📍Aspen, CO 81611, USA
1970 – 1997“My father was an Air Force pilot, so I grew up moving between bases in Arizona, Alabama, Texas and elsewhere, always the new boy at school. My grandmother gave me an old acoustic guitar, and music became the one thing that travelled with me. I took the name Denver from the capital of the state I loved most, long before I lived there, and in the early 1970s my wife Annie and I made our home in Aspen, in the Rocky Mountains. We settled in Starwood, a quiet community on the hillside above the valley, and built a house among the aspens and pines with views of the mountains. I wrote about it in Starwood in Aspen, and it was in these mountains, after a night watching the Perseid meteor shower by a lake, that I wrote Rocky Mountain High. That song, and Annie's Song, which came to me on a ski lift, grew directly from the life we made here: the seasons, the snow, the clear air and the feeling of being at peace in nature. Aspen changed my life's direction as well as my songs. Living so close to the wilderness made me an environmentalist, and in 1976 I co-founded the Windstar Foundation near Snowmass to teach people how to live more lightly on the land. I worked on conservation and hunger campaigns and spoke for the protection of wild places. Rocky Mountain High became one of Colorado's official state songs, and near Aspen, beside the Roaring Fork River, the John Denver Sanctuary invites people to sit among the rocks engraved with my lyrics.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today