10 Denver Hotels at Exactly One Mile Up

The thirteenth step of the Colorado State Capitol is engraved with the words "One Mile Above Sea Level." It has been re-surveyed twice and moved twice as measurement improved, so there are now three markers on the steps and the current one is a brass disc set in 2003.

That elevation — 1,609 metres — is the thing worth planning around, and almost nobody does. A very large number of visitors land at Denver, collect a car and drive straight to Vail, Aspen or Breckenridge, gaining another 1,200 to 1,400 metres in under two hours, and then spend the first two days of a ski holiday with a headache, disrupted sleep and no appetite.

A night in Denver at 1,609 metres before going up is the acclimatisation stop, and it costs a fraction of a mountain room. Nobody markets the city that way, which is strange, because it is the single most useful thing Denver does for a Colorado trip.

Union Station

The other reason to stop is a building. Denver Union Station opened in 1914, declined with passenger rail, and was restored in 2014 as a public hall — the great waiting room is now a bar, a bookshop, restaurants and a hotel, with shuffleboard tables where the benches were, and trains still running underneath including the direct line to the airport.

It is one of the more successful adaptive reuses in America precisely because it did not become a museum. People use it as a place to sit.

The neighbourhoods

LoDo, around Union Station, is the restored warehouse district with the ballpark and the restaurants.

RiNo, north, is the former industrial quarter now covered in murals, with breweries and galleries.

Cherry Creek, southeast, is the wealthy shopping district.

The Golden Triangle, south of the Capitol, holds the Denver Art Museum with its Libeskind extension and the Clyfford Still Museum, which holds about ninety-five percent of that artist's entire output because his will left everything to whichever American city would build a museum for it and show nothing else.

The ten below are grouped that way.

LoDo and Union Station

The restored warehouse quarter.

The Crawford Hotel occupies the upper floors of Union Station itself, in three room styles matching the building's eras, with the great hall as the lobby and the airport train downstairs.

Kimpton Hotel Born sits beside the station in a design-led property with a rooftop and the LoDo restaurants outside.

The Maven Hotel at Dairy Block occupies a converted building in the Dairy Block with a small room count and an alley of bars behind it.

Downtown and the Capitol

The civic centre.

The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa occupies an 1892 triangular building with a nine-storey atrium, has not closed a single day since it opened, and serves an afternoon tea that has run for over a century. It is the historic hotel of the Rockies.

Four Seasons Hotel Denver sits downtown with a spa, a pool and the most polished service in the city.

The Ritz-Carlton, Denver occupies a tower with a spa, a pool and large rooms near the convention district.

Hotel Teatro sits in a 1911 building opposite the opera house with a small room count and a good ground floor.

Cherry Creek and RiNo

The shopping district and the mural quarter.

Halcyon Hotel Cherry Creek occupies a Cherry Creek building with a rooftop pool, an art collection and the shopping outside.

Clayton Members Club & Hotel sits in Cherry Creek as a members' club with hotel rooms, a rooftop and a quieter tone.

The Source Hotel occupies a converted foundry in RiNo with a brewery, a market hall and the murals around it.

What we have left off

The apartment rentals across LoDo and RiNo are excluded. They are apartments rather than hotels.

What to do

Spend the first day gently and drink more water than feels necessary. That is the reason you are here.

Use Union Station as a base. The airport train takes thirty-seven minutes and arrives in the building.

See the Clyfford Still Museum, then the Denver Art Museum next door, which together make one of the better afternoons in the American West.

Walk RiNo for the murals, which are repainted regularly and organised through an annual festival, and drink in the breweries — Colorado has more of them per head than almost any state.

Drive up to Red Rocks, an amphitheatre between two 90-metre sandstone monoliths fifteen minutes west, which is free to visit when there is no show and is used as an outdoor gym by locals at dawn.

Practical notes

Denver's airport is the largest in the world by land area and thirty-seven minutes from Union Station by train.

The city has around 300 sunny days a year and a genuinely four-season climate. Winter is cold but dry with frequent warm spells; summer afternoons bring quick thunderstorms.

The mountains are one to two hours west on I-70, which is congested on Friday afternoons and Sunday evenings in ski season.

Why stop in Denver before the mountains?

It sits at 1,609 metres and the resorts are 1,200 to 1,400 metres higher. A night here is the acclimatisation step most people skip.

Is Union Station worth it?

It is a working transport hall with a hotel, bars and a bookshop inside it, and the airport train arrives in the building.

LoDo or Cherry Creek?

LoDo for restaurants, walking and the station. Cherry Creek for shopping and quiet.

How many nights?

Two, or one as an acclimatisation stop on the way up.

If you only book one

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