Downtown Denver Walking Tour: Mile High City's Booms and Busts

Denver is a city that has reinvented itself more times than almost any other in the American West. On this walking tour, you'll take in its transformation from a rough gold-rush outpost to the thriving capital of the Rockies. You'll also hear how the city survived a railroad bypass, a silver crash, and mid-century bulldozers to become what you see today.

The tour starts at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, in the heart of Lower Downtown. From there, you'll pass through the Dairy Block – a former 1920s milk-bottling operation turned boutique hotel and food hall – and walk by Wynkoop Brewing, the brewpub that helped drag this neighborhood back from skid row in the 1980s. You'll stop at Union Station, whose granite facade was Denver's deliberate answer to the transcontinental railroad that almost bypassed the city entirely.

Continuing down the 16th Street Mall – designed by I.M. Pei and still the spine of downtown – you'll reach Larimer Square, the oldest block in Denver. In the 1960s, it was slated for demolition when a woman named Dana Crawford's car broke down here, and she decided to buy the block instead of losing it to a parking lot. The tour ends at the Federal Reserve Bank, where a free on-site money museum lets you watch currency being processed – and hands you a bag of shredded cash to take home.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Browse Rockmount Ranch Wear, where Papa Jack Weil invented the snap-front Western shirt in 1946
• Hear how Denver raised $300,000 in three days to build its own railroad to Cheyenne
• See the Travel by Train neon sign at Union Station, put up in 1953 just as train travel was dying
• Spot Jonathan Borofsky's 60-foot sculpture Dancers outside the Denver Performing Arts Complex
• Walk through the Galleria connecting Denver's symphony, opera, ballet, and theater venues
• Learn how one University of Denver professor produced two US Secretaries of State

Lace up your shoes and let Denver tell you its own story – boom, bust, and back again.