Kansas City and Denver are about of an age and are comparable in many ways. The former still remains a kind of capital to which naturally gravitate men who have made fortunes in southwestern oil and cattle, while the latter is a mining capital. Of her "hundred millionaires," most have been enriched by mines, and the story of her sudden fortunes and of her famous "characters" makes a long and racy chapter in American history, running the gamut from tragedy to farce. And, like Kansas City, Denver is particularly American. Practically all her millionaires, past and present, came of native stock, and almost all her wealth has been taken from ground in the State of Colorado.
J. M. Oskison, in his "Unconventional Portrait," published in "Collier's" a year or so ago, told a great deal about Denver in a few words:
Last October a frock-coated clergyman of the Episcopal Church stood up in one of the luxurious parlors of Denver's newest hotel and said: "I am an Arapahoe Indian; when I was a little boy my people used to hunt buffalo all over this country; we made our camps right on this place where Denver is now." There is not very much gray in that man's hair.
In the summer of 1867, when Vice-President Colfax came to Denver from Cheyenne, after a stage ride of twenty-two hours, he found it a hopeful city of 5,000. Denver had just learned that Cherry Creek sometimes carried a great deal of water down to the Platte River, and that it wasn't wise to build in its bed.
Irrigation has made a garden of the city and lands about. There are 240,000 people who make Denver their home to-day. The city under the shadow of the mountains is spread over an area of sixty square miles; a plat of redeemed desert with an assessed valuation of $135,000,000.
In 1870, three years after the visit of Colfax, Denver got its first railroad: a spur line from Cheyenne; in the 80's it got street cars; to-day it has the look of a city that is made--and well made. But, as I have said before, that has, hitherto, been largely a matter of good fortune. Denver's youth has saved her from the municipal disease which threatens such older cities as St. Louis and St. Paul: hardening of the arteries of traffic. Also, nature has given her what may be termed a good "municipal complexion," wherein she has been more fortunate than Kansas City, whose warts and wens have necessitated expensive operations by the city "beauty doctor."