page_title: Benjamin F. Stapleton
section_title: Red Rocks Amphitheatre
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin F. Stapleton / Projects / Red Rocks Amphitheatre
caption_attribution_description: English: Shoot of the amphitheater at Red Rocks in Colorado
context_page_description: Benjamin Franklin Stapleton was the mayor of Denver, Colorado, for two periods, the first from 1923 to 1931 and the second from 1935 to 1947. He also served as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and as the Democratic Colorado State Auditor from 1933 to 1935.
context_section_description: In 1935, Stapleton appointed George Cranmer, a wealthy former stockbroker, as manager of Improvements and Parks. Cranmer had luckily pulled his assets out of the stock market a year before the crash of 1929. The two, as it turned out, had completely different visions for what to do with a particularly striking locale at Red Rocks Park.
  Some time before his appointment, while Cranmer pondered a boulder field that was surmounted by large projecting rocks on either side, his thoughts drifted to a memory of something he had once seen while on tour in Sicily: an ancient Greek open-air theater with stone seating. He began to envision something similar, yet unique, for this location.
  Whereas Cranmer dreamed of clearing a starry-skied stage, Stapleton saw the boulders strewn there as the members of a naturally formed, one-of-a-kind 'rock garden', and wanted them preserved.
  Unbeknown to Stapleton, Cranmer was attempting to persuade the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to quietly go ahead with plans to demolish the rocks with dynamite. He was successful in this, and the rocks were razed. With Stapleton's rock garden removed, the process began of hiring architects to design and oversee the eventual building of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
  Other projects during Stapleton's tenure as mayor include Denver's water system and the Valley Highway project.
caption: Stapleton was against the construction of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre and wanted to preserve the unique landscape.
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