

Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who’d created New York City’s Central Park, designed the surrounding grounds to add botanical beauty to the overall scheme. The Exposition showcased such “mechanical wonders” as the Ferris wheel, as well as classically styled buildings by architect Daniel Burnham grouped around a central lagoon that “proved that architecture could bring order out of chaos,” Forsyth notes. “The ideas of both the City Beautiful and the amusement park owed their existence to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, which an estimated 27 million people from around the world visited between May 1 and October 30, 1893,” David Forsyth writes in his 2016 book, Denver’s Lakeside Amusement Park…From the White City Beautiful to a Century of Fun. Today 400 remain, including Lakeside, the last private amusement park in metropolitan Denver. But the concept of an amusement park really took off a few years later, with nearly 5,000 amusement parks developed between 18 across the country. Mary and John Elitch took outdoor recreation to the next level when they opened Elitch Gardens, complete with a zoo, gardens and a theater, on West 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street in 1890. Denver Public Library Parks were popular in early Denver, with residents often picnicking at cemeteries, in gardens and at early attractions along the South Platte River.
