Colorado history

Sunday, September 6, 2026

A singing granite tower on Cheyenne Mountain finds its name, a farm kid from Aurora grows up to run the state, and Denver's official thermometer pretends September is still July.

The Shrine of the Sun gets a name, a radio audience, and a job it still has

1937 · Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

On Sept. 6, 1937, Spencer Penrose dedicated the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun on Cheyenne Mountain. NBC carried the ceremony. The 100-foot granite tower looks over The Broadmoor, the zoo, and half of the eastern plains, and it has been ringing the quarter-hour ever since.

Penrose had already given Colorado Springs a hotel, a zoo, and a highway up Pikes Peak. In 1934 he started a fortress of Cheyenne Mountain granite with no wood and no nails, meant as a shrine to the rising and setting sun and, more privately, a tomb for himself and Julie. Architect Charles E. Thomas drew a Romanesque tower that looks like it wandered uphill from a medieval hillside and decided the view was worth staying.

Then Will Rogers died in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska, in August 1935, while the walls were still going up. Penrose and Rogers had been friends. The unnamed tower got a name. Jo Davidson sent a bronze bust from Paris. Randall Davey painted the Pikes Peak region onto the interior walls. On dedication day the NBC network put the mountain on the air, which is a lot of ceremony for a building that also had to outlast the Depression, the weather, and its own builder.

Penrose and Julie are buried in the chapel at the base. The Westminster chimes still walk the quarter-hours down the mountain. Zoo admission still includes the 1.4-mile drive up the Russell Tutt Scenic Highway. The plaque is not shy: This singing tower has been built as a lasting memorial to WILL ROGERS dedicated September 6, 1937. Ninety years later the granite has not asked for a rewrite.

Sources: Wikipedia — Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun · History Colorado — Shrine of the Sun · Cheyenne Mountain Zoo — visiting the shrine · KRDO — 85th anniversary

Bill Ritter is born in Denver, sixth of twelve, and later gets the keys

1956 · Denver / Aurora

August William Ritter Jr. was born in Denver on Sept. 6, 1956, and raised on a small farm in Aurora with eleven siblings. In 2006 he became the first Colorado-born governor elected in more than thirty years, then spent one term trying to talk the state into a New Energy Economy.

Sixth of twelve is not a quiet childhood. Ritter graduated with Gateway High's first class in 1974, took a political-science degree from Colorado State, a law degree from CU Boulder, and a few years in Zambia with his wife Jeannie running a food and nutrition center. Then he came home and prosecuted. Roy Romer appointed him Denver district attorney in 1993. He kept the job until 2005.

The 2006 campaign needed a sentence. Someone in the orbit offered New Energy Economy. Ritter ran with it, beat Bob Beauprez, and walked into the governor's office as the first Colorado-born person elected to the job since 1975. He signed a stack of energy bills — fifty-seven by the official count — including a 30 percent renewable portfolio standard, and liked to joke that the press corps accused him of cutting every solar-panel ribbon in the state.

He did not run again in 2010, citing family. John Hickenlooper took the chair. Ritter went back to Fort Collins and founded CSU's Center for the New Energy Economy, which spent the next fourteen years handing clean-energy homework to legislatures that asked for it. The farm kid from Aurora is 70 today. The phrase outlived the term of office, which is about as much as a slogan can hope for.

Sources: Wikipedia — Bill Ritter · National Governors Association — Gov. Bill Ritter · Colorado State University — Center for the New Energy Economy

Denver hits 98 on Sept. 6, then remembers the year it hit 34

2022 · Denver International Airport

On Sept. 6, 2022, Denver's official high reached 98 degrees, breaking the date record of 97 set two years earlier. The same calendar square once bottomed out at 34 in 1929. September on the High Plains has never been a reliable narrator.

The 2020 heat wave had already used this date as a warm-up. After 101 on Sept. 5, the airport tied 97 on the 6th and then, three days later, measured snow. 2022 decided the 97 was not enough and pushed the official reading to 98. Schools sent kids home early. Libraries opened as cooling rooms. The National Weather Service issued a September heat advisory, which is a sentence Denver does not enjoy writing.

That is only half of the file. On Sept. 6, 1929, the official low was 34 and the high struggled to 45. Same date, different century, same instrument class arguing with itself. The modern average high sits around 83. Pack a jacket and a bottle of water and refuse to let the calendar pick for you.

Yesterday's brief already told the 101-to-snow story. Today's moral is smaller and meaner: this particular square on the grid has held both a date-record bake and a near-freeze, and it will not apologize for either.

Sources: Denver Post — 98 breaks the Sept. 6 record · 9NEWS — Denver sets heat record · Extreme Weather Watch — Denver Sept. 6 records