Downtown Denver was packed with people including kids with hair dyed green and loud beer-swilling St. Patrick’s Day revelers for the 50th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade Saturday morning.
Near record-breaking temperatures ensured an enormous turnout Saturday morning. The 16th Street Mall was lined with men wearing lime-green knickers or kilts, teenagers with their faces painted green and tots holding green helium-filled balloons.
Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said there is no way of estimating the exact numbers, but downtown was bursting with people enjoying the holiday and staying out of trouble.
The temperature reached 73 degrees in the morning, or 2 degrees below the record set for St. Patrick’s Day in 1974, said Bob Koopmeiners, of the National Weather Service in Boulder.
As the parade got underway near Coors Field, Denver Mayor “O’Hancock” marched and waved at the crowds a dozen or more rows deep on the sidewalks.
A sign on a motorcycle/hearse was “dedicated to those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom.” An old-fashioned white firetruck was jammed with kids swinging green bead necklaces and waving to the crowd.
Sarah Spitz, 23, of Denver, noted the shiny red coats of Irish Setters that marched together.
“Oh, there is one in a basket,” Spitz said. “How cute.”
Loud cheers echoed down Blake street as the McTeggart Irish Dancers tap-danced in the middle of the street. Flat-bed truck floats toted pots of gold and musicians playing violins.
In lieu of normal parade food like hot dogs, one street vender was selling hot “biscuits and gravy,” urging people to “get it while it’s hot.” Many people wore green T-shirts with “Kiss me, I’m Irish” on them.
Although the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Denver was in 1889, the parade was later discontinued. Various colorful accounts provide different versions of how the parade got started again in 1962.
According to one, three men at Sullivan’s Grill downed a few drinks and then marched down the middle of the street and around the block waving small American flags while bar patrons cheered. In another version recounted by Denver Post columnist Tom Noel, it began at Duffie’s Shamrock Bar, Irish Coffee House and Restaurant. Journalists who were members of the “evil companions club” marched around the block.
Either way, the humble first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was a far cry from what it has become as crowds were estimated into the hundreds of thousands and spread across downtown Saturday.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com or follow him on Twitter @kmitchellDP
