We set the stage for our Tale of Dust at a cinder block warehouse in the city of Denver, late in the year Two-Thousand and Eighteen. Amid the renaissance expansion of the front range, north of the cacophony of creation in 5-Points and the RiNo developments, we stand on the edge of what was once the ASARCO SuperFund site, now-turned warehouse-park and appropriately named "The Crossroads." For it's here, at this intersection, that the old National Road (Now I-70) and the front range highway, I-25 cross.
This is the Center
Of the Crossroads
Of the West.
In another sense, this place is a crossroads of something else...something deeper.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Globe Plant was a great beacon to Denver, heralded in the early 1900's as "the most important economic development" to the Platte Valley communities. However, throughout their refinement and production of metals, they destroyed the land beneath them, and so, in turn, already slagged, others followed suit. The land was poisoned. The people were poisoned. ASARCO was held responsible, and in 2008, went bankrupt, and settled with the EPA for $1.79 Bn for their part in creating over 26 superfund sites nationwide.
So now,
As we enter the roaring twenties
Of the twenty first century,
We wonder what legacy we will leave
For the next city that will come to be.
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