Lodo History

The 23 plus square block area of the original Denver is now called Lower Downtown Denver. In 1858, General William Larimer built his cabin and named his small settlement Denver City, after the governor of the Kansas Territory. Within 20 years, his settlement had grown in population (in 1860, the population was 4,749; in 1870, the population was 4759; and in 1880, the population grew to 35,629). In 1870, after the determined local citizenry had raised enough cash to finance the building of a spur of the Transcontinental Railroad from Denver to Cheyenne, Denver started in a boom cycle that would continue up to the Silver Crash in 1893.