Your walk follows a river that both gave Denver life and, in the 1864 flood eight days after the Sand Creek Massacre, nearly destroyed it. The South Platte rises near Leadville and runs three hundred and fifty miles to the North Platte in Nebraska. For Denver, the river was simultaneously the reason the city existed and a persistent problem.
The 1864 flood, striking just eight days after the Sand Creek Massacre killed approximately 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people to the southeast, destroyed much of early Denver. By the mid-twentieth century the South Platte through Denver was an industrial sewer lined with junkyards and warehouses. Cleanup began in the 1970s after activists and city officials persuaded Denver to invest in the river rather than ignore it.
The greenway system that now runs for miles along both banks has become one of Denver's most-used public spaces, threading together parks, bike paths, and neighborhoods that the river had previously divided.