Colorado history

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

The last Interstate stitch opens north of downtown, a Fowler kid is born who will close a World Series, and Crested Butte sends Hollywood a Monday.

I-76 finally meets I-25 and Colorado's Interstate map stops leaking

1993 · North Denver / Adams County

On Sept. 15, 1993, CDOT opened the last mile of I-76 from Pecos Street to I-25. That ramp closed a gap that had forced plains traffic into the Mousetrap for decades and, by the state's own count, finished Colorado's Interstate system.

Most of the road already existed. Construction on what was first called I-80S started in August 1958 on the northeastern plains. Julesburg to Omaha was four lanes by 1970. In January 1976 the S got retired and 488 signs became I-76, a bicentennial number that also happened to be Colorado's centennial year. The missing piece was the urban end: a short, expensive braid of ramps between I-70 in Arvada and the Valley Highway.

The last contract ran from Pecos to east of I-25. Twelve projects, 24 bridges, connections to US 36 and I-270, about four years, $91 million, Centric-Jones of Denver on the paperwork. Before that day, eastbound I-76 dumped you onto I-25. After it, you could stay on the same shield from Wheat Ridge to Nebraska without asking the Mousetrap for a favor.

Glenwood Canyon had already given the national system its postcard finish in October 1992. Colorado's own last stitch was less photogenic: industrial frontage, Clear Creek, a stack of ramps. It is the kind of history you only notice when the gap is gone. People still complain about I-25. They no longer have to exit I-76 to start complaining.

Sources: CDOT — Interstate 76 history · CDOT — last Interstate segment in Colorado · AARoads — I-76 east, Denver to Commerce City

Luke Hochevar is born in Denver, then learns to throw in Fowler

1983 · Denver / Fowler

Luke Anthony Hochevar arrived in Denver on Sept. 15, 1983, grew up in Wiley and Fowler, and spent a high-school career being coached by his dad. Twenty-two years later the Kansas City Royals took him first overall. Ten years after that he was the winning pitcher in World Series Game 5.

The birth certificate says Denver. The story is the Arkansas Valley. Brian Hochevar had tried out with the Nuggets after CSU Pueblo basketball, missed, and turned into the kind of small-town coach who also happens to be your father. At Fowler High, Luke was Colorado 2A player of the year, all-state in baseball three times, all-state in basketball, and academic all-state every year, which is what happens when the town is small enough that the same kid has to do all the jobs.

The Dodgers drafted him twice. He went to Tennessee instead, then played independent ball after a contract fight that became a scouting-report paragraph. Kansas City grabbed him first overall in 2006, $3.5 million bonus, and he debuted in 2007. The ERA as a starter was not a poem. The bullpen year in 2013 was: 1.92 in 58 games. Tommy John ate 2014. In 2015 he threw a clean inning in the clincher against the Mets and got the win in the last World Series game Kansas City has needed.

Colorado produces a lot of pitchers who leave. Hochevar left, won the last game that mattered, and retired in 2018. Fowler still has a high school. Denver still has the birth record. The valley keeps the part where a dad who missed the Nuggets taught his kid how to miss bats.

Sources: Wikipedia — Luke Hochevar · Baseball-Reference — Hochevar · Congressional Record — honoring Hochevar, 2005

Heidi Montag is born in Crested Butte, a town that already had enough plot

1986 · Crested Butte

Heidi Blair Montag was born Sept. 15, 1986, in Crested Butte, where Elk Avenue is the whole downtown and the family restaurant was called The Timberline. Two decades later MTV pointed a camera at her in Los Angeles and a Gunnison County ski town became a footnote on The Hills.

Crested Butte in 1986 was a former coal camp that had already chosen wildflowers and a ski hill over another boom. Montag is German for Monday, and Sept. 15, 1986, was in fact a Monday, which is the rare case of a last name showing up on time. Her mother and stepfather ran The Timberline for 21 years. The town has one main street, a National Register historic district, and a talent for exporting people who then have to explain where they are from at parties.

She left for California, landed on Laguna Beach long enough to get invited onto The Hills, and spent several seasons turning a roommate plot into a national argument about friendship, fame, and how much work a person is allowed to do on a face. The show needed a villain and a wedding. Crested Butte supplied the origin story and then went back to closing the pass in October.

Colorado keeps doing this: a small mountain town produces someone the rest of the country thinks they know, and the town itself remains a place where you can still park on Elk Avenue if you arrive before the weekend. On her birthday the honest version is not the tabloid reel. It is a kid from 8,900 feet who left, got famous for reasons that have nothing to do with coal or columbine, and gave the Butte a sentence it did not ask for.

Sources: Wikipedia — Heidi Montag · Wikipedia — Crested Butte · IMDb — Heidi Montag