Colorado State Capitol

Elijah Myers, who also drew the capitols of Michigan and Texas, designed the building, and it opened in November 1894. It is Colorado stone throughout: white granite outside, Yule marble from the quarries at Marble on the floors, and rose onyx from a quarry near Beulah lining the walls. The dome was first sheathed in copper. In 1908 it was gilded with gold leaf to commemorate the rush that made the state, and it has been regilded several times since with gold from Colorado mines.

The mile is on the west steps. A marker was set there in 1909 to show 5,280 feet above sea level, and after it and several plaques that followed were stolen, the words ONE MILE ABOVE SEA LEVEL were carved into the riser of the fifteenth step in 1947. In 1969 engineering students from Colorado State University resurveyed and set a brass benchmark three steps higher, on the eighteenth. In 2003 a survey with modern equipment put the mile lower again, and on September 29 of that year Governor Bill Owens dedicated a third marker, a brass disk showing the mountains, on the thirteenth step.

All three are still there, a few feet apart, and visitors stand on whichever one they find first. The building is open to the public on weekdays, and the steps at any hour, looking west across Civic Center Park toward the range the gold came out of.