, fans have been hopping on board to help find them…
The beloved model-train layouts in the basement of Union Station have reached the end of the line. Back when two developers were competing for the contract to redevelop the facility, both promised there would always be a spot for the model trains — and the clubs that ran them. And…
Civic Center is quiet this morning: the grass raked, the trash collected…and the crime scene tape down. The Denver Police Department had used it to cordone off the southeast corner of the park after after multiple shots rang out — stampeding the crowds and leaving three 4/20 celebrants with bullet…
The Sand Creek Massacre isn’t the only grim chapter in Colorado history that will mark a major anniversary in 2014. Next year is also the hundredth anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, the darkest moment in the Great Coalfield War. On April 20, 1914, a skirmish broke out between the Colorado…
The University of Denver has been meeting with members of the DU community to discuss the “mascot development” process. Doug Hirsh has been following the process with particular interest: He was the first human Denver Boone, chosen to portray the caricature that Walt Disney donated to DU to serve as…
While the University of Denver explores the role that John Evans, its founder, had to the Sand Creek Massacre, some people have moved beyond study to action. Aaron Sears, for example, has written a script for a movie he plans to direct: The Soul of Silas. The film is far…
In the late ’80s, after a Broncos Super Bowl loss, a CBS report said Denver had never been number one in anything besides air pollution. But that wasn’t true: At the time, Denver had Smiley’s, the world’s largest laundromat. And this modern marvel’s existence had been shared a few years…
Given Arapahoe County’s record, Fox reporter Jana Winter should be glad she’s only facing contempt-of-court charges, not the death penalty. As media outlets were chasing every possible tip in the days following the Aurora shootings last July, Winter came up with a real scoop: James Holmes had sent a notebook…
Even as Coors Field was filling up last Friday, fans were learning Ballpark neighborhood mainstay Snooze would no longer support the city’s May 2012 ban on camping because it hadn’t helped the homeless community. Snooze had initially supported that proposal — a stance that inspired Occupy Denver to boycott the…
As the weather heats up, so do concerns that the camping ban Denver City Council approved a year ago has not worked as envisioned. Last week, Denver Homeless Out Loud released the results of its survey of 500 homeless people on the impact of the ban, which took effect on…
Is the University of Denver’s hunt for a new mascot turning into a Boone-doggle? That’s what some alumni are wondering after attending a Thursday focus group, part of a campus-wide process to calm controversy and select a new mascot. Denver Boone, a coonskin cap-wearing caricature, was adopted as the image…
What makes Colorado Colorado? That’s what “Making Colorado,” the state’s new branding mission announced yesterday, wants to determine — and it’s set up a website where you can offer your own suggestions that will help determine the state’s new brand. This DIY approach drew the attention of the New York…
The University of Denver was founded in 1864, only five years after Denver got its start and the same year a flood threatened to wipe the tiny town off the map. But DU has always had a fighting spirit — and today, both students and alumni are fighting mad over…
It’s coming down to the wire. Everyone knows that Denver beats Portland when it comes to beer and weather — but how do the two rate as bike cities? REI recently rolled out its 2013 Cycling City Showdown, and Denver has already beaten Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis — now it…
Endless vistas of the mountains and plains? Endless pours of craft beers? Endless protests about gun-control laws? What makes Colorado Colorado? That’s what the state plans to find out with Making Colorado, an ambitious branding effort being announced today by Governor John Hickenlooper and Aaron Kennedy, Colorado’s chief marketing officer,…
The rumblings of a boycott started even before Governor John Hickenlooper signed three gun-control measures ten days ago, and they’re only going to get louder with President Barack Obama coming to Colorado on Wednesday to tout this state’s new laws as an example for the rest of the country. “I’m…
This is our thirtieth Best of Denver edition. Over the years, we’ve given at least 15,000 awards. Some of the categories — Best Mobile Hot Tub? — have disappeared, reflecting how trends come and go in a boom-and-bust-and-boom town; other honorees, such as the Winter Park Ski Train, simply reached…
The explosions outside the State Capitol yesterday startled people from downtown to Capitol Hill. But unlike so many other explosions today, these were planned. Artillery blasts marked the 151st anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass, on March 26, 1862, when Colonel Major John Chivington led members of the First…
For Governor John Hickenlooper, it was a very hard week at the end of a hard year, filled with disasters both natural and man-made — disasters Colorado is still struggling to understand. The frustrations that consumed Hickenlooper over the past twelve months came bubbling out during an interview about his…
Is Denver International Airport in the dark? The airport will be celebrating touchy-feely Earth Hour tomorrow, turning off lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 23. The black-out includes the illuminated DIA sign along Pena Boulevard, the illuminated sign marking the Jeppesen Terminal and the lights on…
