Things to do / Travel Guide
Many of the inhabitants of the eastern Colorado and Wyoming Rockies are descendants of the original pioneers who settled the area. These pioneers were the miners and speculators searching for precious metals, the rail-men building and manning the train lines, and the ranchers in search of greener pastures. African Americans first made their way west as freed men after the Civil War.
Demographics
A sizable Asian community sprung up in the region in the aftermath of the World War II internment camps. Other inhabitants from the early days were Latin Americans, and of course Native Americans have inhabited the region from time immemorial. German-Russians also came over to Colorado in the early years of the 20th century to work in the beet and wheat fields.
Nowadays, Denver boasts the largest Hispanic constituency in the region, as this city was the one that many of the Latin Americans flocked to over the years - over 30% of the city is Hispanic, for example. The other cities in the region with large Latin American populations are Cheyenne and Colorado Springs.
Many of the other cities in the eastern Colorado and Wyoming Rockies are quite homogenous, Boulder, for example, being nearly 90% Caucasian. In the old mining towns such as Cripple Creek and Silver Plume, this trend is even more pronounced.
The larger cities found in the eastern Colorado and Wyoming Rockies - Denver and the outlying areas as far away as Boulder, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs - are home to a more metropolitan blend of residents, where immigrants from other parts of the country and the world make themselves at home.
Many residents of the bigger cities are employed in the communications, energy, aviation, and transportation industries. A number of government agencies are based out of Denver and the city also enjoys the presence of Lockheed Martin and Ball Aerospace. There are huge beer breweries in Golden and Fort Collins, which headquarter Coors and Anheuser-Busch, respectively. Needless to say, the presence of these industrial giants is greatly enjoyed by the cities' residents.
Sports and Outdoor Activities
Denverites, Boulderites, and the inhabitants of the region as a whole love sports. Denver boasts a team in each of the four major spectator sports, as well as a soccer team. The locals are dedicated to watching these games, and, of course, playing them is a major pastime, too. Not least, everyone in the region takes advantage of all the great outdoor activities, proving that if they're good enough for the indigenous population, they must be good for tourists. Biking, skiing, hiking, white-water kayaking, and other outdoor sports are all enjoyed to the hilt by residents. The region is considered an outdoor-sports paradise, and all the more because it's the locals who have built it up.
Progressives
More recently, Boulder in particular has greeted masses of educated free-thinkers in search of cleaner air and great outdoors opportunities in proximity to a large city. When you're in Boulder you'll be flabbergasted as to the amount of bicycles in the city - there are over 100 miles of bike paths within city limits. This fact can be taken as a neat indication of the environmentally- and eco-friendly nature of folks here.
Beer
One thing you'll find out on a trip to the region almost immediately is the ubiquity of beer. In addition to Coors and Anheuser-Busch, there are a number of excellent microbreweries in the more major cities as well as the smaller cities and towns. This means there are lots of brew pubs all over, and a pastime of a number of people is trying the newest good sudsy output by one of the local producers.
Mining Heritage
Elsewhere in the Eastern Colorado Rockies, the locals are proud of their mining heritage, and often, in places like Victor and Cripple Creek, they subsist on tourism revenues from visitors to the area. Silver Plume as well as Cripple Creek have institutionalized low-stakes gambling, which also serves to employ quite a few people in these areas.
Dude Ranches
Basically from Denver on north, you'll come across a healthy number of dude ranches. Many of these ranches started their histories as actual livestock-centered operations, though nowadays they serve as vast rusticated resorts. Many of the families who run them, they're ancestors founded them. Many of the towns in the area are populated by the descendants of former dude employees. Wait, there's a word for these types: cowboys.
Farther north, Cheyenne and Laramie are still today focused very much around livestock. In particular, the focus of Cheyenne's year is Cheyenne Frontier Days, its lively livestock festival, where the population can explode up to six-fold. While Cheyenne is Wyoming's idea of a big city, to the tourist from the East or West Coast the locals will appear quite down home and friendly, and will probably display rapt interested in things where you come from.
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