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Denver still wrestling with city's cow-town image

Bill Gallo, Special to the Rocky

Published November 20, 2008 at 4:27 p.m.

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Do Denverites still fret about what the world thinks of them?

Yes, says state historian Bill Convery. Always have. Always will.

"It's deep in our DNA. That we're still a cow town and don't belong in the first rank of cities. The whole rush to build a railroad was about that; so was the rush to build the world's largest airport (DIA) in the nation's 24th-largest city."

Self-consciousness has been a part of Denver's mind-set since the beginning, he says. It's a plague of perceived inferiority, rooted in the old 19th century dependence on Eastern capital and imported labor. Will we never measure up?

"I don't think so," Convery said. "I think we know that we live on the margins here: the margins of public consciousness, the margins of the environment, the margins of mountain and plain. The idea is embedded. ... It may not be true anymore, but it's a habit of thought for us."

He points to two events as illustration. When crews of the Kansas Pacific completed the right of way to Denver in 1870, Georgetown miners donated a silver railroad spike to commemorate the feat. But on the eve of the ceremony the spike vanished: Legend says a thief hocked it for a jug of whiskey. The next day, a man with a sledgehammer drove home an iron spike sheathed in white paper.

Embarrassment all around.

More than 130 years later, work crews installed the flashy but untested automated luggage delivery system that was supposed to make DIA the most up-to-date airport in the world. The automation failed, and the airport opening was delayed five times.

Embarrassment all around.

The moral of the tale?

"It's anxiety," Convery said. "The belief that we have to have the latest and the best to be a world-class city. But the truth is you don't need a silver spike to finish a railroad, and you need only a conventional system to get baggage to the terminal. Different times, same story."