page_title: Denver
section_title: Parks and recreation
hierarchical_section_title: Denver / Parks and recreation
caption_attribution_description: English: Genesee Park
context_page_description: Denver, officially the City and County of Denver, is the capital and most populous municipality of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. With an estimated population of 727,211 in 2019, Denver is the 19th-most populous city in the United States, the fifth-most populous state capitol, and the most populous city located in the Mountain states. The metropolitan area surrounding Denver represents a majority of the population and economic activity in the Front Range region, an area within which an estimated 85% of Colorado's population lives. The Denver downtown district is immediately east of the confluence of Cherry Creek with the South Platte River, approximately 12 mi east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Denver is named after James W. Denver, a governor of the Kansas Territory. It is nicknamed the Mile High City because its official elevation is exactly one mile above sea level. The 105th meridian west of Greenwich, the longitudinal reference for the Mountain Time Zone, passes directly through Denver Union Station.
context_section_description: As of 2006, Denver had over 200 parks, from small mini-parks all over the city to the giant 314-acre (1.27 km²) City Park. Denver also has 29 recreation centers providing places and programming for resident's recreation and relaxation.
   Many of Denver's parks were acquired from state lands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This coincided with the City Beautiful movement, and Denver mayor Robert Speer (1904–12 and 1916–18) set out to expand and beautify the city's parks. Reinhard Schuetze was the city's first landscape architect, and he brought his German-educated landscaping genius to Washington Park, Cheesman Park, and City Park among others. Speer used Schuetze as well as other landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Saco Rienk DeBoer to design not only parks such as Civic Center Park, but many city parkways and tree-lawns. All of this greenery was fed with South Platte River water diverted through the city ditch.
  
  In addition to the parks within Denver, the city acquired land for mountain parks starting in the 1911s. Over the years, Denver has acquired, built and maintained approximately 14,000 acres (57 km²) of mountain parks, including Red Rocks Park, which is known for its scenery and musical history revolving around the unique Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Denver also owns the mountain on which the Winter Park Resort ski area operates in Grand County, 67 miles (110 km) west of Denver. City parks are important places for Denverites and visitors, inciting controversy with every change. Denver continues to grow its park system with the development of many new parks along the Platte River through the city, and with Central Park and Bluff Lake Nature Center in the Central Park neighborhood redevelopment. All of these parks are important gathering places for residents and allow what was once a dry plain to be lush, active, and green. Denver is also home to a large network of public community gardens, most of which are managed by Denver Urban Gardens, a non-profit organization.
  Since 1974, Denver and the surrounding jurisdictions have rehabilitated the urban South Platte River and its tributaries for recreational use by hikers and cyclists. The main stem of the South Platte River Greenway runs along the South Platte from Chatfield Reservoir 35 miles (56 km) into Adams County in the north. The Greenway project is recognized as one of the best urban reclamation projects in the U.S., winning, for example, the Silver Medal Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence in 2001.
  In its 2013 ParkScore ranking, The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization, reported Denver had the 17th best park system among the 50 most populous U.S. cities.
caption: Genesee Park is the largest of the Denver Mountain Parks.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A2200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2011:12:29 16:13:41", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Tag 0x1001": "2144", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1608", "Image Rating": "0", "Image Tag 0x4749": "0", "Image ExifOffset": "2334", "Image SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity and Recommended Exposure Index", "Image XPTitle": "[32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image XPSubject": "[32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "17", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:12:29 16:13:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:12:29 16:13:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "287/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "131/16", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-2/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "41/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2144", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1608", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "80000/9", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "810000/91", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4240"}