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Denver's position near the mineral-rich
Rocky Mountains encouraged mining and energy companies to spring up in the
area. In the early days of the city, gold and silver booms and busts played a
large role in the economic success of the city. In the 1970s and early 1980s,
the energy crisis in America and resulting high oil prices created an energy
boom in Denver captured in the soap opera Dynasty. Denver was built up
considerably during this time with the construction of many new downtown
skyscrapers. When the price of oil dropped from $34 a barrel in 1981 to $9 a
barrel in 1986 the Denver economy dropped with it, leaving almost 15,000 oil
industry workers in the area unemployed (including former mayor and current
governor John Hickenlooper, a former geologist), and the highest office vacancy
rate in the nation (30%). There remain 700 employed petroleum engineers in the
region, and energy and mining are still important in Denver's economy today,
with companies such as EnCana, Halliburton, Smith International, Rio Tinto
Group, Newmont Mining, Noble Energy, and Anadarko.
Denver's west-central geographic location
in the Mountain Time Zone (UTC−7) also benefits the telecommunications industry
by allowing communication with both North American coasts, South America,
Europe, and Asia in the same business day. Denver's location on the 105th
meridian at over one mile (1.6 km) in elevation also enables it to be the
largest city in the U.S. to offer a 'one-bounce' real-time satellite uplink to
six continents in the same business day. Qwest Communications, Dish Network
Corporation, Starz-Encore, DIRECTV, and Comcast are a few of the many
telecommunications companies with operations in the Denver area. These and
other high-tech companies had a boom in Denver in the mid to late 1990s. Denver
had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 3.8% in
