Denver

Libraries and Museums

The Denver Public Library operates a central library downtown and 22 neighborhood branches. With a total of 1,882,487 book and government document volumes and over five million items altogether, the library serves a population of over half a million and employs a staff of 453. Its special collections cover subject areas including Western history, fine printing, mountaineering, aeronautics, Napoleon, and folk music. The main library is housed in a new $64 million building completed in 1995. Its interior includes a three-story atrium, and the Western History Room has a rotunda that measures 24 meters (80 feet) in diameter and affords an outstanding view of the Rocky Mountains.

Denver is home to a variety of museums, with collections in areas ranging from art to history to horticulture. The Denver Art Museum houses the world's premier collection of American Indian art, including artworks from all tribes. The facility, which celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary in 1993, is the largest art museum between Kansas City and the West Coast. Many of its holdings are exhibited in a way that highlights connections between different cultures and societies. The Black American West Museum and Heritage Center explores the role African Americans played in settling the West. Other museums with Western themes are Buffalo Bill's Grave and Museum, the Colorado History Museum, and the Museum of Western Art, which features works by artists including Georgia O'Keefe (1887–1986) and Frederic Remington (1861–1909). The Molly Brown House and Museum celebrates the life of this early feminist and heroine of the Titanic disaster. The museum is housed in a restored Victorian mansion that Brown purchased with her husband in 1894.

The Denver Museum of Natural History is the nation's fourth-largest natural history museum and displays 80 dioramas portraying animals from all over the world. It also has a notable dinosaur collection, a planetarium, and an IMAX theater. The Children's Museum of Denver is an interactive museum that offers a wide array of activities, including a computer lab and a grocery store. Denver's other museums include the Museo de las Americas (which focuses on Latin American history and culture), the Forney Transportation Museum, and the Mizel Museum of Judaica.

More than ten billion coins are struck at the U.S. Mint every year, and the basement has the second-largest storehouse of gold bullion in the nation after Fort Knox. The U.S. Mint has several public displays, including a real gold bar, and offers 30-minute tours that describe the coin-production process.