Sunday, October 4, 2026

Pei opens a rattlesnake of a street and 200,000 people come downtown

1982 · Denver, 16th Street

On Oct. 4, 1982, the 16th Street Mall opened after two years of construction. I. M. Pei and OLIN paved it in a diamond pattern borrowed from Navajo blankets and a rattlesnake. More than 200,000 people came downtown to walk it.

Downtown had a bus problem dressed up as a shopping problem. Sixteenth Street was still a destination, with department stores and office towers, and it was also where the regional buses went to turn around. By the 1970s the downtown business crowd and RTD wanted the transfer stations at the ends, Market Street and Broadway, and a free shuttle in the middle so the rest of the street could belong to people. The idea had been kicking around since 1959. It got serious in 1971. It took until this date to open.

I. M. Pei & Partners designed it, with Henry Cobb as the design partner, and the landscape firm OLIN. Cobb later said the paving had two Western teachers: Navajo rugs and the diamondback rattlesnake. The granite came in 19-inch squares, charcoal, light gray, and a color they called Colorado red, set in a diamond that reads as a blanket if you are being polite and a snake if you are being honest. Historic Denver puts the original run at about 13 blocks, Broadway to Market, built for about $29 million. The lights were custom and supposed to dim as the sun did. The shuttle was free. From 1982 to 1999 the buses were custom jobs, front-wheel drive and right-hand drive, so the operator could see the door and the pedestrian at the same time. Consolidating the shuttles pulled about 870 daily bus trips off the surrounding streets.

The party was the point. Wikipedia, citing the local television account, puts the opening crowd at more than 200,000. The mall ran from Market Street Station to Civic Center Station at Broadway. Light rail joined at California and Stout in 1994. The LoDo reach came later: out to Wynkoop in 2001, to Union Station in 2002. The free bus kept the name MallRide for decades and the habit of stopping at every intersection.

The granite did not love Front Range winters. By the 2010s the pavers were failing, and the original honey locusts and red oaks were aging out. Reconstruction started in April 2022, a job the city priced around $175 million. Most of the old trees were gone by 2023. New ones went in, the median amenity zone between Arapahoe and Tremont came out, and the street got a center-running transitway with wider sidewalks. On Oct. 4, 2025, exactly 43 years after the first opening, Denver held the reopening on the same date and dropped the word mall. It is 16th Street now. The shuttle is the FreeRide. Mayor Mike Johnston told the crowd it had been the heart of the city for forty years and the work was to keep it that way. The buses were still detouring on 15th and 17th that Saturday. They came home the next day.

The rattlesnake pattern did not all survive the rebuild. The argument did. A mile of downtown that is for walking, with a free bus in the middle, is still the city's answer to the question of what a street is for.

Sources: Historic Denver — 16th Street Mall · Wikipedia — 16th Street Mall · Westword — 16th Street reopening, Oct. 4, 2025 · Denver Gazette — full reopening celebration

A Swansea kid is born who will knock out Terrible Terry in two rounds

1880 · Denver

William Rothwell was born in Denver on Oct. 4, 1880. Fighting as Young Corbett II, he knocked out featherweight champion Terry McGovern in the second round in 1901. The ledgers argue about his middle initial. The knockout does not.

He was born William Rothwell, in Denver, on this date. The middle initial is the first fight. Wikipedia has a J. The International Boxing Hall of Fame and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame have an H. He died in Denver too, on April 10, 1927, at 46. Between those dates he was one of the smallest men Colorado ever sent out to become famous.

The Colorado Sports Hall of Fame puts the first lessons on Swansea Street, where he learned to protect himself because the neighborhood required it. He turned professional in 1896, about seventeen, and took a ring name the sources also refuse to agree on. Wikipedia says he borrowed it in honor of James J. Corbett, Gentleman Jim, the heavyweight champion. The state hall of fame says he took it after his manager, Jimmy Corbett. Either way he was the second Young Corbett, five foot two or a shade over, and a puncher. Boxing was a mining-town circuit then. He fought in Leadville, Cripple Creek, and Aspen before the cities noticed.

The notice came in two steps. He stopped George Dixon in Denver for the Western featherweight title. Then, on Nov. 28, 1901, in Hartford, he met Terrible Terry McGovern for the world title. The featherweight limit was 122 pounds. They agreed to scale at 126, because Corbett could not honestly make the lower number, and the bout was billed as the championship anyway. The Hall of Fame version has him walking into McGovern's dressing room to insult the champion into a fight. It worked. Two vicious rounds, an uppercut, and McGovern was counted out. The betting line had expected the Denver kid to be gone inside five. Denver celebrated as if the title had been won on Larimer. His mother, two sisters, and a younger brother got the national attention that came with it.

He defended, including a rematch on March 31, 1903, which he also won by knockout, in the eleventh. He could not stay at the weight. Some ledgers say he gave the featherweight title up in December 1902 and went looking for lightweights. Battling Nelson stopped him twice, in 1904 and 1905. The record books still do not match: something like 68 wins, 22 or 23 losses, 16 draws, about 47 knockouts, 112 bouts. Ring Magazine put him in its hall of fame in 1965. Colorado followed in 1978. The international hall waited until 2010.

The name was borrowed. The city was not. He was born here, he learned it on Swansea, and he came home to die here. The title was a Hartford night. The parade, such as it was, was Denver's.

Sources: International Boxing Hall of Fame — Young Corbett II · Colorado Sports Hall of Fame — Young Corbett · Wikipedia — Young Corbett II

October sends tornadoes toward Barr Lake, and the llamas take the worst of it

2004 · Adams and Weld counties

Oct. 4 has been 87 degrees and it has been a 28-degree morning. In 2004 it was a string of small tornadoes from DIA toward Barr Lake and Hudson. One barn came off its foundation. Four llamas were inside.

The National Weather Service October table is unsentimental about this square. Record high, 87 degrees, in 1997, one degree past the 1922 mark. The airport series matched 87 again in 2024. Warmest minimum, 58, in 1922. Record low, 28, in 2013. Coldest maximum, 35, in 1969. Most rain, 1.07 inches, in 1984. Most snow, 5.9 inches, in 1969, the second day of the leaf-on storm yesterday's brief already walked through. Normal high is about 71. Normal low is about 42. Average remains a rumor.

2004 is the date's strange one. Several small tornadoes touched down near Brighton, Barr Lake, and Hudson, in Adams County and southern Weld. The storm survey counted up to nine non-supercell twists along a boundary from around the airport to Barr Lake and on into south-central Weld. Most of them did nothing. One, about five miles southeast of Brighton, did not get the memo. It tore up a recreational vehicle, pulled a barn off its foundation, and threw the roof about 100 feet. Four llamas were in the barn when it collapsed. They were injured. Nobody was killed. October on the plains will do this sometimes, a summer habit that forgot the month, and then go back to being wind.

The older versions are just wind. In 1912 a south wind sustained at 55, gusting to 60, shoved the high to 83, the warmest reading that October managed. In 1924 a west wind at 46, gusting to 50, did the opposite, a bora that held the high to 57 after a 70 the day before. In 1997 the 87 on this date was a record, and the 86 on the 5th tied one. The closet is the usual argument. Shorts in 1997 and 2024. A barn roof in a field in 2004. And, if you were here in 1969, snow still coming down on trees that had not dropped a leaf.

Sources: NWS Boulder — Denver October normals and records · NWS Boulder — Oct. 4, 2004, in the daily weather history · ThorntonWeather — Oct. 4 to Oct. 10 weather history · CIRA RAMMB — Oct. 4, 2004 Colorado tornadoes