My favorite artifact on display at the new History Colorado Center is an old “Colorful Colorado” sign right by the fabulous floor map of Colorado, riddled with bullet holes and sporting colored-in lettering — vandalism, according to the highway workers who took down the sign. History, according to History Colorado…
“In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.” So said Mark Twain, and after the first historic week of the History Colorado Center, we have a quick correction: You may not be walking…
Eric Holder called it the most serious terror threat to the United States since 9/11. And the bombs that could have blown up New York’s subway system got their start in Denver beauty-supply stores, where Najibullah Zazi bought the ingredients to make homemade detonators. But that plot exploded, and Zazi’s…
Don Hunt may be the hardest-working man at the State Capitol — and that’s saying a lot as the legislature heads into its final week. The head of the Department of Transportation helped pull the plug on a Beltway Authority proposal — and now he could bury a feud that…
She wasn’t named chief of the Denver Police Department — although she was rumored to be a leading contender until Michael Hancock decided to go outside of the DPD to tap Robert White. But tonight Captain Tracie Keesee will get another honor: She’s the alumni recipient of the 2012 Outstanding…
Rock promoter Barry Fey saved Denver’s symphony in 1989 — and was honored by a plaque in Boettcher Concert Hall for his efforts. But last year, when the Colorado Symphony Orchestra hit the rocks, its leaders weren’t interested in Fey’s help, much less locating his plaque…
Here’s an idea that sounds like a definite smash: Smashburger, the homegrown chain, will introduce its first-ever SmashCart next Tuesday on the 16th Street Mall, one of the first physical signs of the extra effort that the Downtown Denver Partnership is putting into its mall vendor program. Smashburger already has…
Let’s go West, young man! The town backed by newspaper publisher Horace Greeley — the man who may, or may not, have proclaimed “Go West, young man!” — is all grown up. Grown up enough to introduce a new branding campaign for its downtown with a colorful, clownish logo and…
Does a bear shit in the woods — and outside a convention center? That question was answered when pranksters placed a pile of blue poo under “I See What You Mean,” the Lawrence Argent sculpture that’s known as the Big Blue Bear. Inspired, one critic turned her eyes to DIA’s…
The Brown Palace has hosted every U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt first visited in 1905, thirteen years after the hotel opened, except for two: Calvin Coolidge and Barack Obama. And now Obama has snubbed the Brown again, opting to stay at the JW Marriott in Cherry Creek last night…after slumming…
Boosters have put the brakes to a proposal that would have formed a state beltway authority to allegedly smooth traffic snarls, but critics charged was really designed to grease the wheels for the completion of the northwest beltway, including a toll road past Rocky Flats…
Location, location, location. For the past twenty years, I’ve lived in Denver City Council’s District 9. But if the proposed redistricting is approved by council, my house at the edge of Highland will become part of District 1, and District 9 will move east. Time — and partisan politics –…
Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work in Northern Ireland, has pulled out of the twelfth World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates that starts Monday in Chicago. “That’s what happens when you don’t hold your big Nobel events in Denver!,” jokes Dawn Engle,…
The first public hearing on the six projects vying for Regional Tourism Act funding was barely over when the state’s Economic Development Commission announced that the sign-up list for the second and — and final — hearing was already full. Who were some of the notables shut out?…
The story seemed too crazy to be true: A DIA shuttle driver conspiring to blow up New York’s subway system with bombs made from components found in Aurora beauty-supply stores? But after days of questioning in September 2009, 26-year-old Najibullah Zazi was indicted and shipped off to New York, where…
Long before Buford, the tiny Wyoming town with its own zip code, became an international sensation, it was a required road-trip stop. We’d discovered it one morning after taking a quick left at Cheyenne and heading west on Interstate 80, then realized we might need gas before Laramie. Buford, located…
After seeing the parade of suits speaking on behalf of Aurora’s application for the proposed 1,500-room Gaylord Entertainment complex to be part of the Regional Tourism Act program — ten speakers on April 10 supported the gargantuan project, and only one opposed it — several people who question the Gaylord…
For months the City of Golden met with Jefferson County and state authorities, trying to come up with a plan that would could increase and ease the flow of traffic in the metro area as it also protected the town. But those negotiations came to a halt at the very…
Terrorism hit close to home in September 2009, when Aurora resident Najibullah Zazi, an airport shuttle driver, was indicted for being part of a conspiracy to bomb the subways of New York — with homemade bombs concocted from ingredients he’d purchased at local beauty supply stores. In February 2010, he…
Sure, there are Martians living under Denver International Airport, and the New World Order has concentration camps there. Still, all the conspiracy theories about DIA don’t hold a candelabra to the flotilla of rumors floating around the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic tragedy. And we’re not just talking about the…
It’s been a big year for John Denver, even though he’s been dead since 1997. Last April, the mop-topped troubadour who was born Henry John Deutschendorf was one of the first inductees in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame; the other, Red Rocks, wasn’t available for comment, either. Last month,…
We’d just driven two hours through the dry, dry landscape when we spotted a fire on the side of the road just south of I-70. A small fire — but then, the Lower North Fork fire was once small. I dialed 911, whose dispatchers are still feeling the heat over…
