Founded in 1993, 5280 is the largest local magazine in Colorado. The magazine's stories often make national headlines, and since 2005 5280 has been nominated for four National Magazine Awards. Get 5280 Magazine digital subscription today.
When I moved to Denver in the early aughts, Union Station was a grand but dilapidated building that didn’t offer much beyond a couple of model train layouts that had long occupied its basement. By 2014, though, the depot had been remade—courtesy of a historic public-private partnership—into a transportation hub dressed up with high-end restaurants, a boutique hotel, smart retail, and an elegant central hall. In those days, 5280’s office was right around the corner, a location that gave us a front-row seat to Union Station’s rebirth and what it did for the area. And what it did was spark verve: There was an energy in LoDo that hadn’t been there before. Kids frolicked in the plaza fountain, downtown workers grabbed lunch at Zoe Ma Ma, and travelers with roller…
Tin Can Camp may be Instagram-worthy, but the collection of five new rental micro-cabins in the San Luis Valley is far from an amenity-laden glamping experience. That’s by design. “We wanted to make sure that we would be able to restore the landscape to its original integrity [when we eventually remove the structures],” says Maddy Ahlborn, development and communications coordinator for the nonprofit San Luis Valley Great Outdoors (SLV GO), which opened the camp ($80 per night) to visitors in May. The purpose of the project is twofold. It will help relieve pressure on the dispersed camping areas near Penitente Canyon—a climbing, hiking, and biking destination about 30 minutes southwest of Saguache that has seen a massive increase in use since the pandemic began—and provide SLV GO with another revenue…
Marissa Garcia describes her family as supportive, but mental health wasn’t something they discussed around the dinner table. So when she struggled with her emotional well-being in high school, she felt alone. “By overcoming that and piecing myself back together,” she says, “I just really became interested in the meaning behind what happened and the ‘whys.’ ” The 23-year-old Thornton resident’s search for answers led her to the Youth Mental Health Corps (YMHC), an AmeriCorps initiative that launched in four states, including Colorado, this past summer. With 42 percent of high school students reporting persistent feelings of hopelessness and with suicide ranking as the second-leading cause of death among kids ages 10 to 14 in America, the youth mental health emergency isn’t burgeoning—it’s raging. To quell the epidemic, the YMHC…
Wheat Ridge–based writer Kathryn O’Shea-Evans traces her eye for interiors back to age eight, when she persuaded her stepdad to paint her bedroom’s ceiling like the sky, à la Michelangelo. She turned that love for inspiring spaces into a career: She’s worked as a contributing editor at House Beautiful since 2018, and her byline has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times. But the self-proclaimed “indoorsy ski bunny” found her favorite writing project yet in Alpine Style (Gibbs Smith; September 10), a coffee-table book that combines two of O’Shea-Evans’ peak interests: mountains and style. While the compendium’s images of high-elevation interiors span the globe, Alpine Style also features stunning properties close to home. We spoke with O’Shea-Evans about what sets the Centennial State’s mountain style apart…
LOVE SARO At their Cherry Creek, Boulder, and Los Angeles studios, classically trained gemologist Sacha Jarmon and her mom, sculptor Carol Ritter, outfit clients (including Kourtney Kardashian) with custom designs using more than 60 chain styles and 180-plus natural gemstones. Unlike most jewelers, who weld a subtle but noticeable connecting piece called a jump ring, Love Saro uses a seamless technique, welding the chain to itself. Bracelets start around $115 CLP JEWELRY Christy Lea Payne, who’s been designing baubles for more than two decades, started offering welded jewelry in 2018—and soon found a line out the door of her South Broadway shop. Three years ago, she added a LoHi outpost to meet demand for her Adorned line’s 20-some chains, customizable with house-made charms, and new, perfect-for-stacking bangles. Bracelets start at…
Peter Heller has an uncanny ability to, as he puts it, hear the train whistle from around the bend. In 2012, he penned his debut novel, The Dog Stars, about a postapocalyptic world ravaged by a never-before-seen virus. Within a decade, COVID-19 emerged, creating a pandemic that has killed more than seven million people worldwide. Then, in 2019, he wrote The River, about college friends trying to outrun a massive wildfire—among other dangers—in northern Canada. In the years since, Canadian provinces have seen some of their most active fire seasons in recorded history. “It’s a little weird,” Heller admits. His eighth work of fiction, Burn, was published on August 13 (Knopf) and follows two lifelong friends and hunting partners who emerge from the woods of Maine to find a civil…
