Denver Urbanism: The birth of Denver

Next time you’re in LoDo, go to the corner of 15th and Larimer, look around, and visualize if everything manmade you see was gone – as in nothing but rolling prairie as far as you can see to the north, east and south, and to the west, only more prairie plus Cherry Creek and the South Platte, with the foothills and the Rockies rising up off on the horizon.

In your mind’s eye, Cherry Creek should not be channelized into the concrete-walled, bike-friendly corridor that it is today. It should be a meandering ribbon of water dotted with an occasional chokecherry tree, flowing towards its rendezvous with the South Platte River, a shallow, sprawling waterway lined with cottonwoods following a serpentine path across the plains.

What you’re envisioning is what you would have viewed had you been standing on that spot 155 years ago.

By the fall of 1858, rumors were rampant that gold could be found in the region near Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. Several “town companies” were formed by real estate speculators to take advantage of the thousands of gold rush prospectors flocking to the area. Within a few days of each other, three towns were founded:

On November 1, 1858, “Auraria City” was established east of the Platte and south of Cherry Creek. The first permanent structure in Auraria City, the Russell-Smith cabin, was located at the northeast corner of 11th and Wewatta – today that would be approximately the location of the East entrance of the Pepsi Center. Auraria City was home to the first permanent business, school, and church and is considered to be the first platted development at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte.

Next, “Denver City” was established on November 17, 1858, when General William Larimer waded across Cherry Creek from Auraria City and claimed the land east of the Platte and north of Cherry Creek (jumping the claim previously held by the St. Charles Town Company – but that’s a whole other story). According to his son’s memoirs, they “camped near where Blake Street crosses Cherry Creek. Right back of our camp toward the Platte was a grove of a few acres of young cottonwood trees. It was in that grove that I, myself, cut logs with which to build the first cabin on the town-site of the City of Denver. Its place was made a corner lot, and Samuel Curtis, from whom Curtis Street takes its name, and myself, staked off the four corners of what is now the intersection of Fifteenth and Larimer Streets.” General Larimer’s cabin was located where Tom’s Urban 24 Diner is today.

Finally, the third was the “Town of Highland,” also founded by General Larimer. It existed mostly on paper, with only a few modest structures inhabiting its platted grid of streets on the western bluff overlooking the South Platte. Today, we call this area Lower Highland, or “LoHi” for short.

On December 19, 1859, the residents of Auraria City, Denver City, and Highland voted to consolidate into a single municipality which became known as just “Denver.” The rest, as they say, is history.

So, next time you’re at 15th and Larimer, look around and think about this: You are standing at the very spot where, 155 years ago on a November morning, two young men pounded four stakes into the prairie a few hundred feet uphill from the confluence of two unexceptional bodies of water in a desolate place 600 miles from the closest civilization, and demarcated an intersection that would become the center of a town that would grow up to become a thriving metropolis.

As former Denver mayor Federico Peña once said, let’s “imagine a great city.” What great things have you imagined lately?