Why Is the Denver Airport So Weird?

The Denver airport is far less terrifying — not so much a society-shaking assault on truth, more an ongoing experiment into whether sometimes, institutional fabulism can just be fun.

One official statement was attributed to a “Sr. Illuminati Spokesman.” An employee appeared in a goofy video to explain a suspicious inscription in the Great Hall: “AU AG,” she said, did not represent the Australia antigen, which is associated with viral hepatitis and linked by conspiracy theorists to genocidal plague. Rather, it nodded to gold and silver, metals central to Colorado’s mining history.

“If I was going to try to relieve people of their conspiracy theories or misinformation, would alien beliefs or Illuminati be at the top of my list? No, I probably would be more concerned about things that are more closely tied to political extremism or poor health decisions,” he said.

Besides, as the airport case study shows, changing people’s minds tends to be difficult.

“Oftentimes, our beliefs are a reflection of our underlying ideologies and dispositions,” he said. “So you’re not battling just a belief about aliens or the Illuminati, you’re battling an entire worldview.”

Earlier this year, a claim gained traction on TikTok that a “new” art installation in Concourse A legitimized the flat earth conspiracy theory. Videos attempting to assign conspiratorial meaning to the tiled global map, set beneath arching train tracks and titanium poles, have racked up more than 1.5 million views. Airport officials pointed out that the piece is nearly 30 years old and represents the past and future of transportation.

When Stacey Stegman, who leads the airport’s communications efforts, arrived in her role a decade ago, her colleagues were sick of the local lore. To Ms. Stegman, the airport’s reputation as the batty uncle of international aviation was part of its charm, a chance to raise Denver’s profile to travelers who may not have thought much about the city and airlines that were looking to expand to new destinations.

“We leaned in pretty hard for a few years,” she said. “And we did learn some lessons along the way from it.”

True believers hated it.

“Some got very upset by it because they thought, ‘Oh, now they’re making fun of us, they’re hiding in plain sight, they’re covering up the evil,’” Ms. Stegman said. “Ninety-nine percent of people see this for what it is, but for the others, we try to be like, ‘Look, this isn’t supposed to be hurtful, know that we’re teasing, this isn’t serious.’”

Two gargoyles still remain in the baggage claim area to protect luggage, including a more muted animatronic Greg; the original had “triggered” some people who viewed it as overtly satanic, Ms. Stegman said. Airport administrators have also stopped making light of conspiracy theories that turned out to have racist or otherwise offensive origins, such as the “lizard people” narrative, which is rooted in anti-Semitic tropes.

“You learn and you grow — we’ve slowed down a bit on it,” Ms. Stegman said. “Now we’re going back to a little bit more traditional advertising.”

Then there’s the kind of kitsch folklore that has inspired multiple groups in Washington State to offer Bigfoot hunting expeditions; one has a $245 day tour with lessons in “techniques that have proven to lure in Sasquatch.”

“It’s hard to compete, if you’re a tourism bureau, on your wineries or your beaches because every place has wineries and lots of places have beaches,” Mr. Thuras said. “People are drawn to mythic stories.”

In Denver — a city with a park built atop thousands of corpses and near radium-contaminated streets, a psychedelic art installation masquerading as a multidimensional gateway and a restaurant housed in a mortuary that reportedly once held Buffalo Bill Cody’s remains — it can seem as if everyone one encounters has a take on the airport.

Restaurant servers say the runways are shaped like a swastika (something airport representatives vehemently deny, explaining that the design allows for multiple simultaneous takeoffs and landings). Airline employees report glimpsing ghosts and claim that Native American music is played at night to appease the spirits of the dead buried below (Ms. Stegman said there are no graves and that the music is part of an art installation that, if not for a finicky sound system, would be on all the time). Uber drivers believe that dirt left over from the airport’s construction was used to create artificial mountains to stash food for the apocalypse (Ms. Stegman just laughed and said she had not heard that one).

But the airport’s enormous layout, according to Ms. Stegman, was actually a visionary effort to factor in future growth and efficiency. If anything, the design should have been more ambitious — it was intended to support 50 million travelers a year, but nearly 70 million people passed through last year, and nearly 100 million a year are expected by 2030.

To address the squeeze, the airport recently began a $1.3 billion project to upgrade and expand its Great Hall. The work has pushed some of its most peculiar points of interest out of sight.

Unlike pieces in a museum or gallery, art in airports is often experienced as a surprise, said Sarah Magnatta, an assistant professor of global contemporary art at the University of Denver. Murals or installations in a terminal can increase exposure for local artists and add dimension to an otherwise utilitarian space, she said.