Over a year late and more than $2 billion over budget, the Denver International Airport opened its doors to the public on the 28th February 1995. So big deal, I hear you ask, this is The Things of Which Are Also Rad, not The Things of Which Are Also Airports, so why are we doing an On This Day piece on an airport? Well fasten your seat-belts and put away your tray tables folks, because we're about to soar right into the turbulence that is this crazy-ass airport.
According to officials, the DIA was planned as a replacement for Denver's other airport, Stapleton International Airport, which was proving too outdated to handle its popularity. SIA was one of America's busiest airports due to its location, and with its limited gate space and tendency to fall victim to Denver's intense weather patterns, it was decided a change had to be made. Straight away however we have the beginnings of conspiracy theory backchat to this claim, as many questioned why work was not done to improve SIA in favour of a what was originally a $2 billion ($3.4 billion by today's standards) brand new airport that, amazingly, actually has less runways than SIA did. Officials will argue however that the time, money, and disruptions that would have come to be in closing parts of SIA at a time for renovations would have probably come just as close to the project's original budget and deadlines, which seems a fair enough justification, but hold on, we're about to go crazier...
After deciding on a site, which would see the airport taking up a whopping 350,000 acres of land, the funding for the project was slapped down in September of 1989, and two years following this the then Mayor Wellington Webb marked the official opening date of the airport as 29th October 1993. Then to December 1993. Then March 1994. Then May 1994. So what the hell was going on at the building site of the DIA to account for these multiple push backs? Well official statements attribute them to poor planning, multiple design changes due to ever changing requirements by United Airlines, and a strike in September 1993, as well as an abysmal test date for their "state of the art" automated baggage system, however if we may, let us enter the Twilight Zone for some far more tantalising explanations.
Let's look properly at the facts of the airport again - it was originally supposed to cost about $2 billion and replace an airport that wasn't designed well enough to handle its traffic and was supposed to take four years to build. It ended up costing $4.8 billion, or $8.1 billion by today's standards, took an additional 16 months to complete, and even upon opening was still plagued by issues such as a $200 million baggage system that didn't work and was scrapped entirely by 2005, it had a fabric roof over its terminals despite the designers knowing Denver could be hit by intense snow blizzards, and many buildings built on the site that were then deemed unnecessary were "buried" within its 350,000 acre plot. On the subject of the airport's size by the way, that is almost double the size of America's next largest airport, Dallas International, and makes it the third largest in the world, despite DIA not even ranking within America's top five busiest. So what we have here is a construction that is far bigger and expensive than its requirements, with a bunch of tunnels and buildings hidden away underground due to "failed" features that were responsible for its bloated cost and deadline push-backs. So now you've got all of the hard facts, let's look at the things that really get the DIA conspiracy some credibility.
Firstly, if you found yourself in DIA's baggage claim area up until 2018, you'd have been greeted by two murals painted by artist Leo Tanguma, entitled “Children of the World Dream of Peace” and “In Peace and Harmony with Nature”. I would strongly advice looking these things up if you haven't seen them because, god damn, what the fuck? One part of the mural is pictured above alongside this piece for you to see, but other parts include depictions of animals being sealed way in boxes of light as the world burns and children sleep in underground bunkers, and in another things seem to be a bit more upbeat as a soldier lies dead on the floor as all nationalities of the world rejoice over his corpse, but still, what the fuck is this all about? There are plenty of theories that the mural depicts some sort've New World Order prophecy of the future, which would sound pretty far fetched if not for the fact that there is a huge stone slab located in the airport which features the Freemasons symbol on it, and claims the airport was paid for in contributions made by the New World Airport Commission - a group that does not exist.
But wait, there's more! DIA also homes a number of strange tiles with images and symbols etched into them that adorn floors of the terminals, which are claimed to be references to the history of Colorado, such as references to its mining heritage and the natives who once lived there, however others have argued these symbols are in fact references to everything from The Knights' Templar, to a donor who is also responsible for allegedly also creating a new type of hepatitis which can be used for biological warfare. There is also the continual and unexplained low hums and whirring sounds that often emit from the airport, there was a loud boom that came from the airport a few years back that shook homes located miles away, and last but not least on the conspiracy theory listings, when viewed from above, the runways form a Swastika. So yeah, at DIA sketchiness abounds.
And hey, not everything weird about the airport is necessarily due to conspiracy theories, there is also the fucking 32-foot tall blue horse statue made of metal with glowing red eyes located on the entrance to the terminals, a statue which incidentally killed its creator when its head fell on the artist designing it, severing an artery in his leg. The airport's owners even seem to be in on the whole conspiracy thing now too, as in 2019 they decided to install a talking gargoyle in the baggage claim area, who will call out visitors for being on their phones, and refers to the airport as the Illuminati Headquarters before "correcting" itself.
So there you have it folks, the shady and sketchy history and facts of the Denver International Airport. So was it simply a case of terrible planning, excessive and stupid spending of money on art installations and "innovative" new systems that all backfired spectacularly, or is there something more sinister to the airport, something that is being hidden in plain site with the clues on display to those woke enough to read them? Well in 2094 a time capsule located under the stone slab mentioned earlier is due to be opened, so if you can all hang on until then, maybe we will finally get some god damn answers.
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