Cultural Diversity in Denver. Denver was considered the gateway to the west, so it is very diverse. Everybody came west and they all came west for the same reasons: looking for opportunity, land and gold....
Everybody came west and they all came west for the same reasons: looking for opportunity, land and gold. Denver was founded on gold. There was absolutely nothing here in 1857 and within 20 years there were 200,000 people here. Most of them came by foot, just walking across the plains and there are 30,000 men who came here in the first year of the gold rush. There were lots of Chinese people that worked on the transcontinental railroads that came through and they settled here. We have a great museum, The Black American West Museum which tells the forgotten story of African Americans in the west. After the civil war, a lot of freed slaves came west. It's a little known fact that about a third of the cowboys on the great cattle drives were African Americans. They were the ones who had worked with horses and cattle on plantations; it was a very dangerous, rough, and low paying job. This museum has pictures of all black wagon trains that came out, all black settlements and black minors. They played an important role in every type of thing that you can think of in the West. Denver always had a large Hispanic population. The first non-native Americans that were here were the Spanish who came up this far into Colorado. About a third of the population within the city and county of Denver is Hispanic now. In the metro, it has dropped down to a lower percentage. There are roughly about as many Native Americans in the State as there ever were. The tribes that were in this region were migrating tribes like the Blackfoot. We don't have that large of a population as in the reservations that some of the other western States have. But there are Native American influences everywhere.
The Denver arts museum was the first arts museum in the world to collect Native American art. There are plenty of museums that were collecting the pots, beadwork, headdresses and everything else. This is the first museum to collect them as art and so they wanted the best pots that have ever been made and because of that, it's regarded as the best artistic collection of Native American art in the world. We also have a Latin American museum which tells the history of Latino influences in the Americas on all mediums. Sakura Square is the center of the Japanese community. Denver had an internment camp during World War II and so a lot of the Japanese stayed and relocated to this area following the war. Our governor at that time was very outspoken against this and politically, it cost him his future in politics. He has become a hero now to the Japanese community. There is a statue of him down there. And then in the area on South Federal, there is a large number of Vietnamese and Asian and Thai and Korean restaurants and shops and stores. We have a lot of South American restaurants. We have got Brazilian and Peruvian restaurants. There is a Peruvian restaurant right near our office which is just great. We serve more buffalo than any other city. Buffalo is kind of a new red meat because it has fewer calories than chicken. It's very lean.
We have the largest Scottish Irish festival in the country in Estes Park, about 70 miles away. It is called The Longs Peak Scottish/Irish Highland Festival. It is right at the foot of Rocky Mountain National Park; a gorgeous location. They have about 15 bands and they bring them over from Scotland and Canada and all across the country. It's a huge, huge festival.
