Its skyscrapers marking the final transition between the Great Plains and the American West, DENVER stands at the threshold of the Rocky Mountains . Despite being known as the " Mile High City ," and serving as the obvious point of arrival for travelers heading into the mountains, it is itself uniformly flat. The majestic peaks are clearly visible, but they only begin to rise roughly fifteen miles west of downtown, and Denver has, during the last century, had plenty of room to spread out.

Mineral wealth has always been at the heart of the city's prosperity, with all the fluctuations of fortune that this entails. Though local resources have been progressively exhausted, Denver has managed to hang on to its role as the most important commercial and transportation nexus in the state. Its original "foundation" in 1858 was by pure chance; this was the first spot where small quantities of gold were discovered in Colorado. There was no significant river, let alone a road, but prospectors came streaming in, regardless of prior claims to the land - least of all those of the Arapahoe , who had supposedly been confirmed in their ownership of the area by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Various communities had their own names for the settlement; with the judicious distribution of whiskey, one faction persuaded the rest to agree to "Denver" in 1859. The hope was to ingratiate themselves with the governor of the Kansas Territory, James Denver, but it turned out he had already resigned. The newspaperman Horace Greeley passed through in the early days, and described the place as a "log city of 150 dwellings, not three-fourths completed nor two-thirds inhabited, nor one-third fit to be."

There was actually very little gold in Denver itself; the infant town swarmed briefly with disgruntled fortune-seekers, who decamped when news came in of the massive gold strike at Central City. Denver survived, however, prospering further with the discovery of silver in the mountains. All sorts of shady characters made this their home; Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, for example, acquired his nickname here, selling bars of soap at extortionate prices under the pretence that some contained $100 bills. When the first railroads bypassed Denver - the death knell for so many other communities - the citizens simply banded together and built their own connecting spur.

These days, Denver is a welcoming and enjoyable, though conservative city. Tourism is based on getting out into the wide open spaces rather than on sightseeing in town, but somehow its isolation, a good six hundred miles from any conurbation of even vaguely similar size, gives its two-million population a refreshing friendliness; and in a city which is used to providing its own entertainment there always seems to be something going on.

Though oil money brought a spate of high-rise construction in the early 1980s, creating the "17th Street canyon," downtown Denver remains recognizable as the Gold Rush town of the 1860s. It's very easy to pick out the oldest sections on a map; though an endless regimental grid stretches for miles in all directions, at its heart one small area of tightly packed streets stands at a sharp angle to the rest. Much of the day-to-day activity centers on the shops and restaurants of 16th Street , which but for its free buses is a pedestrian zone; there's also a range of galleries, brewpubs, shops and lofts in the revitalized district bordered by 14th and 20th, and Wynkoop and Larimer streets, known as LoDo , or Lower Downtown. It was in the Larimer Square district, around Market Street between 14th and 15th, that William Larimer built Denver's original log cabin. That burned down in a general conflagration within a few years, whereupon a city ordinance decreed that all new construction should be in brick. Restored to its late Victorian appearance, Larimer Square provides another lively focus for shops, bars and restaurants.

For a quick appreciation of Denver's geographical position, head for the State Capitol at Broadway and E Colfax Avenue. The thirteenth of the steps up to its entrance is exactly one mile above sea level; turn back and look west, and you get a commanding view - zealously protected by building regulations - of the Rockies swelling on the horizon. The capitol is a rather predictable copy of the one in Washington, DC, but the free tours (Mon-Fri 9.30am-3.30pm) are pleasantly informal, and you can climb its dome for an even better view. The world's entire available supply of red onyx was used to make its wainscoting.

Civic Center Park , right in front of the capitol, is flanked by two of Denver's finest museums. The glass-tile-covered Denver Art Museum at 100 W 14th Ave (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; $4.50, free Sat; ) has a solid collection of paintings from around the world, but is most noteworthy for its superb examples of Native American craftwork, with marvelous beadwork by Plains tribes and some finely detailed Navajo weavings. Some of the pre-Columbian art from Central America - particularly the extraordinary Olmec miniatures - is also spectacular.

The most interesting features of the Colorado History Museum at 1300 Broadway (Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun noon-4.30pm; $4.50; ) are to be found in the downstairs galleries. Several dioramas, made under the auspices of the WPA in the 1930s, show historical scenes in fascinating detail, starting with the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde, following up with trappers meeting with Indians at a "fair in the wilderness" in the early 1800s, and a model of Denver in 1860. An exhaustive archive of photo graphs of the early West showcases the work of W.H. Jackson, who died in 1942 at the age of 99.

Free tours of the US Mint , a short walk northwest at 320 W Colfax Ave (Mon-Fri 8am-2.45pm; every 20min; ), reveal millions of fresh coins gushing from the presses in a flurry of flashing metal; avaricious fantasies are checked, though, once you notice the machine-gun turrets on the exterior, mounted in the depth of the Depression.

The Molly Brown House , 1340 Pennsylvania Ave (June-Aug Mon-Sat 10am-3.30pm, Sun noon-3.30pm; Sept-May same schedule, closed Mon; $6; ), was home to the "unsinkable" Molly Brown, who is most famous for surviving the sinking of the Titanic (she'd already lived through a typhoon in the Pacific) and raising money for the survivors and their families. Interestingly, "Molly" is a moniker picked up after her death - she was known as Maggie during her lifetime. A poor Irish girl who went West to marry a millionaire, she ended up mixing with high society in Denver; after the Titanic brought her notoriety, she went on to become a suffragette and eventually ran for senator. Sadly, the house tours concentrate more on what the Browns owned and what the preservationists have managed to authenticate than on illuminating her extraordinary life.

Denver's black community is most prominent in the old Five Points district, northeast of downtown, created to house black railroad workers in the 1870s. The Black American West Museum at 3091 California St (summer Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; rest of year Wed-Fri 10am-2pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; $3; ) has intriguing details on black pioneers and outlaws. Perhaps the most interesting section is on cowboys, which debunks a lot of Western myths: one-third of all cowboys are thought to have been black, many of them slaves freed after the Civil War who left the South and found work as cattle hands.

Two or three miles east of downtown en route to the airport, the enormous City Park is home to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science , 2001 Colorado Blvd (daily 9am-5pm; museum and planetarium $6, IMAX $6, all three for $9; ). As with many such museums, its brief extends beyond the (very good) dinosaur exhibits and wildlife displays to include anthropological material on Native Americans, which, though fascinating, does seem rather out of place. There's also a large zoo nearby (daily: April-Oct 9am-6pm; rest of year 10am-5pm; $8; ), whose four thousand inmates include a couple of huge lowland gorillas in a large, thickly wooded sanctuary.

Denver's Six Flags Elitch Gardens theme park, on the western edge of downtown at 2000 Elitch Circle (summer Sun-Thurs 10am-10pm, Fri & Sat 10am-11pm; rest of year hours vary; $33 aged 6 and above; tel 303/595-4386, ), is not only unusual for being so close to the city center (accessible by a cycle path along Cherry Creek or on the Cultural Connection Trolley), but also in having a state-of-the-art water park attached. There are some great white-knuckle rides here, including the Mind Eraser, that catapults you at 60mph through terrifying corkscrew loops; the Tower of Doom, a freefall vertical drop of 70ft; and the Sidewinder, which spins you round an impossibly tight loop and then, sadistically, does it again - backwards.

If you're looking for something a little quieter, the glitzy Cherry Creek Mall , a few miles southeast of downtown, is second only to the 16th Street mall as Denver's most popular shopping center. Opposite its main entrance is one of the best bookstores in the US, the Tattered Cover Bookstore at 2955 E First Ave (tel 303/322-7727), which spreads over four extremely well-stocked floors. Even more tranquil is the Denver Botanical Gardens , 1005 York St (daily 9am-5pm; $3; ), where an excellent array of beautifully displayed plant life thrive, including a rock alpine garden featuring local mountain flora.

Finally, twenty miles west of downtown, high above the Coors Brewery town of Golden, Buffalo Bill's Memorial Museum and Mountain Parks on Lookout Mountain (May-Oct daily 9am-5pm; Nov-April Tues-Sun 9am-4pm; $3) is the final resting place of William Cody, famed frontiersman, buffalo-hunter, army scout and showman, who died in Denver in 1915. Though now surrounded by huge electricity pylons, the gravesite offers great views in both directions, over the city and out to the mountains. The adjacent museum does a thorough job of outlining Buffalo Bill's past, and one of the more gruesome elements on display is a pistol whose handle has been fashioned from human bone.