Genesee Park and the Buffalo Herd

The bison grazing along Interstate Seventy just west of Denver are not a coincidence. In nineteen fourteen, Denver acquired bison from Yellowstone National Park to anchor a new mountain preserve at Genesee, part of a visionary Denver Mountain Parks system that pushed city-owned parkland far up into the Front Range foothills. The animals had nearly been wiped out by commercial hunting only decades before; the Yellowstone herd was one of the last wild remnants.

Genesee Park is also tied to the early automobile age, part of a mountain parks system meant to draw motorists out of the city, a nod to the automobile age that was then just beginning to transform how Americans experienced the outdoors. Today the park's bison herd still draws travelers off the highway.