Watermelon beer? I don’t think so!” I heard a woman say – and I had to agree with her. I was at the Great American Beer Festival, where you can sample any of 1,900 different beers from over 300 breweries in every part of the USA. Of course with that many to choose from, there are bound to be a few duff ones.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a more foul-tasting thing in my mouth,” my Denver friend said, grimacing at a beer called Beam Me Up Scotty. On the other hand there were some delights, like a honey-and-raspberry ale, a gorgeous cherry wheat beer and dozens of others proving that there’s a lot more to American beer than the insipid light lagers that make their way to the UK.
Denver calls itself the Napa Valley of beer and, as well as the Beer Festival, held every autumn, it is home to the biggest brewery in the world (Coors) and the biggest brew-pub, the Wynkoop. I chatted to the Wynkoop’s owner, John Hickenlooper, as I drank my way through the tasting tray of ten small beers, from Boxcar Kolsch to Patty’s Chili Beer. Much of the conversation has gone to that great repository in the sky where most of our wonderful alcohol-fuelled ramblings go, but I do remember one remark John made about the secrets of good brewing: “What people don’t realise when you start fermentation is that you’re starting a giant orgy. And just like an orgy, the only people you want there are the ones you’ve invited.”
Denver sits exactly a mile high on the edge of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The city’s first permanent building was a saloon, but there’s more to the city than beer, as a visit to the impressive Colorado History Museum reveals. One of a series of huge dioramas shows Denver as it was in 1864 – wagon trains were parked in a circle on the edge of the city, and there was an Indian camp by Cherry Creek where a big shopping mall now stands. You can see how quickly the Wild West was turning into a modern city, as only 20 years later they were starting work on the huge Colorado State Capitol, whose golden dome still gleams on Capitol Hill.
As well as downing beer, Denver is a great place for exploding some of the myths about the Old West. Watch the movies, for instance, and you’d be waiting a long time before you saw a black cowboy. Even in Mel Brooks’ 1974 film Blazing Saddles, the notion of a black cowboy is part of the joke.
“There were no black cowboys,” Paul Stewart was told as a child, “so you’ve got to be an Indian.” When Stewart grew up and became a barber in Denver, he met a black cowboy who had led cattle drives at the turn of the century. Then some of his customers began telling him about their ancestors’ lives as cowboys, settlers and troops. Stewart began collecting the stories and exploring the subject and discovered that about one-third of cowboys were black. In 1971 he opened the Black American West Museum in order to display the material he’d collected.
The museum is a funky little place; in contrast to Denver’s other stunning state-of-the-art museums, this is more state-of-the-heart, occupying just a few rooms in the former home of Dr Justina Ford, the first licensed black female doctor in the country. Being black she wasn’t allowed to work in a hospital, so had to practise from home. The examination room where she worked from 1902-52 is one of the exhibits, while other rooms have displays on black homesteaders, ranchers and farmers. One of the most interesting exhibits is on the black troops, who became known as the Buffalo Soldiers. The Indians they fought against gave them the name due to their strength, ferocity and their curly hair that looked like the manes of the buffalo which the Indians had so much respect for.
‘Indians’ is not the approved term these days, but who grew up playing ‘Cowboys and Native Americans’? Most surprisingly, who do you think was the first to start using this politically correct term? Buffalo Bill, that’s who, back in the late 19th century. The man who was said to have helped almost wipe-out the buffalo (another myth) was an early champion of the rights of the Indian people. He said they were the original inhabitants of the land, and the least they deserved was equal rights and equal treatment.
Buffalo Bill is buried just outside Denver, and I spent quite some time browsing his grave and the nearby museum, which reveals some of the fascinating truths about the characters of the Wild West. As a notice on the wall states: Sometimes heroism and villainy are a matter of perspective.
Buffalo Bill killed only a few thousand buffalo, for food and their hides, which can hardly be the reason that numbers dropped from an estimated 70 million to 1,500. Their downfall was caused partly by the settlement of the West, which drove the buffalo back as man took over their habitat; but it was also due to the disturbing fact that the American government, having little success in defeating the Indians, decided to wipe them out by destroying the buffalo on which they depended for survival.
They almost succeeded but, when the buffalo were on the brink of extinction, efforts were finally made to protect them. The last herd was split, in case disease struck, with half put in Yellowstone and half in Denver. Their descendants are still there, roaming by the freeway that separates them from Buffalo Bill’s grave. Watching them being fed, I met the man who has looked after them for the last 28 years, Marty Homola.
“The herd’s now managed,” Marty told me, “but they are still wild animals and I take care when I go in with them. Some days they let me be; other days they’ll chase me. We’ve got 25 adults here on four square kilometres that they share with about 52 elk. It’s the most animals such an area can support.
“In the USA today there are probably about 115,000 bison,” he said, referring to them by their correct name – American bison, not buffalo. “And there are a similar number in Canada.”
Marty isn’t too keen on the bison being reared for meat, although its popularity is one of the reasons that the animals have survived – it’s leaner than chicken, with fewer calories than some fish.
“I don’t eat it myself,” Marty told me. “They’re a part of me. When I was young I used to hunt, but I don’t do that any more. When you get older you respect life a lot more. I don’t eat much beef – I prefer seafood.”
But back in Denver there was only one place I could possibly eat that night: the Buckhorn Exchange. Founded in 1893, it is Denver’s oldest restaurant. Buffalo Bill used to eat there and Sitting Bull would come in and sit. The Buckhorn is a museum too, with Annie Oakley’s rifle, Sitting Bull’s daughter’s wedding dress and a few hundred stuffed animal heads looking down at you. Apparently they moved the two-headed calf to a less obvious place as it was putting some people off their food. The manager pointed on the menu to what he delicately referred to as an elk’s ‘unit’. But there was only one meat I could eat. Sorry, Marty – it was delicious. The Buffalo Gold beer tasted pretty damn good, too.
