Local Independence Day celebrations will get a Western twist this year when cowboy music singer Michael Martin Murphey highlights the Mile High Rendezvous to celebrate the opening of the Mile High Marketplace Event Center, Friday through Sunday.
The event will feature fur traders and trappers in 1800s period dress, cowboy poets, and Western artisans and performers. Murphey, who will do four concerts during the weekend, said the event was designed as a “bargain-basement West Fest.”
Holding the daily admission fee to just $3 (kids under 12 are admitted free) was important to the performer.
“I figure that with the economic downturn, we all just have to start thinking differently about how we do things,” Murphey said.
The doings also mark Murphey’s return to hosting West Fest fairs after a five-year hiatus. Western events such as rodeos, powwows and mountain-men gatherings tend to feature only parts of the culture, he said. But West Fest and this weekend’s smaller Mile High Rendezvous present “the rainbow culture of the West” that included not just white cowboys, but cowboys who were Indian, black, Mexican and Hispanic.
“It wasn’t cowboys and Indians, it was cowboys who were Indians,” he said.
This weekend’s activities will be the first of several events, including four festivals this year, to showcase the offerings of the Marketplace, said Gina Hallisey, event and venue director.
Formerly known as the Mile High Flea Market, the venue’s name was changed to better reflect that it has a 25,000-square-foot event center tent, flea market, a farmers market that operates year-round, an antiques alley and a shopping center with stores selling clothing, furniture and other merchandise.
Sheba R. Wheeler: 303-954-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com
