[DeltAlum]

CUAPhi, did a pretty good job, so I'll just add a couple of thoughts:

Denver is like any other fairly big city -- it has goods and bads -- with the goods outnumbering the other.

Of course the immediate proximity to the mountains is the big difference in all seasons of the year.

Many Colorado residents participate in individual outdoor sports -- running, biking, skiing (snow and water), hiking, camping, rock climbing, golf, etc. The U.S. Olympic Training Center is in Colorado Springs. There are excellent and very competitive college sports at CU, Boulder, Colorado State and the Air Force Academy (also at Colorado Springs)

Some other stuff: Denver has the largest performing arts complex in the nation, outside New York City. The national tours of Sunset Boulevard and The Lion King both originated here in Denver. Two of Time Magazine's top ten theatrical events for the year 2000 (Tantalus, in cooperation with the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Laramie Project) were staged by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Coloradoans spend more money on the preforming arts yearly than professional sports. Having said that, we also have a brand new football stadium, new baseball stadium and new arena for the NBA and NHL. None is more than a few years old.

There is legalized "limited stakes" gambling in a number of the nearby mountain towns like Central City and Blackhawk -- about a hour outside Denver.

Denver tends to be a very white collar city, and has one of the (if not the) highest education levels anywhere. With the exception of Washington, DC, Denver has the highest number of Federal government employees in the country.

The largest "minority" population is Hispanic (around 13-14%) African American population is around 6-7%. Native American about 1%. There are also a fair number of Asian residents. The substantial majority, however, is Caucasion.

The public school systems are reasonably good, with one suburban system, Cherry Creek Schools, being considered in the top ten in the nation.

There are a number of excellent state and private colleges and universities. There are also some less known, and very affordable smaller state universities for instate students.

The old reputation about flying problems through Denver has been put to rest by new airport, which had the best ontime rate in the nation last year. It is the sixth (or seventh) busiest airport in the world. It is the only city in America where you can do a single hop satellite transmission to Western Europe and the Pacific Rim. We are must about midway between Frankfurt and Tokyo, and reasonably close to the geographic center of the US.

Great neighborhoods include Washington (Wash) Park, LoDo (Lower Downtown -- which is North of downtown for some reason) and the area around the University of Denver. All are a little pricy. There are a number of very nice suburbs. They say that housing prices rise with the altitude -- which means places like Evergreen and other "foothills" cities cost a lot to live in.

Finally, we've lived here over twenty years, and love the city and state. My theory about what makes Denver so much better (my opinion) than other cities I've visited of about the same size (2.5-3 million in the metro) is that Denver is so far away from other major cities, it has to be self-sustaining. It's too far to drive to the next big city. And, I think I've visited just about every major city in the country -- most on numerous occassions.

Which is a long way of saying, it's a pretty neat place.

Good luck.