Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Interesting facts
- The Beatles' show here on 26 August 1964 was the only concert of their US tour that year that failed to sell out.
- The earliest documented performance took place on 31 May 1906, when a 25-piece brass band played for the owner John Brisben Walker.
- Walker ran a funicular railway, the Mount Morrison Cable Incline, up the neighbouring mountain from 1909 for about five years.
- The opera singer Mary Garden sang here in 1911 and declared she had never found better acoustics in any opera house in the world.
- Igor Stravinsky conducted the Denver Symphony in the amphitheatre on 23 July 1948.
- A riot at a Jethro Tull concert on 10 June 1971 led Denver to ban rock shows at the venue for five years.
- The Grateful Dead played the amphitheatre 20 times between 1978 and 1987.
- Pollstar magazine named it the best small outdoor venue so often that in 1999 it renamed the award the Red Rocks Award.
- Denver bought the site from Walker in 1927 for about $54,000 at the urging of its parks manager George Cranmer.
- Despite seating only about 9,500, it was ranked the world's top-grossing and most-attended concert venue in 2021.
Why it is worth it
Red Rocks is a concert stage set inside a geological formation, in the foothills of the Rockies above the plains of Colorado. Two enormous slabs of rust-red sandstone, Ship Rock on one side and Creation Rock on the other, rise roughly 300 feet and enclose a natural bowl between them, with the smaller Stage Rock behind the performers. The rows of seats climb the slope between these walls, and from the top the view runs out over the stage toward the city of Denver spread across the plain. At 6,450 feet above sea level, the amphitheatre places musicians and audience in one of the most striking natural settings any venue has.
The rock belongs to the Fountain Formation, sediment shed from the eroding Ancestral Rocky Mountains some 290 million years ago and later lifted and tilted on edge during the Laramide orogeny, the same mountain-building episode that raised the present Rockies. Similar tilted slabs appear elsewhere along the Front Range, but nowhere do they frame a space so neatly. The park belongs to the City of Denver, which still operates the venue, and from 1936 workers of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built the amphitheatre to designs by the architect Burnham Hoyt; the venue was dedicated on 15 June 1941. Hoyt's restrained stonework, using the local red sandstone, lets the rocks remain the architecture.
Its acoustics and setting have drawn performers for generations. The Beatles played here in August 1964, and U2's concert of June 1983 was filmed for the celebrated Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky. An Easter sunrise service is held in the amphitheatre every year, and the Trading Post in the park has housed the Colorado Music Hall of Fame since 2015.
Getting there
The amphitheatre lies in Red Rocks Park near the town of Morrison, about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Denver, at 17598 W. Alameda Parkway. The nearest airport is Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), about 28 km away, a general-aviation field; for most travellers Denver is the natural base.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Red Rocks Amphitheatre is an open-air amphitheater near Morrison, Colorado, approximately ten miles (16 km) southwest of Denver. It is owned and operated by the city of Denver. In addition to several other large sandstone formations nearby, the venue is best recognized by its two massive monoliths, named "Ship Rock" and "Creation Rock", as well as the smaller "Stage Rock", which together flank its 9,525 capacity seating area and naturally form the amphitheater. While the venue is primarily known for hosting concerts and music festivals, other events of various types and sizes are held throughout the year.
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