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Looking through some old work recently, I discovered that I supported Denver International Airport, much to the surprise of Carl Miller, who edited these pages then.
Unlike Roy Romer, I will not recant. I still think it makes sense.
Even so, if I'd been dictator of Colorado, I'd have put the airport on Monument Hill with high-speed rail links to Denver and Colorado Springs. Why build an airport 25 miles out to serve one metropolitan area, when you could build it 30 miles out and serve two?
An answer might lie in the land speculations of the Silverado gang and their contributions to Federico Pena's 1987 campaign. But I didn't know that then. Nor did I know that air freight would get treated like a stepchild.
Recent critics point out that the project is running
late and over budget, that subsidies might be necessary. So
what? That's how Denver has always done its job as the
inland port for the Rocky Mountain Empire.
It began in 1859, when Denver's main competitor was
Auraria, just across Cherry Creek. Denver got the
stagecoach terminal, not because it was a better site, but
because the city fathers bribed the Leavenworth & Pikes
Peak Express Co. with 53 lots and nine shares in the
profitable town land development company. As Samuel S.
Curtis, namesake of Curtis Street, explained, this was
the vital move in the making of the city.
Denver's next competitor was Golden, territorial capital and gateway to the mines of Clear Creek. Golden magnate W.A.H. Loveland began building a railroad north to connect to the Union Pacific mainline at Cheyenne.
John Evans, former territorial governor and Denver real-estate baron, stood to lose big if Golden got there first. Suffice it to say that the Grant Administration was corrupt, Evans enjoyed many Republican connections, and his railroad, the Denver Pacific, got the federal land grant and other favors.
At the turn of the century, it was time to smash Pueblo, which had been prospering because it sat on the main rail route into the mountains. David Moffat looted the First National Bank to lay rails due west from the city.
His route over 11,660-foot Rollins Pass was no cure; Denver still feared losing its position. Thus the Moffat Tunnel, built at public expense. Like DIA, it was late and well over budget, and for the first decade, it did not connect Denver to the Pacific, but only to Craig.
Eventually the Dotsero Cut-off, and then the tunnel's water from the Western Slope, enabled Denver to squash Pueblo. When the complete history of the routing of Interstate 70 appears, it will doubtless reveal that Denver destroyed neighborhoods, making its own citizens suffer, rather than allow another city to enjoy better access.
DIA is just another chapter in 135 years of subsidies, corruption, delays, cost overruns, etc. Colorado was constructed with Denver as its hub; changing things now would involve tremendous expense and complication. DIA may look expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than the alternative of supporting another metropolis.
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