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Denver
The Mile High City, capital of Colorado
Denver sits exactly one mile above sea level — its nickname, the Mile High City, is literal, with a step on the state capitol marked at 5,280 feet. The city spreads across the High Plains right where they meet the abrupt wall of the Rocky Mountain Front Range, so the skyline rises against a backdrop of snow-capped peaks. Founded as a gold-rush camp where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River in 1858, it became the territorial and then state capital.
That position at the foot of the Rockies made Denver the supply, banking, and rail hub for the whole mountain mining region, and it remains the great metropolis of the interior West, anchoring a metro of nearly three million. The plains run flat and dry to the east — the mountains climb sharply to the west, putting world-class skiing and the Continental Divide within an hour's drive of downtown.