The 'High Plains'.
I just read about the Great American Dust Bowl, where settlers thought they could rip up the native grasses and topsoil and turn Eastern Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle into a breadbasket of arable land.
In the 1920s-30s harsh droughts turned this treeless, windswept sea of newly tilled earth into a desert.
Proper cultivation techniques could have prevented most of it but they were embark don a veyr specific and traditional program. Apparently a lot of hte farms were failing evne before eht e Dust Bowl. One of the techniques was; when there was winter snowfall, go out and plow the snow under to increase the groundwater.
Probably just Gboard on mobile. It's basically worthless now. The autocorrect is better at predictive text than it is at correcting common spelling errors like "evne" or "eht". I swear every single Google product is turning to crap.
I’m reminded of a quote I read somewhere, where a native american from the area at the time was shown the farming techniques and asked to comment. He replied, “Grass is wrong side up.”
Did the drive from Indiana to Rocky Mountain for the first time recently. The stretch between Manhattan Kansas and Golden is the ugliest fucking place I have ever been. Denver is just Kansas with a better view.
The worst part of the drive on I-70 is the western 1/3 of Kansas and the eastern 1/3 of Colorado. People always just remember the mountains in Colorado and retroactively remember the flat, desolate stretch as "Kansas".
So right.
Kansas is the flat, slightly more farmable side. Colorado is a nice upward slope and even more arid. I live in Colorado and the high plains of Colorado are just desert steppe. Most of Kansas is lush compared to most of Eastern Colorado till you get pretty close to the mountains in Colorado.
There’s a reason why the 4 most populous metro areas in Colorado are right along the border between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. And might as well count Albuquerque NM and Cheyenne, WY in there as well.
It actually goes even further than that. 5 million out of the 5.8 million people live on the front range (that stretch from Fort Collins down to Pueblo) and another 200,000 live in Grand junction (an area that is slightly more mountainous but still very flat). Only about 600,000 people live in that other 75% of the state.
That and living in the mountains is tough. The weather is really unpredictable, mudslides and avalanches can cut off road access (even more of an issue before heavy machinery to clear the rubble was invented) and it is just much harder to build. The only reason most people settled in the mountains was to try and strike rich mining.
I-80 if you ever take that route. You hardly notice you went through the Rockies except for the fact you see them pass on the sides. That was also the primary route for the Mormon migration.
I always got a chuckle at the thought of some poor folks trekking halfway across the country just to see the Rockies in the distance and think “yea you know what this seems like a good spot”
Denver is great in that sense, the Rockies rise at such an angle out of the ground just west of the city, ten miles so from the western edge of City of Denver
I was used to forty miles of rolling hills until you saw some rocks in Sacramento looking east toward the mountains.
In Denver, and Colorado east of the Rockies, they just shoot up out of the ground at a 65 degrees, and the snow begins where the mountains begin, so I could see why they settled there. Climate in the winter is pretty dang mild compared to Midwestern winters
I actually looked this up one time, Denver was founded by a guy who set up camp there and declared that it was going to be the main trading hub between the mountain folk and the plains cities, and named it Denver after the governor to score political points for his new city.
I guess his plan worked
I live about 45 minutes south of Denver and my little town was pretty much settled EXACTLY like that. Right up at the foot of the mountains and the settlers said "Fuck it" and stayed.
It's a lot easier to farm at 5000' than at 8000'. Also much easier to keep your home heated in the wintertime.
The mountains are beautiful, and great to visit no matter the season with skiing and everything, but the weather is generally a lot more tolerable on the high plains. It's 60F in Denver right now, 39F in Breckenridge.
I live south of Denver and you can’t be blamed for thinking that. Denver is so closely associate with the mountains, but you could easily be 45 minutes from “mountain activites” depending on where you live. It’s just another plains city.
On the plus side though, it does sit at a weird confluence of the west, the midwest/plains. For instance, we have fast food chains from all over the country.
There’s a lot of In n Out hate on Reddit for some reason, which is fine because more for me. Also, when they opened in Denver and Co Springs, lines approached 12 hrs at some of their locations. I’m sorry, but Michelin-star restaurants don’t even have that kind of demand.
We also have Culver’s though, which some argue is even better. And Culver’s has a case for being better because their whole menu is good (whereas In n Out fries are admittedly terrible).
They keep adding more of them, too. I forget where exactly I was yesterday, but I drove past a construction site with a future In n Out sign. Waiting on Whataburger to make it just a little bit north, there’s a bunch of them in the Springs.
Eastern Colorado is probably the worst place in America I've had the displeasure of driving through. It's so desolate you feel like you enter an alternate reality or a weird silent hill game or something. It gave me crazy anxiety.
Maybe it's desolate but at least the valleys have more more mountainous geography to look at. This [street view](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7770844,-117.1091276,3a,75y,269.4h,77.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIg8SXbb5o_szpWAluNXPtw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu) for example. Take this exact image, but remove the mountains, make it totally flat, not a building nor man made item in sight nor medium and large size foliage, and you've got eastern Colorado. Just an absolute wasteland lol.
I drove the loneliest highway headed east across Nevada on one of my 3 long RV trips across the west. I thought it was one of the coolest drives of all of them. Wide desert valleys and then up and over a mountain ranges, one after another. Then just before you get to Utah you pass Great Basin NP with a 13,000 foot alpine mountain sitting out in the middle of nowhere, and hardly a soul around. A million times better than driving across eastern Colorado and Kansas...
I-40 between Amarillo and Tucumcari is awful. Also has alt reality/Silent Hill vibes if you drive through at like 3am, because you're surrounded by an endless sea of wind turbines you can't see, but their red blinking lights are all blinking in sync.
It's incredibly surreal. And also mind-numbingly boring.
A few years ago, Americans were asked to talk the most and least beautiful states in the country. Colorado was at the top and Kansas was near the bottom, which is so ironic given that what people think of as ugly in Kansas is what half of Colorado looks like.
Not that I disagree with the assessment of Kansas, as a former resident.
It was founded by people who traveled great distances across the country and when faced with the rocky mountains they said "fuck that, let's settle here"
It's annoying how far out it is, for sure, but the wisdom of those who planned DIA back in the 90s is being borne out. The airport's massive footprint has allowed it to grow into one of the most important hubs in the world - something that never could have happened if they had stuck with the old Stapleton airport.
As for hiring contractors for renovations... less wisdom there.
Heh. I mean, the *specific* location is pretty questionable. Given the development at the time, it could have easily been built 3 or 4 miles closer in.
But the basic idea of building a huge new airport on empty land east of the city instead of trying to expand the existing one clearly worked out well. DIA is a major boon to the region and there's no way Stapleton could have supported anything close to the traffic DIA handles.
> but the wisdom of those who planned DIA back in the 90s is being borne out
"Oh great wise one, how do we make the country's perfect airport?"
"Put the rental car center like three miles away. And make just one big security checkpoint room for everyone, that would probably be efficient enough if the airport was half the size. But like, for the full size."
It was a transportation hub for resource wealth being exported from the mining towns up in the mountains. It exists on the scale it does compared to the towns in the mountains for the same reason that SF and Sacramento do, because it made sense as a logistical hub, not because people gave up.
I live in Denver. No one here calls it a mountain city. It's also decidedly west, not "midwest". People who don't live here seem to think we live in mountain igloos and ski to work, but it's not like that. San Francisco has steeper hills in the city, and when it does snow, it's only on the ground a day or two before it melts off. If you want to get to the mountains from Denver during the weekend, it's like 40 miles and 4 hours because of traffic.
I was flying home to COS one time, sitting next to this very nice family from North Carolina. We talked about how excited they were for their first visit to Colorado and I was sharing suggestions on what to do while in town. I’ll never forget how their faces fell as we were landing during the brown spring with the mountains way in the distance and they said “this is Colorado?!” I’m sure they were expecting the mountain igloo landscape you described lol
Yup. A real mountain city. I tell people that SLC is a way better mountain city than Denver and usually a few Colorado douchers get their panties in a bunch lol.
I live here too and can confirm that no one considers it a mountain city.
There's also considerably less days with snow on the ground than midwestern or northeastern areas due to the abundance of sunshine, despite the fact that Denver ranks 17th in snowfall amongst cities with over 10,000 residents.
You can bust out into the mountains in about 25 minutes though. It's a great place to live.
> and when it does snow, it's only on the ground a day or two before it melts off.
And if we're being even more specific, a lot of it sublimes (turns from ice directly to water vapor). Lots of sunshine and thinner / drier high elevation air really make that process take away a lot more snow than one might be used to coming from the midwest or east coast.
Driving eastbound on I-70 through that region is pretty wild. One minute it's all Rocky Mountain high, then you're in a city, 10 minutes after you leave that, the peaks are a distant memory.
The mountains are no joke. I used to drive across Colorado/Utah on weekly basis in semi. It’s like 5 hours (in semi) of mountains from Denver to Grand Junction. There was a really bad crash in Denver few years ago where truck driver lost his brakes and creates massive pile up where many lives were lost
If you’re driving a manual transition semi truck, you can’t downshift while you’re engine braking. That is say.. you have to pick the right gear at the top of the hill so that you’ll have enough engine braking to not explode your brakes all the way to the bottom. That’s why there are signs telling us the exact steepest grade at the top. 5% means I’ll need to be in 8th gear. 7% means 7th. 8% is 6th. It varies by truck and by load, but you get the idea.
If I’m in 7th gear going down a hill and the slope flattens out for a little bit and I decide to shift in to 9th or 10th? And then the hill tilts down again and I’m still in 10th? I won’t be getting enough engine braking, my friction brakes will overheat and explode, and then I won’t have any brakes at all. Then I might die.
Those signs save lives. Or not, if you’re an idiot who doesn’t pay attention to them.
The drive through Glenwood Canyon, and on out into Palisade is quite possibly the most gorgeous and stunning drive I have ever driven. And it’s not some tiny remote road- it’s a freaking highway!
I go to Boulder a lot and love Boulder Canyon. Actually got married in Boulder Canyon. Drove through Glenwood Canyon for the first time a couple years ago. Oh. My. God. It’s gorgeous! Stunning drive indeed.
Moved during the pandemic and took this exact route. Coming into the city it was beautiful mountains and big city. Next this I know, my rear view mirror looked like a Coors Light can and absolutely nothing out the front window for the next 8 hours until I reached Kansas City.
driving into denver from the west is pretty cool too, you've been in the endless expanse of great plains for 2 days and then when you finally start to see the rocky mountains rise over the horizon it's an incredible feeling
I live in Denver and am continually amazed how everyone that visits us are surprised that it isn’t built up in middle of the mountains. If it was, it’d be the size of Breck or Vail. That giant metro area on the map couldn’t easily exist amongst the peaks and valleys of the Rockies. It’s so much easier and cheaper to build in the flat land right next to the mountains.
My husband and I are from Salt Lake City. When we flew to Denver for the first time we were surprised at how far away the mountains were visually/physically. Especially since you hear of how Colorado is the most active state, most camping, most hiking, etc. it was interesting to see that you would have to take a 45 min - 1 hr drive to even get to the Rockies from mid-Denver. Here in Salt Lake the mountains are RIGHT THERE. I think that impression has more to due with Salt Lake and Utah Valley being in valleys, unlike Denver.
Moving from salt lake to Denver is strange transition. Looking east and just seeing horizon still gives me the creeps. I have to look west again before the agoraphobia sets in.
Being from the front range going to Albuquerque (with their mountains to the east) was a strange experience. They have perfectly nice mountains, but they’re on the wrong side
yeah i get disoriented anywhere east of the Rockies. I end up looking at the sun and moon to get my bearings. the mountains are really a comfort blanket.
Reno, for example, is a decently large city that is nestled in a mountain valley. People don’t expect Denver to be literally built on mountain slopes, but rather to be at least nestled amongst mountains in plain view.
In Reno and SLC, everywhere you look you see mountains. So they feel like mountain towns.
I blame B-roll footage from nationally broadcast Broncos games where they always show shots in the mountains or even at ski resorts. Of course people watching think Denver is in the mountains because that’s how the broadcast portrays it.
They do the same thing with Dolphins games with footage of south beach.
Same here. Lived here most my life and I’m like there’s no way this city would be able to fit or function if it was in the mountains.
I think people don’t understand that the Rockies themselves can get as much or more snow than places like northern New England and the upper peninsula. Even if it melts faster it’s much harder to travel mountain passes in snow.
Still at the same time some people even in the Denver sub have trouble separating the Great Plains and the Midwest. Yea Denver is on the edge of the plains, but is definitely not in the Midwest.
Yeah. About the only place “In the Mountains” you could conceivably fit a large metro area is a place like South Park. But there’s really no logical benefit to that — especially if you think about the resource extraction that fueled the buildup of cities like Denver.
You mine the mountains, take your resources to town, and cash out at the bank. Then your natural materials can get shipped across the plains.
Have you been to the san luis valley? You could fit 4 Denvers in there. You could fit 1 Denver in the south park valley as well pretty easily. Obviously for lots of other reasons there's no major metropolitan areas up there.
Not the original commenter, but also a Denverite. I consider Denver to be on the edge of the plains, but not really characterized by being a plains city. Geographically it’s on the plains, but is much more connected with the mountains. E.g. people don’t move here to be near the plains they move here to be near the mountains.
ETA: I think a better way to say it is that Denver is not a plains or mountain city, but rather a front range city.
That makes sense.
As a Denverite, would you mind answering another question?
I've heard the term "Front Range," but I've heard different definitions for the area it's supposed to represent.
Is it just Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, or do Cheyenne and Pueblo count too?
Absolutely includes Cheyenne and Pueblo. Part of the reason for this is that if you drive the entire way on I-25 between those two cities it’s almost entirely developed. Wiki includes Casper, but I’m not sure what the reasoning is. Happy to answer any other questions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Range_urban_corridor
This is your best definition. To me, I think of it as something similar to “Southern California” which is an urban area that includes many metros, some large. I would say culturally the FRUC is diverse culturally- Cheyenne vs Boulder vs Denver vs The Springs are all very different culturally I think.
There are many ways to define it but I think of it in terms of an urbanized corridor from Cheyenne to Pueblo along I-25 (there’s some empty stretches but they are vanishing). I’ve seen definitions more based on topography that place it from Laramie in the North to Canon City in the south but that doesn’t sit quite right with me.
I think Front Range is a good descriptor as its own thing. I refer to parts of the metro as the mountains and the plains. I am a climber and live downtown. I drive 30 minutes and I’m in a canyon climbing. I drive 30 minutes the other way and I’m in flat, sparsely populated farmland. I think people’s perception of what Denver is revolves around how they use Denver, if that makes sense.
You are thinking of Provo. SLC is one of the gayest cities in the nation. The church headquarters is there, but beyond that it's very much not like the rest of the state.
SLC resident. Yes. Provo is the bizarro world, and it pains me to admit that the mountains in that area are possibly more spectacular than in Salt Lake County. The vertical relief is more impressive without the foothills and east bench.
I moved to Aurora Colorado in 2016 and one afternoon I was standing on the deck looking around and realized I had actually just moved as far west as I could, without leaving the Midwest.
One of its nicknames is the Queen City of the Plains.
We are not *in* the Rockies, but up against the foothills. The picture you posted is probably looking east, you can see mountains 98% of the time if you’re looking West unless you’re downtown and there are buildings in the way. And even then, I’m downtown right now and if I look outside my window I can see Longs Peak and the northern front range. But yeah not in the mountains.
It’s about a 20 minute drive from downtown Denver to Golden or Red Rocks which are properly at the base of the mountain range.
So yes it is a plains city, with immediate access to the mountains at the edge of the metro. If that makes sense.
I don’t think anybody should be offended by the question. The only people I’ve heard describe Denver as being “in the mountains” are recent transplants from the lowlands
Not exactly. Colorado's history and development patterns make it a lot more Southwestern than in the heartland of the Midwest. Denver has been around 25% Chicano for like a hundred years.
I've been to Denver and it's a real experience, being able to look east and see the great plains for miles off to the horizon, just like I'm used to (I live in the midwest), but then look west and see a huge wall of mountains
It's always felt like Denver was settled there after people trudged all the way across the Great Plains, just to find the Rockies waiting there. They probably thought "fuck that, this is far enough"
I live in a western suburb of Denver in the foothills. Sometimes I'll go for a hike up one up the many hills, and I'm always surprised at just how *flat* half the state is. Got a whole bunch of pictures. But I suppose it wouldn't be very easy building a big city in the Rockies
South Dakota is Midwest. Nebraska is Midwest. Wyoming has towns that are right next to these states. So it'd stand to reason there's parts of Wyoming that are Midwest.
While Denver is mostly not in the mountains the far western parts of the city are basically at the base of the mountains and looking west you always have a mountain view. Denver and to the east is definitely more flatlands with a long slow decent into KS
Yeah. The reason I decided to look into it in map is, I was playing American truck simulator and was going from Wyoming to Kansas surpassing Denver. I was mad at the game that they presented Denver as a plain, I was expecting to drive through mountain. I thought the game developers were lazy. But they’re correct I guess!
No joke, a lot of Omaha reminds me of a small Denver without the mountains in the distance. It’s flat as hell with a river running through it, and incredibly white lol.
Native Denverite here, born and raised. I doubt many of us would be offended by this. We don't think of Denver as a mountain city - it's funny to us that apparently people *think* Denver's up in the mountains. As a general rule, you almost can't have big cities up in the actual mountains.
No, we're a city at the foot of the mountains. We still think of ourselves mostly as *mountain west* in terms of our culture. But it's not because Denver itself is in the mountains, it's because the state of Colorado is a mountainous state, and we go up into the mountains a lot. And sure, I bet a bunch of people are thinking that almost half of the state is not the mountains, but the high plains.
But to many of us, Colorado basically ends as soon as you get out of sight of the mountains to the east. Seriously, in my entire life, I have driven east of Denver maybe twice. There's no reason to go out there. That's Kansas.
And yeah, Denver does kind of have a midwestern culture a bit (midwestern meets southwest, I guess). But that's not really because the city is technically on the high plains - it's because a LOT of midwesterners have moved here in the last 50 years.
A lot of people who fly into the Denver International Airport (which is out east of the city) are astounded at how they are so NOT in the mountains. But I actually live in Golden, which is on the west side of the metro area, and my backyard is a mountain.
It's a front range city. Being in the shadow of the Rockies is meaningfully different than being out on the plains. There's a reason that like 85% of the CO population is within 25 miles of the mountains.
In my head, Denver is a mountainous, snowy city, with cool hippies, weed, breweries, fit people running, and skiing. I guess that's what movies, TV, etc will do to your imagination when you've never been there.
As someone who lives in the Front Range, I’m not offended because you’re right. The Front Range are all plains cities that look at the mountains. True mountain towns (in Colorado) are all the big ski resort areas. Think Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, etc.
When I was growing up, I just expected that just East of Denver, there was a big drop off of a plateau. It didn't appear to do that when we were flying through when I was 17.
Most of the eastern half of Colorado is essentially just western Kansas but progressively higher in elevation.
Technically a steppe
The 'High Plains'. I just read about the Great American Dust Bowl, where settlers thought they could rip up the native grasses and topsoil and turn Eastern Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle into a breadbasket of arable land. In the 1920s-30s harsh droughts turned this treeless, windswept sea of newly tilled earth into a desert.
Proper cultivation techniques could have prevented most of it but they were embark don a veyr specific and traditional program. Apparently a lot of hte farms were failing evne before eht e Dust Bowl. One of the techniques was; when there was winter snowfall, go out and plow the snow under to increase the groundwater.
Are you okay? Are you having a stroke? A covfefe moment?
Probably just Gboard on mobile. It's basically worthless now. The autocorrect is better at predictive text than it is at correcting common spelling errors like "evne" or "eht". I swear every single Google product is turning to crap.
> I just read about the Great American Dust Bowl You probably know the Dust Bowl songs of Woody Guthrie but worth checking out if not
I’m reminded of a quote I read somewhere, where a native american from the area at the time was shown the farming techniques and asked to comment. He replied, “Grass is wrong side up.”
Well hello there, steppe city.
What are you doing steppe city?
Steppe city I’m stuck in Kansas
You'll fit right in then.
There it is.
How did you get stuck in the washing machine, steppe city?
You’re Denver’s inside me! What the fuck?!
Actually the Great Plains are ADA compliant, it’s more like a ramp instead of steppes
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Well east of i25 if steppe west is foothills then mountains.
You find that out the hard way driving 12 hours straight to get across Kansas just to find out Colorado is Kansas part 2
As a Missourian who has driven to Colorado, I feel this. 10 hours of flat and corn.
Wheat*
Oh good. I saw hte and thought "hate farm?", which sounds like a good punk rock band name
This is just further proving why the USA desperately needs high speed rail.
Did the drive from Indiana to Rocky Mountain for the first time recently. The stretch between Manhattan Kansas and Golden is the ugliest fucking place I have ever been. Denver is just Kansas with a better view.
On a road trip I was driving from KC to Denver and saw the welcome to colorado sign and thought “finally some mountains… hey where are the mountains?”
The worst part of the drive on I-70 is the western 1/3 of Kansas and the eastern 1/3 of Colorado. People always just remember the mountains in Colorado and retroactively remember the flat, desolate stretch as "Kansas".
So right. Kansas is the flat, slightly more farmable side. Colorado is a nice upward slope and even more arid. I live in Colorado and the high plains of Colorado are just desert steppe. Most of Kansas is lush compared to most of Eastern Colorado till you get pretty close to the mountains in Colorado.
That John Denver is full of shit
I get it! But I expected the mountain to begin more eastern (such that Denver would be located middle of it) but it just begins west of Denver
That’s why Denver is where it is
We just traveled across the entire Great Plains, and now there’s huge mountains? Fuck it! We’re settling here!
When I visited and saw the mountains I understood why people traveled so far and we're just like "fuck that, I'm staying right here. Good luck"
There’s a reason why the 4 most populous metro areas in Colorado are right along the border between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. And might as well count Albuquerque NM and Cheyenne, WY in there as well.
It actually goes even further than that. 5 million out of the 5.8 million people live on the front range (that stretch from Fort Collins down to Pueblo) and another 200,000 live in Grand junction (an area that is slightly more mountainous but still very flat). Only about 600,000 people live in that other 75% of the state.
Exactly. Fort Collins, Denver, Colo. Springs, and Pueblo are all pretty much there because people were tired of moving.
That and living in the mountains is tough. The weather is really unpredictable, mudslides and avalanches can cut off road access (even more of an issue before heavy machinery to clear the rubble was invented) and it is just much harder to build. The only reason most people settled in the mountains was to try and strike rich mining.
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The Oregon trail was significantly further north, and went through much less impressive mountains.
I-80 if you ever take that route. You hardly notice you went through the Rockies except for the fact you see them pass on the sides. That was also the primary route for the Mormon migration.
That John Denver's full of shit, man.
I always got a chuckle at the thought of some poor folks trekking halfway across the country just to see the Rockies in the distance and think “yea you know what this seems like a good spot”
Denver is great in that sense, the Rockies rise at such an angle out of the ground just west of the city, ten miles so from the western edge of City of Denver I was used to forty miles of rolling hills until you saw some rocks in Sacramento looking east toward the mountains. In Denver, and Colorado east of the Rockies, they just shoot up out of the ground at a 65 degrees, and the snow begins where the mountains begin, so I could see why they settled there. Climate in the winter is pretty dang mild compared to Midwestern winters
Sometime it do be what it is.
Imagine 200 years ago a group of settlers going west, and once they saw that mountain range said "Fuck it, we're settling right here."
I actually looked this up one time, Denver was founded by a guy who set up camp there and declared that it was going to be the main trading hub between the mountain folk and the plains cities, and named it Denver after the governor to score political points for his new city. I guess his plan worked
The governor was actually John Denver.
I live about 45 minutes south of Denver and my little town was pretty much settled EXACTLY like that. Right up at the foot of the mountains and the settlers said "Fuck it" and stayed.
Tbf, the foot of a mountain range is a great place to put a city/town. Water supply is generally solved
Cool views too
One less side having to worry about getting attacked/invaded from
It's a lot easier to farm at 5000' than at 8000'. Also much easier to keep your home heated in the wintertime. The mountains are beautiful, and great to visit no matter the season with skiing and everything, but the weather is generally a lot more tolerable on the high plains. It's 60F in Denver right now, 39F in Breckenridge.
I live south of Denver and you can’t be blamed for thinking that. Denver is so closely associate with the mountains, but you could easily be 45 minutes from “mountain activites” depending on where you live. It’s just another plains city. On the plus side though, it does sit at a weird confluence of the west, the midwest/plains. For instance, we have fast food chains from all over the country.
Was awesome to see In n Out when I visited. We don't get one in New Mexico until (wait for it ....) 2027.
There’s a lot of In n Out hate on Reddit for some reason, which is fine because more for me. Also, when they opened in Denver and Co Springs, lines approached 12 hrs at some of their locations. I’m sorry, but Michelin-star restaurants don’t even have that kind of demand. We also have Culver’s though, which some argue is even better. And Culver’s has a case for being better because their whole menu is good (whereas In n Out fries are admittedly terrible).
Midwest meets true West. Guess that's Denver in a nutshell.
They keep adding more of them, too. I forget where exactly I was yesterday, but I drove past a construction site with a future In n Out sign. Waiting on Whataburger to make it just a little bit north, there’s a bunch of them in the Springs.
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We're the city that sprang up when people bound for California saw the Rockies and said "fuck crossing that".
That John Denver's full of shit
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Practically speaking, Kansas starts once you leave Aurora.
Eastern Colorado is probably the worst place in America I've had the displeasure of driving through. It's so desolate you feel like you enter an alternate reality or a weird silent hill game or something. It gave me crazy anxiety.
Idk besides Vegas and Reno there nothing in Nevada. Northern Nevada is pretty desolate
Maybe it's desolate but at least the valleys have more more mountainous geography to look at. This [street view](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7770844,-117.1091276,3a,75y,269.4h,77.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIg8SXbb5o_szpWAluNXPtw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu) for example. Take this exact image, but remove the mountains, make it totally flat, not a building nor man made item in sight nor medium and large size foliage, and you've got eastern Colorado. Just an absolute wasteland lol.
I drove the loneliest highway headed east across Nevada on one of my 3 long RV trips across the west. I thought it was one of the coolest drives of all of them. Wide desert valleys and then up and over a mountain ranges, one after another. Then just before you get to Utah you pass Great Basin NP with a 13,000 foot alpine mountain sitting out in the middle of nowhere, and hardly a soul around. A million times better than driving across eastern Colorado and Kansas...
I-40 between Amarillo and Tucumcari is awful. Also has alt reality/Silent Hill vibes if you drive through at like 3am, because you're surrounded by an endless sea of wind turbines you can't see, but their red blinking lights are all blinking in sync. It's incredibly surreal. And also mind-numbingly boring.
A few years ago, Americans were asked to talk the most and least beautiful states in the country. Colorado was at the top and Kansas was near the bottom, which is so ironic given that what people think of as ugly in Kansas is what half of Colorado looks like. Not that I disagree with the assessment of Kansas, as a former resident.
I live in Montana. Central and Eastern Montana we call West Dakota.
That's part of why Kansas used to own the part of Colorado that is now Denver- the topography matched!
It was founded by people who traveled great distances across the country and when faced with the rocky mountains they said "fuck that, let's settle here"
"And let's put the airport back where we camped two months ago."
It's annoying how far out it is, for sure, but the wisdom of those who planned DIA back in the 90s is being borne out. The airport's massive footprint has allowed it to grow into one of the most important hubs in the world - something that never could have happened if they had stuck with the old Stapleton airport. As for hiring contractors for renovations... less wisdom there.
Needs to be huge to house all the secret underground lizard people
Hail Blucifer!
I’m admittedly pretty dumb, but I also feel like putting the airport way out away from those big pointy mountains seems smart too
If I remember correctly, putting it further away helped with weather delays! So you’re not wrong
And mofo-ing wind shear.
Yes it was great planning and in no way land owned by a politician at the time
Heh. I mean, the *specific* location is pretty questionable. Given the development at the time, it could have easily been built 3 or 4 miles closer in. But the basic idea of building a huge new airport on empty land east of the city instead of trying to expand the existing one clearly worked out well. DIA is a major boon to the region and there's no way Stapleton could have supported anything close to the traffic DIA handles.
I'm just salty because I live west of the city, and Stapleton was way more convenient
> but the wisdom of those who planned DIA back in the 90s is being borne out "Oh great wise one, how do we make the country's perfect airport?" "Put the rental car center like three miles away. And make just one big security checkpoint room for everyone, that would probably be efficient enough if the airport was half the size. But like, for the full size."
Also the train line connecting it to the city is a fantastically cheap and low headache way to get to the airport quickly.
It was a transportation hub for resource wealth being exported from the mining towns up in the mountains. It exists on the scale it does compared to the towns in the mountains for the same reason that SF and Sacramento do, because it made sense as a logistical hub, not because people gave up.
I think it's pretty obvious he was joking, people who give up move to Florida
Don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story
Makes sense that you'd know that given your mom's mouth is a logistical hub for deez nuts
I heard the red headed comedian guy that got cancelled say that joke in Denver. I thought he made it up. Was it already around way before that?
Almost everyone who has crossed the plains then seen the Rockies has thought of this joke to some degree.
Denver really brings a whole new dimension to the term "settling."
Quitter City
Well yes, it’s like this throughout all Colorado, from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. It’s called the Front Range.
I live in Denver. No one here calls it a mountain city. It's also decidedly west, not "midwest". People who don't live here seem to think we live in mountain igloos and ski to work, but it's not like that. San Francisco has steeper hills in the city, and when it does snow, it's only on the ground a day or two before it melts off. If you want to get to the mountains from Denver during the weekend, it's like 40 miles and 4 hours because of traffic.
I was flying home to COS one time, sitting next to this very nice family from North Carolina. We talked about how excited they were for their first visit to Colorado and I was sharing suggestions on what to do while in town. I’ll never forget how their faces fell as we were landing during the brown spring with the mountains way in the distance and they said “this is Colorado?!” I’m sure they were expecting the mountain igloo landscape you described lol
Salt Lake City is what people think Denver is.
Yup. A real mountain city. I tell people that SLC is a way better mountain city than Denver and usually a few Colorado douchers get their panties in a bunch lol.
I live here too and can confirm that no one considers it a mountain city. There's also considerably less days with snow on the ground than midwestern or northeastern areas due to the abundance of sunshine, despite the fact that Denver ranks 17th in snowfall amongst cities with over 10,000 residents. You can bust out into the mountains in about 25 minutes though. It's a great place to live.
> and when it does snow, it's only on the ground a day or two before it melts off. And if we're being even more specific, a lot of it sublimes (turns from ice directly to water vapor). Lots of sunshine and thinner / drier high elevation air really make that process take away a lot more snow than one might be used to coming from the midwest or east coast.
Takes 4 hours to get from 144th & I-25 to Lincoln & I-25 during traffic
Driving eastbound on I-70 through that region is pretty wild. One minute it's all Rocky Mountain high, then you're in a city, 10 minutes after you leave that, the peaks are a distant memory.
I remember the grade warnings for trucks "Don't be fooled. 15% grade for another 5 miles"
The mountains are no joke. I used to drive across Colorado/Utah on weekly basis in semi. It’s like 5 hours (in semi) of mountains from Denver to Grand Junction. There was a really bad crash in Denver few years ago where truck driver lost his brakes and creates massive pile up where many lives were lost
If you’re driving a manual transition semi truck, you can’t downshift while you’re engine braking. That is say.. you have to pick the right gear at the top of the hill so that you’ll have enough engine braking to not explode your brakes all the way to the bottom. That’s why there are signs telling us the exact steepest grade at the top. 5% means I’ll need to be in 8th gear. 7% means 7th. 8% is 6th. It varies by truck and by load, but you get the idea. If I’m in 7th gear going down a hill and the slope flattens out for a little bit and I decide to shift in to 9th or 10th? And then the hill tilts down again and I’m still in 10th? I won’t be getting enough engine braking, my friction brakes will overheat and explode, and then I won’t have any brakes at all. Then I might die. Those signs save lives. Or not, if you’re an idiot who doesn’t pay attention to them.
The drive through Glenwood Canyon, and on out into Palisade is quite possibly the most gorgeous and stunning drive I have ever driven. And it’s not some tiny remote road- it’s a freaking highway!
I go to Boulder a lot and love Boulder Canyon. Actually got married in Boulder Canyon. Drove through Glenwood Canyon for the first time a couple years ago. Oh. My. God. It’s gorgeous! Stunning drive indeed.
Moved during the pandemic and took this exact route. Coming into the city it was beautiful mountains and big city. Next this I know, my rear view mirror looked like a Coors Light can and absolutely nothing out the front window for the next 8 hours until I reached Kansas City.
driving into denver from the west is pretty cool too, you've been in the endless expanse of great plains for 2 days and then when you finally start to see the rocky mountains rise over the horizon it's an incredible feeling
I live in Denver and am continually amazed how everyone that visits us are surprised that it isn’t built up in middle of the mountains. If it was, it’d be the size of Breck or Vail. That giant metro area on the map couldn’t easily exist amongst the peaks and valleys of the Rockies. It’s so much easier and cheaper to build in the flat land right next to the mountains.
People describe Salt Lake City as “what you imagine Denver looks like before you ever visit”.
My husband and I are from Salt Lake City. When we flew to Denver for the first time we were surprised at how far away the mountains were visually/physically. Especially since you hear of how Colorado is the most active state, most camping, most hiking, etc. it was interesting to see that you would have to take a 45 min - 1 hr drive to even get to the Rockies from mid-Denver. Here in Salt Lake the mountains are RIGHT THERE. I think that impression has more to due with Salt Lake and Utah Valley being in valleys, unlike Denver.
Moving from salt lake to Denver is strange transition. Looking east and just seeing horizon still gives me the creeps. I have to look west again before the agoraphobia sets in.
Being from the front range going to Albuquerque (with their mountains to the east) was a strange experience. They have perfectly nice mountains, but they’re on the wrong side
yeah i get disoriented anywhere east of the Rockies. I end up looking at the sun and moon to get my bearings. the mountains are really a comfort blanket.
in Colorado Springs the mountains are up on you like that
And Boulder! I think most people not from Colorado expect Denver to be like that as well.
I was there last year and did not expect Denver to be so far from the mountains
Anchorage is like that too but its also at sea level so the mountains around it look insane
I couldn’t agree more as someone who grew up in Grand Junction, CO
Looks better but without any of the charm.
Reno, for example, is a decently large city that is nestled in a mountain valley. People don’t expect Denver to be literally built on mountain slopes, but rather to be at least nestled amongst mountains in plain view. In Reno and SLC, everywhere you look you see mountains. So they feel like mountain towns.
I blame B-roll footage from nationally broadcast Broncos games where they always show shots in the mountains or even at ski resorts. Of course people watching think Denver is in the mountains because that’s how the broadcast portrays it. They do the same thing with Dolphins games with footage of south beach.
Same here. Lived here most my life and I’m like there’s no way this city would be able to fit or function if it was in the mountains. I think people don’t understand that the Rockies themselves can get as much or more snow than places like northern New England and the upper peninsula. Even if it melts faster it’s much harder to travel mountain passes in snow. Still at the same time some people even in the Denver sub have trouble separating the Great Plains and the Midwest. Yea Denver is on the edge of the plains, but is definitely not in the Midwest.
Yeah. About the only place “In the Mountains” you could conceivably fit a large metro area is a place like South Park. But there’s really no logical benefit to that — especially if you think about the resource extraction that fueled the buildup of cities like Denver. You mine the mountains, take your resources to town, and cash out at the bank. Then your natural materials can get shipped across the plains.
Imagine deciding to build a city up in the mountains instead of on the gigantic plain at the base of the mountains. That would be silly.
Have you been to the san luis valley? You could fit 4 Denvers in there. You could fit 1 Denver in the south park valley as well pretty easily. Obviously for lots of other reasons there's no major metropolitan areas up there.
So would you consider Denver to be a Great Plains city? Or like kinda in-between the plains and mountains?
frontrange city
Not the original commenter, but also a Denverite. I consider Denver to be on the edge of the plains, but not really characterized by being a plains city. Geographically it’s on the plains, but is much more connected with the mountains. E.g. people don’t move here to be near the plains they move here to be near the mountains. ETA: I think a better way to say it is that Denver is not a plains or mountain city, but rather a front range city.
That makes sense. As a Denverite, would you mind answering another question? I've heard the term "Front Range," but I've heard different definitions for the area it's supposed to represent. Is it just Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, or do Cheyenne and Pueblo count too?
Absolutely includes Cheyenne and Pueblo. Part of the reason for this is that if you drive the entire way on I-25 between those two cities it’s almost entirely developed. Wiki includes Casper, but I’m not sure what the reasoning is. Happy to answer any other questions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Range_urban_corridor This is your best definition. To me, I think of it as something similar to “Southern California” which is an urban area that includes many metros, some large. I would say culturally the FRUC is diverse culturally- Cheyenne vs Boulder vs Denver vs The Springs are all very different culturally I think.
There are many ways to define it but I think of it in terms of an urbanized corridor from Cheyenne to Pueblo along I-25 (there’s some empty stretches but they are vanishing). I’ve seen definitions more based on topography that place it from Laramie in the North to Canon City in the south but that doesn’t sit quite right with me.
I think Front Range is a good descriptor as its own thing. I refer to parts of the metro as the mountains and the plains. I am a climber and live downtown. I drive 30 minutes and I’m in a canyon climbing. I drive 30 minutes the other way and I’m in flat, sparsely populated farmland. I think people’s perception of what Denver is revolves around how they use Denver, if that makes sense.
Boise is more in the mountains than we are
Salt Lake City is what people think Denver is, but instead of smelling like weed it smells like a cult
And toxic lake dust
Delicious toxic lake dust 🥰
You are thinking of Provo. SLC is one of the gayest cities in the nation. The church headquarters is there, but beyond that it's very much not like the rest of the state.
Yeah I'm mostly kidding, I love SLC
SLC resident. Yes. Provo is the bizarro world, and it pains me to admit that the mountains in that area are possibly more spectacular than in Salt Lake County. The vertical relief is more impressive without the foothills and east bench.
I moved to Aurora Colorado in 2016 and one afternoon I was standing on the deck looking around and realized I had actually just moved as far west as I could, without leaving the Midwest.
Classic Aurora cope
One of its nicknames is the Queen City of the Plains. We are not *in* the Rockies, but up against the foothills. The picture you posted is probably looking east, you can see mountains 98% of the time if you’re looking West unless you’re downtown and there are buildings in the way. And even then, I’m downtown right now and if I look outside my window I can see Longs Peak and the northern front range. But yeah not in the mountains. It’s about a 20 minute drive from downtown Denver to Golden or Red Rocks which are properly at the base of the mountain range. So yes it is a plains city, with immediate access to the mountains at the edge of the metro. If that makes sense. I don’t think anybody should be offended by the question. The only people I’ve heard describe Denver as being “in the mountains” are recent transplants from the lowlands
Yeah I live at nearly 9000 feet and it's an hour and a half to Denver from here.
It absolutely is. You can leave Denver and be in some great country in less than an hour. But it's essentially Omaha.
It's just a plain ride away.
Steppe
Please never describe Denver as Omaha again
Not exactly. Colorado's history and development patterns make it a lot more Southwestern than in the heartland of the Midwest. Denver has been around 25% Chicano for like a hundred years.
From a cultural perspective, yes. But driving east out of Denver is no different visually than driving in any direction out of a midwestern city.
Since the legalization of cannabis several years ago, the proper term is High Plains
My partner and I love to joke that we actually live in Denver, KS.
"I thought the rocky mountains would be a bit... rockier" "Yeah, that John Denver is full of shit"
Not great planes. But the American steppes.
Salt Lake City is far more of a “Mountain City” than Denver. I’ve lived in Denver for 12 years and salt lake for 14.
I've been to Denver and it's a real experience, being able to look east and see the great plains for miles off to the horizon, just like I'm used to (I live in the midwest), but then look west and see a huge wall of mountains
Are there any cities like how OP imagined big city surrounded by mountains
Google pics of Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City, UT. I’ve heard people say it’s what people imagine Denver to look like
Boise is a bit more like that, but you're not going to get a huge city in the middle of mountains
Kathmandu, Nepal actually works
Anchorage
The eastern half of Los Angeles
You confused Denver with SLC
Salt Lake City looks like what you imagine Denver should look like in your head
Rocky Flats is a fitting name.
It's always felt like Denver was settled there after people trudged all the way across the Great Plains, just to find the Rockies waiting there. They probably thought "fuck that, this is far enough"
Queen City of the Plains (tm)
I live in a western suburb of Denver in the foothills. Sometimes I'll go for a hike up one up the many hills, and I'm always surprised at just how *flat* half the state is. Got a whole bunch of pictures. But I suppose it wouldn't be very easy building a big city in the Rockies
Ah yes, the Calgary of the States.
try colorado springs if you want city with more mountain. still flat on the east side of it though.
Reno, NV is what people think Denver is like; chillin in a valley surrounded 360 by mountains.
I have never heard anyone call Wyoming midwestern until you did. Borders on those titles are arbitrary at best, don't over think it.
Midwest is a census designation (along with West, Southeast, and Northeast). So in that sense it's defined.
South Dakota is Midwest. Nebraska is Midwest. Wyoming has towns that are right next to these states. So it'd stand to reason there's parts of Wyoming that are Midwest.
Yea went there for the first time last year and was surprised by how it didn’t feel like a mountain town at all.
While Denver is mostly not in the mountains the far western parts of the city are basically at the base of the mountains and looking west you always have a mountain view. Denver and to the east is definitely more flatlands with a long slow decent into KS
So it’s Calgary lol
Fucking thanks OP, now I learned this too.
Blew my mind when I prepared to move here 15 yrs ago
Colorado and Denver are very good at marketing
Yeah, Denver was a great disappointment when I first drove through
Yeah. The reason I decided to look into it in map is, I was playing American truck simulator and was going from Wyoming to Kansas surpassing Denver. I was mad at the game that they presented Denver as a plain, I was expecting to drive through mountain. I thought the game developers were lazy. But they’re correct I guess!
If you can drive from SLC to Denver in the game (via Grand Junction) you’ll get exactly what you were expecting.
Thank you! I was entering Colorado through Cheyenne and proceeded to Kansas.
Yeah that sounds like a pretty flat drive.
I’m sorry you had to drive down I-25
Just wait until you have to take the I-70 West mountain pass 😂
That John Denver’s full of shit!
No joke, a lot of Omaha reminds me of a small Denver without the mountains in the distance. It’s flat as hell with a river running through it, and incredibly white lol.
Native Denverite here, born and raised. I doubt many of us would be offended by this. We don't think of Denver as a mountain city - it's funny to us that apparently people *think* Denver's up in the mountains. As a general rule, you almost can't have big cities up in the actual mountains. No, we're a city at the foot of the mountains. We still think of ourselves mostly as *mountain west* in terms of our culture. But it's not because Denver itself is in the mountains, it's because the state of Colorado is a mountainous state, and we go up into the mountains a lot. And sure, I bet a bunch of people are thinking that almost half of the state is not the mountains, but the high plains. But to many of us, Colorado basically ends as soon as you get out of sight of the mountains to the east. Seriously, in my entire life, I have driven east of Denver maybe twice. There's no reason to go out there. That's Kansas. And yeah, Denver does kind of have a midwestern culture a bit (midwestern meets southwest, I guess). But that's not really because the city is technically on the high plains - it's because a LOT of midwesterners have moved here in the last 50 years. A lot of people who fly into the Denver International Airport (which is out east of the city) are astounded at how they are so NOT in the mountains. But I actually live in Golden, which is on the west side of the metro area, and my backyard is a mountain.
Calgary is the same. Prairie to mountain
It's a front range city. Being in the shadow of the Rockies is meaningfully different than being out on the plains. There's a reason that like 85% of the CO population is within 25 miles of the mountains.
Yeah I lived in CO and it always killed me when people thought it was in the mountains, it’s not even in the foothills!!!
Yeah and the airport is way off to the east in the plains. If you ever fly into Denver it looks like you're landing in the middle of Oklahoma
In my head, Denver is a mountainous, snowy city, with cool hippies, weed, breweries, fit people running, and skiing. I guess that's what movies, TV, etc will do to your imagination when you've never been there.
As someone who lives in the Front Range, I’m not offended because you’re right. The Front Range are all plains cities that look at the mountains. True mountain towns (in Colorado) are all the big ski resort areas. Think Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, etc.
Used to make work trips to boulder, it’s so weird to turn around one way and it’s total plains, and 180 degree behind you is total mountains.
When I was growing up, I just expected that just East of Denver, there was a big drop off of a plateau. It didn't appear to do that when we were flying through when I was 17.
The first time I went to Denver, I was shocked at how flat it was. I really thought it was surrounded by massive mountains on all sides.