At attention, indeed.ġ959: Activist-led homophile organization The Mattachine Society settles a chapter in Denver years earlier, but holds its first convention out of New York and California in - you guessed it - Denver. It’s noted by a local historian that small groups of airmen from Lowry AFB transformed Mary’s Tavern on Broadway into a gay bar. For gays and lesbians, the war made it easy to find and identify one another. WWII: With the men off to war and the women left at home, same-sex bonding was a requirement. In contrast, the professor also tells the story of an engineering student who, after being busted “carrying on with the boys in the YMCA building,” felt such shame at his arrest that he shot and killed himself.ġ939: Denver’s first gay bar, The Pit, opens. The prof curiously listed the occupations of some of his gay colleagues: “five musicians, three teachers, three art dealers, one minister, one judge, two actors, one florist, and one women’s tailor.” He goes on to describe parties thrown by a “young artist of exquisite taste and a noble turn of mind” that many gays in Denver attended - some in drag. The scandal!ġ914: “Homosexuality in Men and Women” is published, regaling readers with a report from a gay Denver professor that the city’s underground gay network was alive and kicking - especially at the university. Billings, who left his wife to be with his lover, saloon entertainer Charles Edwards. Undeterred, they eloped.ġ899: Citizens of Denver read of denizen W.H. A local newspaper reports that a man left the saloon to commit a “crime against nature” with another man he met there.ġ889: The Denver Times tells the story of two women - postmistress Miss Clara Dietrich and Miss Ora Chatfield - whose passionate letters were discovered, only to have their families attempt to keep them apart. Moses Home is a possibly gay bar in the settler days. Weren’t you an oasis for the weary traveler? The town reportedly has a few “ladies of the night” in a red-light district of its own. What it does have? 35 saloons where “loose morals and same-sex bondings” are the norm. So without further ado, we present: Out Front’s LGBT history of Denver and surrounding.ġ860s: In spite of a population of 4800, Denver has no churches, schools, hospitals, libraries, or banks. As it turns out, it is easier to tell the story that way. “The best way to visualize the progression of our history is to think of it in waves,” advises Phil Nash, longtime Denver resident and first director of the GLBT Center. As such, we decided to chat with some locals who lived through the days when the word ‘gay’ was practically profanity and devise a timeline of events they felt most notable. Lucky for us - and the region as a whole - the enormous body of work that Out Front Magazine’s forebears archived for the community are kept safe for reverence and posterity.īut how, in such a short amount of space, could we possibly fit nearly 40 years’ worth of archived LGBT goodness without skipping over pivotal turning points in our history? Even if we chose one event from each year since Out Front began, we’d have a tough time paying true homage to each historical event. In fact, there was almost nothing at the public library. But like any grizzled company of Americans, the boots were dusted off, the horses were remounted, and it was onward prosperity into the future we see today.īut when did we - the LGBT community - start our movement? Who were our pioneers and what sorts of setbacks did we face? For the answers, Out Front combed the history books, but admittedly found very little about the LGBT community.
In an effort to curry political favor, he named the land Denver, after the governor of the neighboring Kansas Territory, James Denver.Ĭouple the Civil War and battles with Native Americans with rampant fires and flash floods that nearly obliterated the city, and you get an idea of the hardships Denver faced the next few decades.
Larimer staked flags along Cherry Creek’s eastern side and began his version of urban development. Teepees and tents that were slapped together gave way to shoddy lean-tos which gave way to buildings that marked the makings of a small boomtown. In short order, the dusty trails of a barely-sought region became the feverishly traveled roads of a Gold Rush frenzy. 1858: Prospectors from Georgia crossed the Colorado Territory and literally struck gold at the base of the Rockies.