Denver, the capital of Colorado, was established by a party of prospectors on November 22, 1858, after a gold discovery at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. Town founders named the dusty crossroads for James W. Denver, Governor of Kansas Territory, of which eastern Colorado was then a part. Other gold discoveries sparked a mass migration of some 100,000 in 1859-60, leading the federal government to establish Colorado Territory in 1861.
Before the great Colorado gold rush, the Rocky Mountains offered little to attract settlers, except "hairy bank notes," the beaver pelts prized by fur trappers, traders and fashionably hatted gentlemen in Eastern America and Europe. The gold rush changed that, as the rudely dispossessed Cheyenne and Arapaho soon discovered.
The Mile High City’s aggressive leadership, spearheaded by William N. Byers, founding editor of the Rocky Mountain News, and Territorial Governor John Evans, insisted that the Indians must go. After dispossessing the natives, Denverites built a network of railroads that made their town the banking, minting, supply and processing center not only for Colorado, but for neighboring states. Between 1870 when the first railroads arrived and 1890, Denver grew from 4,759 to 106,713. In a single generation, it became the second most populous city in the West, second only to San Francisco.
Although founded as the main supply town for Rocky Mountain mining camps, Denver also emerged as a hub for high plains agriculture. Denver’s breweries, bakeries, meat packing and other food-processing plants made it the regional agricultural center, as well as a manufacturing hub for farm and ranch equipment, barbed wire, windmills, seed, feed and harnesses.
The depression of 1893 and repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act abruptly ended Denver’s first boom. Civic leaders began promoting economic diversity—growing wheat and sugar beets, manufacturing, tourism and service industries. The Denver Livestock Exchange and National Western Stock Show confirmed the city’s role as the "cow town" of the Rockies. Denver began growing again after 1900, but at a slower rate. Stockyards, brickyards, canneries, flour mills, leather and rubber goods nourished the city. Of many Denver-area breweries, only Coors has survived, becoming the nation’s third largest sudsmaker.
Regional or national headquarters of many oil and gas firms in the Mile High City fueled much of Denver’s post-World War II growth and an eruption of 40- and 50-story high-rise buildings downtown, during the 1970s. Denver’s economic base has come to include skiing and tourism, electronics, computers, aviation and the nation’s largest telecommunications center. As the regional center of a vast mountain and plain hinterland, Denver boasts more federal employees than any city besides Washington, D. C. Since the 1940s, the large federal center, augmented by state and local government jobs, has somewhat stabilized the city’s boom-and-bust cycle.
Sited on high plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, Denver has a sunny, cool, dry climate, averaging 13 inches of precipitation a year. The sun shines 300 days a year, and the usually benign climate and nearby Rocky Mountain playground have made tourism one of the Mile High City’s economic mainstays. Warm chinook winds warm the winters between snowstorms.
Visually, Denver is notable for it predominance of single-family housing and its brick buildings. Good brick clay underlies much of the area, while local lumber is soft, scarce and inferior. Even in the poorest residential neighborhoods, single-family, detached housing prevails, reflecting the Western interest in "elbow room" and a spacious, relatively flat, high plains site, where sprawling growth is unimpeded by any large body of water or geographic obstacle.
Denver’s 1970s energy boom spurred a proliferation of suburban subdivisions, shopping malls and a second office core in the suburban Denver Tech Center. Denver’s traditional dependence on non-renewable natural resources returned to haunt the city during the 1980s oil bust. When the price of crude oil dropped from $39 to $9 a barrel, Denver sank into a depression, losing population and experiencing the highest office vacancy rate in the nation.
Notable institutions include the Denver Museum of Natural History, the Denver Public Library, the Colorado History Museum, the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the U. S. Mint and major league baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer teams. Gun violence and crime, as well as smog, and traffic congestion are among the principal problems.
As one of the most isolated major cities in the United States, Denver always has been obsessed with transportation systems. Fear of being bypassed began early when railroads and later, airlines, originally avoided Denver because of the 14,000-foot-high Rocky Mountain barrier just west of town. To secure Denver’s place on national transportation maps, the city opened a new $5 billion airport in 1995. The 55-square-mile Denver International Airport is the nation’s largest in terms of area and capacity for growth, prompting boosters to call it the world’s largest.
Denver is a sprawling city in a state of long distances and mountainous obstacles. To tackle long distances and tough terrain, Coloradans have become auto-dependent. Denver has one of the highest per-capita motor vehicle ownership rates in the country—with an average of one licensed vehicle for every man, woman and child. In the 1990s, Denver built an outer ring of freeways that immediately became over-congested. Even after the Regional Transportation District began building a light-rail system, highway congestion remained the number-one complaint of many Denverites.
In 2000, the metro area reached a population of 2.1 million, three-fourths of whom live in the suburban counties—Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson. Roughly 20 percent of the core city population is Spanish-surnamed, 13 percent African-American, two percent Asian and one percent Native American. Denver has elected Hispanic (Federico Peña, 1983-91) and African-American (Wellington Webb, 1991-2001) mayors in recent years and has enjoyed relatively smooth race relations.
The Rocky Mountain metropolis boomed during the 1990s, as the eastern suburb of Aurora became Colorado’s third-largest city and the western suburb of Lakewood became the fourth-largest. Even the core City and County of Denver gained population in the 1990s for the first time since the 1970s, climbing once again beyond the 500,000 mark. Thanks to landmark districts preserving venerable business and residential areas, as well as the 1990s opening in the core South Platte River Valley of Coors Baseball Field, Elitch Gardens Amusement Park, Ocean Journey Aquarium, Pepsi Athletic Center and many new housing projects, downtown Denver is booming as well as its suburban fringe, at the dawn of the 21st century.
Howdy! Welcome to the Black American West Museum! Founded in 1971 by Paul W. Stewart, the Museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving and disseminating the contributions of Blacks in the Old West.
While famous for telling the story of Black cowboys, we are broader than this with interests in the stories of all those early Blacks who came west and performed as miners, soldiers, homesteaders, ranchers, blacksmiths, schoolteachers, lawmen, and every other profession needed to build up the West. In fact, the Museum itself is in the home of Dr. Justina Ford, Colorado's first Black woman doctor!
Our Museum is broken into many diverse exhibits such as our homestead exhibit. This exhibit is primarily dedicated to the town of Dearfield, Colorado. Dearfield was a Black pioneer town founded by O.T. Jackson in 1910 just east of Greeley, Colorado. It was a bustling town of approximately 500 residents founded on the principles of Booker T. Washington. It was successful until the 1930s when depression, drought and dust storms forced most of the residents back to the cities. In the early 1940s, the town dwindled to about a dozen full time residents and finally ended shortly thereafter. The town is now a ghost town and the Museum owns many of the city lots.
In the Cowboy exhibit, there are many items and photographs from famous and not-so-famous Black cowboys. See saddles, spurs, hats, chaps, boots and other cowboy necessities from many of these cowboys. Learn how each of these daily tools of the Black cowboy were used and valued. Did you know that 1 in 3 cowboys were Black?
In the military exhibits, you will see the story of the Buffalo Soldiers. These were the Black military units, both cavalry and infantry, and their stories which were very important to settling of West and beyond. Also, learn about the Tuskegee airmen and their heroics during World War II in their support of our winning war effort. In addition to many photographs and timelines, we have uniforms, saddles, weapons and additional tools of the soldier of the West.
When you have finished with the exhibits of the Museum, visit our hall of education and catch an old Western movie starring Herbert Jeffries, a singing Black cowboy from the 1930s. Or perhaps, you would like to learn more about Dearfield, Colorado? We have the answer in a short (30 minute) video which is both entertaining and educational. We also have many other documentaries on the Black West.
Finally, come on back upstairs to our bookstore and browse the many titles that we have on hand about the Old West and the many Blacks that helped build it. If we are not too busy, our docents can talk with you at length about any questions you might have, sign you up for a membership, or just listen to anything that might be on your mind. You see we still believe in Western hospitality!
Howdy! Welcome to the Black American West Museum! Founded in 1971 by Paul W. Stewart, the Museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving and disseminating the contributions of Blacks in the Old West. 
Our Museum is broken into many diverse exhibits such as our homestead exhibit. This exhibit is primarily dedicated to the town of Dearfield, Colorado. Dearfield was a Black pioneer town founded by O.T. Jackson in 1910 just east of Greeley, Colorado. It was a bustling town of approximately 500 residents founded on the principles of Booker T. Washington. It was successful until the 1930s when depression, drought and dust storms forced most of the residents back to the cities. In the early 1940s, the town dwindled to about a dozen full time residents and finally ended shortly thereafter. The town is now a ghost town and the Museum owns many of the city lots. 
In the military exhibits, you will see the story of the Buffalo Soldiers. These were the Black military units, both cavalry and infantry, and their stories which were very important to settling of West and beyond. Also, learn about the Tuskegee airmen and their heroics during World War II in their support of our winning war effort. In addition to many photographs and timelines, we have uniforms, saddles, weapons and additional tools of the soldier of the West. 
Finally, come on back upstairs to our bookstore and browse the many titles that we have on hand about the Old West and the many Blacks that helped build it. If we are not too busy, our docents can talk with you at length about any questions you might have, sign you up for a membership, or just listen to anything that might be on your mind. You see we still believe in Western hospitality! 