Monday, October 12, 2026

John Denver dies doing the thing he loved, a long way from the mountains he sang about

1997 · Monterey Bay, California

The Aspen resident and Colorado poet laureate crashes his experimental plane into the Pacific. The state lowers the flags and keeps the song.

On October 12, 1997, the man who named himself after Colorado’s capital city flew an experimental Rutan Long-EZ off the California coast and did not come back.

Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. had been living in Aspen for years by then. He wrote “Rocky Mountain High” after watching the Perseids over Williams Lake, and in 1974 Governor John Vanderhoof named him the state’s poet laureate. Ten years after his death the legislature made the song one of Colorado’s two official state songs, sharing the job with the older, quieter “Where the Columbines Grow.”

The plane went into Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove. He was 53. Colorado Governor Roy Romer ordered flags to half-staff. The funeral was in Aurora; the ashes went back to the Rockies.

He had been an avid pilot, taught by his Air Force father. The NTSB later pointed to a hard-to-reach fuel selector and low fuel. No alcohol was involved. He died doing something he loved, which is the kind of ending his songs preferred, even if the ocean was a long way from the Continental Divide.

Colorado still sings the high. West Virginia got “Country Roads.” Denver got the man, and the mountains kept the memory.

Sources: Wikipedia: John Denver · Colorado Encyclopedia: John Denver · Britannica: John Denver

KBTV turns on the test pattern and Denver gets its second television station

1952 · Denver

At 2:15 p.m. on a Sunday, Channel 9 starts with a tone and a pattern, then Quiz Kids and Super Circus. The city now has two ways to watch Walter Winchell.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1952, Denver became a two-television-station town.

KBTV Channel 9 signed on at 2:15 p.m. with a test pattern and the accompanying tone. Fifteen minutes later the first actual program arrived: the game show Quiz Kids. Super Circus followed, then a mix of ABC and CBS shows that ran until roughly 11:30 that night. Everything was black and white. The only news was a 15-minute national report from ABC’s Walter Winchell. Local news waited until the next day.

The call letters stood for “better television.” Max Goldberg had organized the investors and secured the license. The temporary transmitter on Lookout Mountain could reach as far as Cheyenne. Denver was the first city in the country with two stations operating under post-freeze FCC licenses.

The station later became KUSA, switched affiliations, and moved from Bannock Street to Speer Boulevard. The test pattern is long gone. The channel is still on.

Sources: 9NEWS: 70th anniversary · Wikipedia: KUSA (TV) · Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado

Lane Frost is born in La Junta, and the rodeo circuit gets a future world champion

1963 · La Junta, Colorado

The future 1987 PRCA bull-riding champion arrives in an Otero County hospital while his mother is visiting family. He will ride Red Rock and die too young at Cheyenne.

On October 12, 1963, Lane Clyde Frost was born in the hospital in La Junta while his mother was staying with family in nearby Kim. His parents lived in Utah at the time; his father was already on the rodeo circuit.

He started riding dairy calves around age five or six. By ten he was winning at the Little Buckaroos rodeos. The family later moved to Oklahoma, where he became National High School Bull Riding Champion in 1981. He turned pro, qualified for the National Finals five straight years, and in 1987 won the PRCA World Champion bull-riding title at age 24.

He was the only rider to make qualified rides on Red Rock, the 1987 Bucking Bull of the Year, winning a seven-ride challenge 4-3. On July 30, 1989, at Cheyenne Frontier Days, after an 85-point ride on a bull named Takin’ Care of Business, the bull turned, hit him, and he died of internal injuries. He was 25.

Colorado got the birth certificate. The rest of the West got the legend.

Also on this date in Denver weather history: in 1969 the second heavy snowstorm in less than a week left nearly a foot of snow at Stapleton and dropped the temperature to a record low of 11 degrees on the 12th, with a high of only 20. The date has never been colder since.

Sources: Wikipedia: Lane Frost · ProRodeo Hall of Fame · National Weather Service / Thornton Weather history