The area also features three public reservoirs as well a number of parks.
Aurora is also home to the University of Colorado Hospital’s Anschutz Medical Campus, a world-class academic health center, with state-of-the-art healthcare facilities. Today, this city leads the nation in redevelopment, with the creation of new housing and recreational and technical-business plazas in and around the former airfields. The center’s outdoor Summer Stage, with concerts, dance performances and theater productions, is a big draw. Featuring a popular and high-quality annual theater series, a museum, two art galleries, classrooms for hundreds of art education programs, this complex is an exciting addition to the community. While in the area, visit the Arvada Center. Olde Town Arvadais emerging as a popular hangout that bustles with dozens of restaurants, bars, galleries, boutiques, summer concerts, festivals and more. The Arvada Historical Society provides a tour of old downtown, including the 1926 Arvada Flour Mill, now on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, a blend of historic and modern architecture make for a suburb mindful of its small-town roots. Soon after, Denver hosted its first rodeo.ġ983: Denver’s gay and lesbian community mobilizes to elect Federico Peña, Denver’s first Latino mayor and executive ally to the community.ġ990: Denver becomes one of the first municipalities in the nation to adopt an anti-discrimination policy including gay and lesbians.ġ991: Denver voters supported the anti-discrimination policy despite opponents trying to overturn it at the ballot.ġ994: Denver businessman Tim Gill creates the Gill Foundation, an organization to advance LGBT rights through charity and education.Ģ010: The GLBT Community Center of Colorado, the producer of PrideFest, adds a second day of festivities.Ģ012: Denver’s PrideFest ranks third largest in the nation.Ģ013: Colorado adopts the Colorado Civil Union Act establishing relationship recognition for same-sex couples. Here are some moments of notice in LGBT history in Denver:ġ973: Gay Coalition of Denver works with Denver’s City Council to abolish anti-gay laws.ġ974: Denver’s first Pride celebration, a picnic in Cheesman Park.ġ975: Denver’s first official Pride Parade.ġ982: The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association is formed. Gay men and women in the previous decade had organized and established themselves as a smart, cultured and politically active community. By the 1980s, Denver had been dubbed the gay oasis of the west. More than a third of the cowboys riding the cattle drives of this era were African Americans, many of them freed slaves who migrated West after the Civil War. When prospectors discovered gold in 1858, thousands of men (and a few women) crossed the Great Plains and settled in and around Denver. First were the high plains Native Americans who followed the buffalo herds and lived throughout the Front Range.
In the last few years, Denver has jumped in popularity as a travel destination for LGBT visitors ĭenver has long been a gathering place for people of all cultures. The Mile High City has long been a hot spot of gay culture.Īs the largest city in a 600-mile radius, LGBT men and women from all over the West have flocked to Denver for decades, resulting in a well-established nightlife and numerous annual events that draw huge crowds. And from the ponderosa-wooded trails near Deckers to the rolling hills around Castle Rock to Red Rocks’ impressive outdoor amphitheater, there are plenty of opportunities to do so. Urbanism aside, many visitors to Metro Denver come here to get outside.
A lot of that old-school flavor lives on in Lower Downtown’s hip warehouse district and in the turn-of-the-century mansions of Capitol Hill.ĭenver has one of the fastest-growing metropolitan populations in the country, and its big-city amenities are increasing all the time, with acclaimed art museums, a vast performing arts complex, eight professional sports teams and plenty of palate-tempting dining options. The long-running theory among Denverites is that if the rest of the country knew about the Mile High City’s 300 or so annual days of sunshine, resolute friendliness and relative affordability, there wouldn’t be anyone left to live in other major cities.įounded at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, Denver was an 1850s Colorado boomtown for ranchers and prospectors who struck silver and gold in the Rocky Mountains just 15 miles west.