Denver needed reliable transportation to survive, and railroads connected the landlocked city to the outside world, carrying ore from mountain mines and bringing in materials and people who helped make it the largest metropolitan center in the Rocky Mountains. Since the first train arrived in 1870, lower downtown has been the hub of the city's railroad network. By 1880, seven competing railroads in Denver had consolidated and built Union Station near the South Platte River, and when it opened in 1881, warehouses, saloons, and hotels soon grew up nearby. After a disastrous fire in 1894, the center section gained a new roof and elegant clock tower, and in 1914 the waiting room was enlarged to create its present appearance. Trains remained the country's main form of transportation through the mid-1940s, but by the late 1950s airplanes and automobiles had surpassed passenger railroads, and trains had stopped running in Colorado except for Amtrak and the Winter Park Ski Train. In the late 1980s, citizens opposed a plan to move passenger trains to the stockyards and convert Union Station into a convention center, and in 2004 voter approval of the Regional Transportation District's FasTracks transit expansion project revived Union Station and Denver's old rail networks as the building continued to link the city's transportation future with its railroad past.

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Denver, Colorado · USA