Denver, now a bustling mega-town of 600,000 residents, began a low key journey at the foot of Southern Rocky Mountains one hundred and fifty years ago. General William Larimer, one among the many brave hearts who wanted to strike fortune in Wild West, staked claim to a hill standing at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek and named it Denver City. The naming of this new settlement smacked of a speculative attempt by Larimer to get into the good books of Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. As luck would have it, Denver had already retired from office at this point but his name stuck on to the new city which gradually sprouted on this hill.
The geographic location of Denver helped it a lot to become the huge city it is now. Denver also does not have an equally big neighbor within one thousand kilometers. So, it has become the one and only distribution centre to service the Mountain States. It also stands roughly halfway between Chicago and St. Louis, two giants of Mid-west, and other mega cities of western seaboard. Thus, it has become a very important junction in trade and transportation flow within USA. This convenient location has also made it imperative for federal agencies to set up offices here for a more efficient governance and administration of large swathes of the country. In fact, Denver is only second to the national capital Washington in having federal employees in its folds.
But this is not all. Denver is located on the 105th meridian and is at a height of 1.6 kilometers above the sea level. This makes it the only mega city in the US which can provide real-time satellite uplink to six continents in the same business day. This unique characteristic of Denver saw a flood of telecommunication companies including Qwest Communications, Dish Network Corporation and Comcast setting up bases in this city.
Denver’s proximity to Rocky Mountains has always made mining and energy two important engines of growth of this city. Despite a slump in oil prices to $9 per barrel in 1986 (yes, oil really became that cheap two decades ago), the industry picked itself up and together with energy contributes significantly to the city’s economic well being. Presence of big time players in oil and energy sector as EnCana, Halliburton, Newmont Mining and Anadarko in this city proves this point beyond any doubt. It is only natural then that Denver has one of the lowest unemployment rates in entire US. It was a meager 3.8% as measured in late 2007.
Talking about Denver and not mentioning John Denver will sound blasphemous to most citizens of this city! One should not also forget the association which Bob Dylan and Judy Collins had with this city. Neal Cassady, one of the brightest icons of the beatnik era, was born and brought up on Larimer Street and that all time classic “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac has Denver as a prominent backdrop. We can't overlook beat poet Allen Ginsberg either, can we? This poet with a large fan following (even in countries as far off as India) lived for a time in a basement apartment on Grant Street.
It is not for nothing that Denver has been voted the best city for singles three times in a row. It is dotted with numerous art galleries, restaurants, bars and clubs. This city is surrounded by some of the largest breweries of the US with Coors and the New Belgium Brewing Company arranging regular tours to their breweries. Some of the restaurants also have on-site breweries, surely an added attraction not be found anywhere else in the country.