Good morning, it's Friday, May 18, 2018. On this date 150 years ago, on a patch of Colorado prairie, fully one-fourth of Denver's population showed up for a ground-breaking ceremony. There was good reason for such an impressive turnout: The project begun that day was necessary for the town's survival.
The threat had become acute the year before, when the Union Pacific Railroad laid its tracks across Wyoming. The transcontinental railroad had bypassed Denver, which already lacked the amenity of a river, in favor of Cheyenne, 100 miles north.
There's a scene in “Tombstone” that evokes Denver's dire situation. After Doc Holliday, played by Val Kilmer, cleans out the poker tables at some desolate bar, he tells his girlfriend, “I calculate that's the end of this town.” That was Denver's expected fate after the railroad spurned Colorado for Wyoming. Thomas Durant, a Union Pacific official, described Denver as a town “too dead to bury.” The former territorial governor, John Evans, had expressed similar sentiments. “Colorado without railroads,” Evans said, “is comparatively worthless.”
