“City of Demons”: Disability, Health Tourism, and the Rhetoric of Western Masculinity in Early Denver

In 1879, showman P.T. Barnum declared: “Why Coloradoans are the most disappointed people I ever saw. Two-thirds of them come here to die and they can’t do it.” Barnum’s declaration reflects Colorado’s growing reputation in the late-nineteenth century as a healing site due to its ample sunshine, high altitude, air quality, and mineral springs – all qualities believed critical in providing respite to those suffering from tuberculosis and other maladies. Denver became known nationwide as a health haven at the base of the Rocky Mountains – a city surrounded by the healing powers of nature, sunlight and water. Boosters attempted to lure wellness seekers to the city, arguing that Denver provided the best of both worlds – a cultured city encircled by the healing effects of the natural world. This paper will examine how burgeoning industries catering to wellness seekers contributed significantly to the city’s development; however, these publicity campaigns proved so successful that many of Denver’s public health officials, politicians, and charitable organizations expressed concerns over the growing population of the indigent, sick, and disabled. Denver physician W.T. Little summed up what many were feeling when he wrote, “We Coloradoans know what a dumping ground our state has been for the consumptive of the East.” The contrasting rhetoric of Barnum and Little demonstrates the growing tension between entrepreneurs who wanted to foster Denver’s development through a wellness economy, and civic officials who feared a city overrun with sickly and disabled residents too physically and mentally frail for the duties of citizenship. From this perspective, my paper will complicate the historiography on urban development in the American West by considering how nineteenth-century concepts of wellness, paired with frontier rhetoric of healthy masculinity, became both a driving engine for westward migration, and a source of anxiety among reformers and public officials.