Colorado history

Thursday, September 24, 2026

Nine men paper a mile of Cheyenne and Arapaho ground into a town that will last two months, a president walks from Lafayette Street to an Aurora hospital, and this date still cannot decide between 91 degrees and a 29-degree morning.

Nine signatures invent St. Charles, which Denver will jump before winter

1858 · Mouth of Cherry Creek, Kansas Territory

On Sept. 24, 1858, nine men met at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte, claimed a square mile, and signed the St. Charles Town Association into existence. It is one of the earliest municipal documents in what became Colorado. Two months later William Larimer's party renamed the empty claim Denver City.

Montana City, a few miles up the Platte, had already disappointed the Lawrence, Kansas party. Gold was thin. The ground at the confluence looked better: trails already crossed it, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho used the flats seasonally. So a splinter group walked north, measured off 640 acres east of Cherry Creek, and wrote themselves a town.

The article of agreement is dated that afternoon, upper waters of the South Platte, Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory. The signers were William McGaa, John S. Smith, Adnah French, T. C. Dickson, John A. Churchill, William Hartley, Frank M. Cobb, William N. Smith, and Charles Nichols. McGaa and Smith were traders; the Lawrence men wanted them in the company because they could talk to the people who actually held the land. The same day they adopted a constitution copied, more or less, from Montana City. Officers waited until the 28th. Several of them wanted the name Golden City. Nichols had lived in St. Charles, Missouri, and won the argument.

They surveyed a few streets, posted claim notices, and did not build much. Headquarters stayed at Montana City. After an October 2 meeting most of the company headed back to Lawrence for the winter, leaving a thin guard that included Nichols and an unfinished cabin.

On Nov. 22 the Leavenworth-Lecompton party under William Larimer camped on the vacant east bank, offered whiskey, promises, and the rumor of a noose, and filed Denver City on top of St. Charles. The name belonged to James W. Denver, who had just stopped being governor of Kansas and never asked for the compliment. Auraria went up on the west bank in early November. The three paper towns spent a year arguing about which creek bank was civilization. The legislature later folded them together. The creek is still the creek. The square mile is downtown.

Sources: Wikipedia — Timeline of Denver · History of Colorado (Stone) — St. Charles Association · American History Central — Colorado Gold Rush · Wikipedia — History of Denver

Ike leaves the Doud house on his own feet and checks into Fitzsimons

1955 · Doud House and Fitzsimons Army Hospital, Denver and Aurora

In the early hours of Saturday, Sept. 24, 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower woke with chest pain at Mamie's childhood home on Lafayette Street. By afternoon an electrocardiogram had named the attack. He walked to the car and rode to Fitzsimons Army Hospital, where the eighth floor became the Western White House for seven weeks.

He had been in Denver for a work-and-play stretch at the Doud house, 750 Lafayette, the only address the Eisenhowers treated as a second home. Friday afternoon he played Cherry Hills. He blamed a hamburger with Bermuda onions, then the clubhouse phone that kept pulling him off the tee, then his own temper. He told the pro his left arm hurt. He finished the round anyway.

About 2:45 a.m. Saturday he woke Mamie. She tried milk of magnesia. Maj. Gen. Howard Snyder, the White House physician traveling with them, came over and treated the pain as indigestion long enough that the official story still argues with itself. An electrocardiogram around midday showed an anterior myocardial infarction. Snyder's first bulletin to the press had called it a stomach complaint. The 2:30 p.m. bulletin used the words coronary thrombosis.

Eisenhower walked out of the Doud house on his own, leaning on Snyder and Col. Byron Pollock of Fitzsimons. The motorcade took a quiet route to Aurora. He was put on the eighth floor of Building 500, Room 8002, in an oxygen tent. The floor was sealed off and nicknamed the Western White House. Vice President Nixon, John Foster Dulles, Herbert Brownell, and Sherman Adams kept the government moving from Washington. Dr. Paul Dudley White flew in from Boston and told the country the attack was moderate and the outlook satisfactory. The Dow still dropped about 6 percent that Monday, the worst one-day slide since 1929.

He stayed nearly seven weeks. The press corps sent maroon pajamas embroidered Much Better Thanks. He turned 65 in the hospital on Oct. 14, took unassisted steps on the roof on Oct. 25, and left Denver having turned a private coronary into a public lesson the American Heart Association still dates from this week. Building 500 is still on the Anschutz campus. The Doud house is still on Lafayette. Cherry Hills still takes a phone call on the fourth hole.

Sources: Colorado Encyclopedia — Fitzsimons General Hospital · Colorado Encyclopedia — Doud House · National Archives — Heart Attack Strikes Ike · American Heart Association — The presidential heart attack that changed America

The date holds 91 degrees in one pocket and a 29-degree snow morning in the other

2000 · Denver and Boulder

Sept. 24's official personality is a 75-degree afternoon. In 2020 Denver hit 91. In 2000 the same date woke up at 29 with slush on the new airport and a 42-degree high. In 1986 Boulder clocked 131 mph at NCAR, the hardest September gust the town has on paper.

The 1991–2020 average high is 75.5, the average low 46. That is the version the calendar sells in late September, when the light has already gone thin and everyone is still wearing summer shoes.

The sheet disagrees with itself. The record high for the date is 91, set in 2020, a year that also gave Denver 101 degrees on Sept. 5 and snow on Sept. 8. The record low is 29, shared by 1926 and 2000. The lowest high is 42, same two years. Official snow on the date itself maxes out at 1.0 inch in 1970. The more honest storm is the one that started on the 23rd in 2000 and finished melting on the 24th. Rain and drizzle at DIA flipped to an estimated 2.1 inches of wet snow by morning, most of it already leaving the stick. The old Stapleton site took 0.2 inch. Boulder measured 6 inches. Castle Rock and Morrison took 4. Conifer got 10, Crow Hill 8, Chief Hosa 7, Ralston Reservoir 5.

Wind is the other argument. In 1901 Denver held northwest winds at 50 mph with gusts to 57. On this date in 1986 a downslope roar crossed the metro and saved its worst numbers for Boulder. NCAR peaked at 131 mph, still treated as the highest September gust in town. Davidson Mesa hit 118. Niwot saw 92. Seventy to 90 large trees came down; about a dozen of them found cars. Construction walls folded. Solar panels left a roof. Traffic lights and power lines followed.

Wear the layer you can take off at lunch. The date has already proven it can do a heat record, a freeze, and a mountain-wave tantrum without changing its name.

Sources: Extreme Weather Watch — Denver Sept. 24 · NWS notes via ThorntonWeather · The Denver Post — earliest September snows