Denver is a long way from anywhere else of any size, so most visitors arrive by air at Denver International Airport (DIA). If you are driving, it's a scenic route from the West through the mountains. From the east, it's a very long and dreary trip across the Plains.
Denver flights
Most visitors will arrive at Denver International Airport, a remarkable tent-roofed airport, sitting on the prairie to the northeast of the city. Opened in 1995, it covers a massive area and boasts six runways.
Denver is a United Airways' hub and the main hub for Frontier Airlines, Ted (a United subsidiary), and Great Lakes Airlines. There are international flights from London, Paris, Frankfurt, Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.
DIA has three concourses. 'A' handles International traffic plus Frontier and Continental Airlines; 'B' is for United Airlines including United Express; 'C' services a range of airlines primarily American; Alaskan; Delta; Midwest; Northwest; Southwest and US Airways.
There are underground trains from all three concourse to the main terminal building and baggage reclaim.
Regional Transportation District (RTD) has frequent airport buses to locations throughout the Denver and Boulder areas from the Terminal building - check whether it's the east or west side depending upon your destination.
There are scheduled bus services to Fort Collins and the mountain ski and summer resorts. As yet, there is no train link from DIA to Denver, although one is planned for 2015. There's a full range of car rental companies.
Denver by road
Driving from anywhere sizable means many hours on the road - Denver is 600 miles from a large city in any direction. It is well-served by Interstates, with I-70 passing just north of the city and I-25 just to the west and passing very close to Downtown.
It's about 12hr from Las Vegas, Nevada; over 6hrs from Santa Fe and 7hrs from Albuquerque and a long haul of over 9hrs from Kansas City. The drive to Denver from the west takes you through dramatic desert and mountain scenery. From other directions it's through prairie.
Winter can bring tricky driving conditions, particularly in the mountains with drifting snow. In Spring, melting snow in the daytime can trickle across the roadways, re-freezing at night to create dangerously icy conditions.
From elsewhere in Colorado, Denver is about 250 miles from Grand Junction in the west; 165ml to Burlington in the east and 200ml to Trinidad in the south near the New Mexico border. It's 65ml north to Fort Collins and then another 50 to Cheyenne, the main city in Wyoming. Boulder is just 30ml away and Colorado Springs 70ml.
Denver by rail
There are a number of train services via the historic Union station, once an important hub of the nation's rail system. One of the railway system's major East-West routes crosses northern Colorado via Denver, Fraser and Glenwood Springs and is an amazingly scenic route much of the way.
There is a very useful Ski train from Union Station to the city-owned Winter Park ski resort. The trip takes 2 hours and using the Moffat Tunnel, cuts under the Continental Divide. There are another 28 tunnels en route. The train is an ideal way to avoid the grimly predictable weekend jams on I-70.
Airport mural 
Denver railway
Union Station
Denver highway
