Monday, October 5, 2026

A team called the Rockies beats Toronto, and 7,359 people are there to see it

1976 · McNichols Sports Arena, Denver

On Oct. 5, 1976, the Colorado Rockies played their first NHL game and beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 at McNichols. The crowd was 7,359. The name left for New Jersey. The building did not survive it either.

Hockey was back, and this time it had a league that was not going to fold over the summer. The Kansas City Scouts, born in 1974 and already out of patience with Missouri, had moved to Denver and kept a mountain range for a name. On this date they played the first game. Toronto came to McNichols Sports Arena, at 1635 Bryant, a barn that had opened on Aug. 22, 1975, and could hold about 16,600. Denver filled 7,359 of the seats. The Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, which later ranked the night 104th on its list of the state's sports moments, called the crowd sparse. Sparse is polite. It was a Tuesday in October, and the city was still deciding whether it believed.

The scoreboard believed. Larry Skinner scored the first Colorado goal at 3:16 of the first, a power play, with Chuck Arnason and Wilf Paiement on the assists. Dave Hudson made it 2-0. Errol Thompson pulled Toronto within one, also on a power play, from Lanny McDonald. Nelson Pyatt scored in the second. Paiement scored in the third, which gave him a goal and two assists on the night, and Bob Neely answered for the Leafs. Final, 4-2. Shots were 41-35 Toronto. Dave Plati's hall-of-fame note says two Rockies goalies combined to stop 39 of 41. Johnny Wilson coached Colorado. Red Kelly coached Toronto. With 23 seconds left, Colin Campbell and Lanny McDonald each took five minutes for fighting, which is how a 1976 hockey game says goodnight.

The franchise never became a winner here. The New York Times, writing up the May 27, 1982, sale, said they had not been a winning team from the Scouts years through a sixth Denver season that finished last in a 21-team league. Peter Gilbert, who had bought them in 1981, said he lost $4 million. The board of governors approved the move to the Meadowlands. John McMullen's group took them. They became the New Jersey Devils. The baseball Rockies arrived in 1993 and borrowed the name. The Avalanche arrived in 1995, from Quebec, and borrowed the building. McNichols closed on Sept. 29, 1999, and came down on Jan. 24, 2000. The first night is still the one with the small crowd and the 4-2. Belief came later, and it came wearing a different sweater.

Sources: Colorado Sports Hall of Fame / Denver Gazette — Oct. 5, 1976 · NHL.com — Toronto at Colorado, Oct. 5, 1976 · Hockey-Reference — box score · New York Times — Rockies sold and moved, May 28, 1982

The Tribune says Grant is expected, which is not the same as arriving

1875 · Denver and the Colorado Territory

On Oct. 5, 1875, the Denver Tribune reported that President Grant was expected again, a third Colorado trip. He had already come in 1868 and 1873. The timeline that calls this his first visit is wrong.

The Denver Public Library's portrait index is blunt about the newspaper of this date. The Denver Tribune of Oct. 5, 1875, said President Grant and his party were expected again, and the indexer marked it the third visit. Expected is a desk word. It is not a depot. He did not step off a train onto Blake Street on the 5th and invent presidential tourism.

He had already been here. In July 1868, still the general and not yet the president, he came in on the Smoky Hill stage with William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan, spent a night in Denver, and went on to Georgetown by way of Central City. The Rocky Mountain News got a handshake and a cigar out of it. In April 1873, on the second trip, Gilpin County built him a sidewalk of silver bricks up to the Teller House. He did not step on it. The gold-versus-silver argument was loud enough that a president could hear it from the coach, and Grant was careful. Colorado Central Magazine counts a later 1880 swing through Salida, Gunnison, and Leadville, after the presidency, which makes 1875 the third if you are counting while he still had the job.

What the 1875 papers actually describe is a lap, not an afternoon. The Denver Times of Oct. 7 and 8 has him back from southeastern Colorado, receiving the public at the Grand Central Hotel and willing to shake with all comers. The Colorado Springs Weekly Gazette wrote the visit up on Oct. 9. On Oct. 11 the Times reported that Chief Ouray had come up to Denver to see him. Twenty days after the Tribune's expectant paragraph, on Oct. 25, the constitutional convention convened in Denver. Grant had already signed the enabling act on March 3 and appointed John Routt territorial governor on March 29. Statehood was the next summer.

Wikipedia's Colorado timeline still says Oct. 5, 1875, is the day he became the first president to visit the territory. The 1868 stagecoach and the 1873 silver sidewalk would like a word. The useful fact is smaller and better. On this date the capital of a territory that was not a state yet was told the president was coming back, and within a week he was shaking hands at the Grand Central while the Ute leader who had dealt with Washington came to town to deal with him.

Sources: Denver Public Library — Colorado Portrait and Biography Index, Grant entries · Pikes Peak Library — Weekly Gazette, President Grant's visit, Oct. 9, 1875 · Colorado Central Magazine — Grant in central Colorado · Wikipedia — Timeline of Colorado history (the Oct. 5, 1875 claim)

A Pacific hurricane dies, then dumps 3.45 inches on Littleton

1984 · Littleton and Stapleton

From Oct. 3 to 5, 1984, the leftovers of Pacific Hurricane Polo soaked northeastern Colorado. Littleton got 3.45 inches. Stapleton got 1.73. October 5 has also been 87 degrees, and it has hailed on Boulder.

Polo had already given up being a hurricane by the time it reached the plains. The National Weather Service still gave it the credit. From the 3rd through the 5th in 1984, the remnants produced heavy rain over northeastern Colorado. Most places got between 1 and 2.50 inches. Littleton got 3.45. Stapleton International Airport totaled 1.73, with a north wind that only gusted to 24, which is a polite wind for a storm that used to have a name. The rain is the date's wet signature. Yesterday's brief already spent the 4th's tornadoes. The 5th is the day the water finished arriving.

The other October 5 is a late thunderstorm that did not know the month. In 1962, unusually severe storms for so late in the season ran from Boulder northward. Hail up to golf-ball size broke roofs, windows, and signs in Boulder, and the rain flooded the low spots. The report puts a 77 mph gust on Squaw Mountain west of Denver, the name the Weather Service used then. On the plains it was 60 at Kennesburg and 62 near Strasburg. October will do this. It will also, two decades later, send you a dead Pacific storm and call it a Tuesday.

The climate table is the usual argument with itself. The National Weather Service October page for Denver lists a normal high of 70 and a normal low of 42, and a record high of 87 in 2024. The daily history narrative, written in the older voice, still describes 86 degrees on Oct. 5, 1997, as equaling the record set in 1990 and in earlier years. Both can be true if you are honest about which book you are reading. The closet does not care. Shorts in 1997 and 2024. A golf ball in Boulder in 1962. And, if you lived in Littleton in 1984, a gauge that kept climbing after the hurricane had already quit.

Sources: NWS Boulder — Denver October normals and records · ThorntonWeather — Oct. 5 to 11 Denver weather history · NWS Boulder daily history — Polo remnants and the 1997 high