When I was younger, and before I got involved with the esports and video gaming work that led to and evolved into what I do today, I used to work in law enforcement. My Bachelor’s degree from university is in a field adjacent to the investigative aspect of law enforcement, and I was originally planning on becoming a prosecutor before deciding that becoming a lawyer would be too boring. More specifically, I worked at my local police department in the Chicagoland suburbs while I was still living with my parents.

It’s always a running joke that police and firefighters are rivals. This existed in my department as well—the police would always tease the firefighters about how we would always have to actively be running around on patrol, while the firefighters just relax at the fire station until they get called. Of course, this doesn’t account for the fact that the nature of the work of both professions is different, but we conveniently ignored that part.

Although there is the occasional memorial for fallen first responders, there aren’t too many full-blown museums dedicated to police officers and firefighters, so when I saw that there was one in Denver, Colorado—the Denver Firefighters Museum—I decided to check it out while I was in town.

Here are some photographs from my visit:

They had a collection of framed patches from each state, so of course, I had to scroll to Nevada. I was happy to find that they had patches from my fire departments back at home, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue and the Clark County Fire Department.

I thought this was a display of what the bathroom looked like at the old Denver Fire Department, but upon closer inspection, I found out that this was actually a functional bathroom, and the bathroom that was intended to be used by museum guests.

It seemed like a good chunk of the Denver Firefighters Museum was dedicated to teaching children about fire safety, which obviously wasn’t of particular interest to me, but was still a good use of resources to help educate the youth. Beyond that, there was also plenty of firefighting-related artifacts and relics on display that were interesting to look at. General admission was only US$9.00, which I think was a good deal for an hour and a half of exploration.