Eugene Elliott caught his first glimpse of the ravaged Gates Rubber Company complex three years ago. He was driving in Denver one day, and here was this huge, hulking factory, a sprawling labyrinth of brick and concrete stretching across blocks of South Broadway. The empty plant was imposing yet desolate…
For most of its life, the Gates Rubber plant on South Broadway made tires, hoses, fan belts and other industrial wonders. Since the place closed down nearly twenty years ago, though, its chief product line has been controversy. Prospective developers of the site have battled environmental contamination and the financial…
Eric Swanson is still headed to prison for an attack on another concertgoer at the 2010 Mayhem Festival. But the length of his sentence won’t be anything like the mountain of time — up to 64 years — he had been facing in the case. Acknowledging that his codefendant had…
Denver gonzo athlete Justin Simoni’s singular achievement this summer in the Tour Divide, a 2745-mile mountain bike race that crosses the Continental Divide 39 times between Canada and Mexico, is the focus of this week’s feature, “Going to Extremes.” But cycling is only one of Simoni’s multiple and oddly linked…
This week’s cover story, “Going to Extremes,” focuses on triple-threat Justin Simoni, a Denver artist and performer who also finished first last month in the single-speed division of the world’s toughest mountain bike race, the Tour Divide — a grueling odyssey on mostly unpaved trails through the Rockies from Canada…
In the stillness of a summer afternoon, the hours baking away in the clay-oven heat of southwestern New Mexico, Justin Simoni began to wonder if he was done. Done, as in kaput. Finito. Beaten. Done. This was around mile 2,600 of what was alleged to be a 2,745-mile bicycle race…
Deanne Stillman’s richly textured works of nonfiction about life and death in the Mojave Desert involve more than casual research, and consequently take some time in the writing — from eight to ten years each. Her true-crime debut, Twentynine Palms, explored the 1991 murder of two girls by a berserk…
Colorado dealers turned in 40 percent more background check requests for gun purchasers in the four days after the Aurora theater shootings than they did the previous weekend, a spike in gun sales similar to previous runs after other mass killings, including the 1999 Columbine High School attack, according to…
Donald Kueck was a Mojave Desert hermit who had a way with bobcats, snakes, ravens and squirrels. He was also paranoid, doped up and lethal — “Dr. Dolittle with an assault rifle,” as author Deanne Stillman puts it. In 2003, Kueck gunned down a deputy sheriff outside his trailer for…
Cory Gardner is on fire. More than two hundred homes and thousands of acres of forests went up in flames in his district in the past few weeks, and the freshman congressman from Colorado knows exactly who and what to blame. Not drought, not climate change, not even the bark-beetle…
In the aftershocks of the shootings at an Aurora theater that left twelve dead and dozens wounded, it’s inevitable that the tragedy would evoke comparisons to the 1999 attack on Columbine High School. Certainly, the instant online speculation about the shooter and his motives is eerily reminiscent of all the…
Back in the 1980s, when I still had in-laws working a family farm out on the eastern plains, I used to head out to visit them on U.S. 36 and pause, like many drivers did, at a wide spot in the road called Last Chance. It was a place for…
Put up or shut up. After a group of Democratic leaders staged a press conference last week to demand that Mitt Romney release more of his tax returns, ABC News asked the group if they would make public their 1040s, too. Several refused to do so — but not Aspen…
Here at the Criminal Affairs Desk, we’ve remarked before that malfeasance in Colorado Springs often takes strange twists. Not that crime waves are any more severe or more violent in El Paso County than they are in the Denver area; they’re just…different. Like the rock-wielding bandit who recently terrorized Springs…
For a lesson in living large, look no further than Peyton Manning’s new Cherry Hills Village digs, a modest 16,000-square-feet pied-à-terre, snapped up for a mere $4.57 million. But a new documentary from a Colorado couple, charting their quest to build their dream home — all 125 square feet of…
Update: In response to requests from some groups to extend the public comment period for the proposal to increase water storage at Chatfield Reservoir — a project that’s raised several environmental concerns, as detailed in the original story below — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has just announced a…
Rocky Mountain National Park officials have recognized for years that Front Range pollution — from auto exhausts, power plants, emissions from oil wells and refineries, feedlots and more — pose a threat to the health and welfare of their high-country streams, fish and plants. Now a new study from a…
Update, 2:15 pm: Since I posted the account below concerning the mysterious death of 22-year-old journalist Armando Montaño in Mexico City, his family has received new information from the Associated Press that contradicts many of the details presented in the Mexican press (particularly an article that appeared in La Cronica…
Wild horse activists managed to block the complete removal of a small but hardy herd of mustangs in northwest Colorado this week. Bureau of Land Management officials contend that severe drought conditions require roundup and removal of the West Douglas herd, for its own well-being — but opponents say chasing,…
One handy gauge for checking on the relative financial health of the world’s one-percenters can be found right here in Colorado — well, okay, the other Colorado, the one populated with champagne wishes and caviar dreams. And the latest figures for real estate transactions in the Gucci-padded wonderland known as…
After weeks without any news of her whereabouts, friends and family of Kim Remmel, a 47-year-old Arvada woman active in animal welfare causes, are appealing to the public for information that might help solve the mystery of her disappearance. Remmel was last seen on May 25 and is believed to…
Give Rex Tillerson some credit. At least the ExxonMobil CEO has avoided claiming that global warming isn’t real, the way tobacco executives used to pretend lung cancer was just some weird, wacky, luck-of-the-draw disease that had no linkage to massive consumption of their product. Tillerson just happens to think that…
