The Ghosts of University Park, Platt Park, and Beyond, by Phil Goodstein, $19.95. Phil Goodstein has become an institution, the go-to guy for information on Denver urban history and architecture. His many books are filled with facts, lore and trivia about Denver, its dwellings and dwellers, and he pulls no punches.
“The Ghost of University Park, Platt Park, and Beyond” is the third part of a trilogy on south Denver, this one centered on the University of Denver. The school, at one time (after World War II) the largest institution of higher learning in the state, has had its share of ups and downs. Henry Buchtel, chancellor from 1900 to 1921 (and a relative through marriage to P.T. Barnum) saved the university from going under in the first part of the century, as did Daniel Ritchie some 75 years later.
The school was a hodgepodge of buildings until the Ritchie era, when all but three of the University Park campus structures of a half-century ago were replaced by elegant (and expensive), brick, limestone and copper buildings.
Goodstein expands his book to cover areas of south Denver near the university. Neither the buildings nor the builders are as interesting as those in other areas of the city, such as Capitol Hill, but Goodstein does his best, ferreting out scandal and writing about the homes of Ku Klux Klan magnate Gano Senter and Verne Sankey, who kidnapped Charles Boettcher.
Goodstein can be a snarky fellow, which makes for lively history, and his cryptic commentary and no-holds-barred style make for good history as well as good reading. He’s not afraid of taking on anyone, from politicians, to real estate developers to bicyclists who ride on the sidewalk “doing to pedestrians exactly what they feared motorists might do to them: run them down with little second thought.”
The author saves his sharpest barbs for other writers who infringe on his subject, accusing one author of misstating a publication date in order to claim she was the first to publish a work on south Denver.
All this is why Goodstein is so much fun to read.
Colorado’s South Park: High Country Paradise, by Bernie Nagy, $29.95. From south Denver to South Park is a stretch of raw and open land sliced by U.S. 285 to the south of Denver. South Park may not be filled with the sylvan glades and gentle aspen meadows that define many other parts of the state, but it has its own beauty.
Photographer Bernie Nagy includes some 270 pictures in this colorful book. They show South Park’s sweeping vistas in all seasons, its inhabitants, which include burros and buffalo as well as people, and its towns — Fairplay and Como.
There are photos of cemeteries and deserted cabins, burro races, fireworks and parades. But the most haunting photographs are those that show the sweep and majesty of the South Park landscape.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynnem, $27.50. The Comanches were the most feared and the most fearless of America’s many Indian tribes during the 19th century. They dominated the Great Plains, terrifying whites, who were all but helpless in fighting them.
The Comanches were merciless in victory, and whites dreaded the full moon, called a Comanche moon, because that was when the Indians attacked. Virtually anyone captured faced a torturous death. Only a few captives, mostly young children, were spared, and they were taken into the tribe. Some of the captives who were later rescued preferred the Indian way of life and returned to the Comanches.
In the beginning, writes S.C. Gwynne in this sweeping account of Comanche history, whites, even soldiers, were ineffective against the Indians. Military commanders would order their men to dismount to fight, a fatal position because they were no match against the mounted Indians. Only because of their superior numbers (and diseases, such as cholera and smallpox) did the whites finally subdue the Comanches, a humiliating defeat for the once- proud American Indians.
Comanche leaders were chosen for their bravery and success in battle, and each band operated under a different chief. One was Quanah, the half-white son of a captive woman, Cynthia Ann Parker. She had been kidnapped at age 9 by the Comanches and raised as one of them, and after she was rescued when Quanah was 12, Cynthia Ann tried in vain to return to the tribe. When she couldn’t, she starved herself to death.
Quanah was known for his bravery and success as a warrior, a hold-out against the whites, but when he at last gave in to the inevitable, he became the Comanches’ principal chief, a man who negotiated with the whites for land and money for his people.
“Empire of the Summer Moon” is a well-written narrative that begins with an era of grandeur when the Comanches ruled the plains and ends with the demise of what was once the greatest Indian fighting force in America.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist who writes regularly about new regional nonfiction.
