The County and City of Denver is both the most heavily populated city and the capital city of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county. It is located within the South Platte River Valley, situated just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains on the western edge of the High Plains. The downtown district within the city of Denver is situated east of the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, about 19km or 12 miles east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Due to its elevation of precisely a mile, Denver is nicknamed Mile-High City because it lies 1,609.344m or 5,280 feet or 1.6 km above sea level. The temporal reference for the Mountain Time Zone is taken from the truth that the 105th meridian west of Greenwich passes through Union Station.
During November of 1858, the city of Denver was founded. It started out as a mining township which became well-known during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush located in Western Kansas Territory. The summertime of 1858, a group of gold prospectors arrived from Lawrence, in the state of Kansas and they established Montana City on the South Platte River's banks. This was the very first settlement that would later become established as Denver. Soon after its early stages, the location faded. By summertime of the year 1859 on the other hand, it was abandoned in favor of the city of St. Charles and in favor of Auraria, named after the gold mining town with the same name located within Georgia State.
Denver presently has a fast paced growing population approaching 560,000 residents and is the transportation, industrial and commercial center for Colorado. The economy has been further influenced by the biomedical technology and telecommunication businesses. Real estate, construction, tourism and mining also play important parts. Many federal agencies like for instance a U.S. Mint, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all call the city of Denver home. Opened in the year 1995, the Denver International Airport is the largest airport within all of North America, spanning more than 53 square miles.
The economy of the Denver-Aurora metropolitan region is extremely strong, with numerous possibilities for both professional and business growth in the city of Denver. There are 17 head offices of Fortune 1000 company situated within the state of Colorado. Sixteen of these corporate headquarters are located within the Denver-Aurora metropolitan region. Qwest Communications is the biggest company who has their corporate headquarters in the Denver region. The Sports Authority and Molson Coors Brewing are two of the most popular businesses who have their headquarters situated here.
Within the city of Denver, the work force is well educated, ranking in the top 20 American cities, based on the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey. Approximately 36% of the population boasts a higher education or a college degree. Central Connecticut State University ranked Denver sixth among the most literate cities within the USA during 2005.
The central location of the city makes it a perfect location for distributing goods to and from the Mountain States as well as for storage. The area of Denver-Aurora has a large concentration of federal government institutions. Except for Washington D.C. the metropolitan area of Denver comprises a lot more federal personnel than any other metropolitan region within the city.