Glenbow Museum Archives.

A little-known chapter of indigenous Colorado history will unfold tonight when the History Colorado Center's ongoing monthly lecture series presents "And Many Wore Moccasins: The Ute, Navajo and Blackfoot Nations and World War I," with Dr. Timothy Winegard of Colorado Mesa University.

See also:
- Photos: Denver diorama finds new home in History Colorado Center lobby
- Colorful Colorado sign lives on at History Colorado
- Best New Building, Downtown, 2012: History Colorado Center

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A view from the balcony of the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre. Slide show: A Tour of the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre

When the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre closed in 1991, the fate of the century-old building was uncertain. Although the city said it wanted to save this last vestige of the original Elitch Gardens Amusement Park, there was no money for the project. So in 2002, the Historic Elitch Theatre Foundation was created to not just remind people of this piece of cultural history, but actually restore it. Since then, the non-profit has been able to stabilize the structure, but without enough funding, a full renovation has been out of reach.

So this Tuesday, December 4, the Highlands Garden Cafe will host a Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre Holiday Benefit to raise both interest and money for the massive undertaking. In advance of the fundraiser, the organization gave Westword a peek at the grand space, which has sat unused -- but hardly unloved -- for more than two decades.

For more photos, visit our full slide show: "A Tour of the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre."

See also:
- Slide show: A Tour of the Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre
- Radium and roller coasters: A brief, dirty history of Elitch Gardens
- Historic Elitch Gardens Theatre Holiday benefit
- Another Act for the Elitch Theatre
- For Your Amusement: The city is up to its neck in the old Elitch's

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Neal Cassady captured in 1944 Denver Police Department mug shots.

Born and raised in Denver, Heather Dalton has long nurtured affection for one of the city's proudest cultural alumni: Neal Cassady, the larger-than-life literary macho-muse who inspired the character of Dean Moriarty, hero of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. For the past several years, Dalton, a musician, filmmaker and producer at Colorado Public Television, has been hard at work on Neal Cassady: The Denver Years, which documents Cassady's difficult youth in Prohibition-era Denver.

Cassady's exploits in D-Town are the stuff of local legend: his brief stint as a student at East High School, his time in a correctional facility for boys, his days following his father through the alleyways and dive bars of Larimer Street. Drawn from Cassady's memoir, The First Third, as well as her own extensive research, Dalton's film explores the mythology behind the man whose personality and spirit inspired many writers -- and led to the creation of one very famous scroll.

See also:
- Keeping the Beat: Musician David Amram remembers Neal Cassady
- Street artist Theo on Banksy, Jack Kerouac and running from the cops
- Jack Kerouac wrote here: Crisscrossing America chasing cool

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Over the last four decades Gary Hart has been a major force in politics -- from "inventing" the Iowa caucuses while managing George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, to unintentionally creating the template for political sex scandals with the "monkey business" photo during his 1987 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, to issuing a prescient study warning of terrorism before 9/11. Along the way he also served as a U.S. senator from Colorado for a dozen years...and also became a novelist.

We recently touched base with the former senator to discuss his latest novel, Durango, based on the real-life story of the Colorado town's political drama involving the Animas-La Plata project. And while we were talking with him, he also asked this sage of political strategy about the current presidential campaign, touching on Romney's lack of real questioning, Republican opposition to the president's legislation, and whether Obama is repeating the mistakes of previous incumbents.

See also:
- Q&A for former Colorado senator Gary Hart
- Bill Clinton Needles Gary Hart at Warren Beatty Tribute
- E.J. Dionne on the Supreme Court, cable news and evangelicals

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During this heated election season, the American public is awash in "free enterprise" rhetoric, reassurances about the benevolence of the wealthy and parables about bootstraps. But these aren't new themes for those on the right side of the aisle; as KLZ Denver radio scripts from the 1940s demonstrate, extolling the wealthy and affirming the role of the "exceptional man" in improving the lot of the average American have been cornerstones of capitalist philosophy for decades. These radio scripts come from a short weekly radio segment called "Enterprise Unlimited"; they were written by journalist Elliot Wager during his time as a KLZ staffer, and he donated them to the Auraria Library Special Collections Department in the late 1980s. Wager went on to have a long career in communications and academia, retiring from teaching full time at what was then known as Metropolitan State College of Denver in 1987.

See also:
- From the Archives: "Boycott Coors Beer" protest comic book from 1977
- From the Archives: the prison poetry of Minoru Yasui
- From the Archives: St. Cajetan's Church barely escaped demolition

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Minoru Yasui

If you live or work downtown, you probably drive by Minoru Yasui every day. Not the man himself -- he died in 1986, after serving more than four decades as a lawyer and cultural leader in Denver -- but the spot bearing his name: the Minoru Yasui Plaza, at 303 West Colfax Avenue, where there's a bronze bus of the man who committed his life to getting justice for himself and for the Japanese-American people.

See also:
- From the Archives: St. Cajetan's Church barely escaped demolition
- From the Archives: Degrees of Separation from Thomas Hornsby Ferril's Autograph
- From the Archives: Letter from Alice Toklas on the death of Gertrude Stein

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http://www.succm.org

There are many reasons why we Coloradans love our state. Colorado keeps collecting accolades that prove time and time again why we truly are the best in the West. And here's the latest: Southern Ute Cultural Center & Museum in Ignacio has been rated the "Top Western Museum" by True West magazine.

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Streetcar trekkers stop for beer at Hops & Pie on Tennyson Street.

To the stroller-pushing mommies and patio-side drinkers who lined West 32nd Avenue on Sunday afternoon, it probably looked like just another Cruiser ride, as thirty folks on bikes trekked up the Highland hills in Sunday's 100-degree heat.

Yet this sweaty mass, organized by the Denver New Rail~Volutionaries, was on a mission to retrace a living thread of Denver history: The Denver Tramway Company's Number 5 streetcar line.

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Stephen Batura, "Stock", casein on panel

This week's review of Appropriated: The Chronicled West at the Robischon Gallery by Michael Paglia examines the show which opened back on March 29 and runs through Saturday.

Below are a few images from the show.

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"Anne Evans" by Emma Richardson Cherry, courtesy of History Colorado

"People go to the Denver Art Museum all the time, they go to the Denver Public Library and they don't really think of the history behind those things," explains Ashley Rogers, assistant director of the Byers-Evans House Museum. The mission of the new exhibit Anne Evans: Colorado's Cultural Visionary is to get people thinking about the Denver woman who was responsible for founding and championing many of the cultural institutions in this state.

Read on to see how this show will give a glimpse into the life of this cultural hero who helped preserve the arts in Colorado.

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