Watch the kayakers ride the rapids where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte. Confluence Park marks the junction of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, and it was here in the fall of 1858 that two groups of gold seekers established competing camps on opposite banks of Cherry Creek. The party that would become Denver City set up on the west bank; the group that became Auraria settled on the east.
They merged in 1860. The gold discovery that brought them here was modest — just enough color in the creek gravel to set off a stampede — but the location proved itself regardless. Denver sits at the natural gateway between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, and even after the placer gold played out, the city endured as the supply center for every mining boom in the mountains to the west.
The South Platte was historically prone to catastrophic floods; the great flood of 1864 destroyed much of early Denver. The greenway corridor you see here, completed in the 1970s, transformed what had become an industrial wasteland back into public space. Watch the kayakers navigating the engineered whitewater features; this stretch of urban rapids was designed specifically for recreation.