Denver, CO
Filled with stories, Denver’s Rockmount Ranch Wear owner Steve Weil shares inside scoop on famous customers
Nestled in Denver’s oldest historic district is a piece of Americana dating back decades. A new book shares the star-studded history of Rockmount Ranch Wear and its influence on fashion icons.
Current owner Steve Weil grew up inside Rockmount Ranch Wear. Long days in a warehouse and store aren’t unusual for a member of the Weil family, considering his grandfather kept at it until he was 107.
“I have been here pretty much since I was a little kid,” said Weil.
Customer watching at Rockmount Ranch Wear in LoDo is, at times, like a night at the Grammys. Music stars abound. Film stars, too. And regular customers looking for a piece of Americana.
Weil says Rockmount has weathered booms and busts over its eighty years of business.
“Everything was about responding to a changing market. That’s the cycle of business, right?” said Weil, who serves as the company’s President and chief creative officer.
His latest creative effort is a third book, “Rockmount Legends: Celebrities in Classic American Fashion.” The book is a compilation of memories of rock stars like David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan, who have branded their own look with Rockmount clothing. There are stories and back-and-forth communications, as well as style notes and sightings of Rockmount on film sets and among stars.
Weil first noticed a shirt on Elvis Presley in the movie “Love Me Tender.”
“I looked, and I looked, and suddenly I remembered I’d seen a shirt exactly like that that my father had in the 50s,” he recalled.
Weil re-introduced the shirt, and it was a sellout.
The company was started soon after World War II by “Papa Jack,” who cut out a niche as unique as the sawtooth pockets he popularized. The company was the first to put snaps on shirts. His grandfather figured it would keep men on horseback from getting snagged. His shirts also featured yokes and wider cuffs, a departure from the norm at the time.
“My grandfather and his advertising, ‘Designed in the West by Westerners.’ Distinctive,” Steve Weil summarized.
Over the years, more and more stars looking for western wear eventually came into the store on Wazee Street in LoDo.
“People who write music or movies, I think they’re visionaries. And I think they appreciate that in their clothing, and I think we’ve, that’s what we do,” said Weil.
“Rockmount Legends” follows two other books, “Ask Papa Jack: Wisdom of the World’s Oldest CEO,” which is filled with stories and sayings from Papa Jack, who worked at the store until his passing, and “Western Shirts: A Classic American Fashion,” which puts in print the history of the development of western wear.
“I’m inspired by my grandfather. He could mesmerize you with his stories,” said Weil.
One passage features letters exchanged between Papa Jack and Ronald Reagan. Reagan was decrying the U.S.’s shift toward a service economy.
“And my grandfather writes him and says, ‘Servicing is when they take the mare to the stud,’” laughs Weil.
Weil’s father was also an innovator, taking the company nationwide. Weil says he could tell a story of his own.
Weil says, one Saturday at the warehouse, before there was a store, “There’s a guy peering in the window like this, and he sees my father pull up. Opened the door and he says, ‘Bloody hell, you’re never open when I’m here.’ And it’s a guy with an English accent. And my father’s a nice guy, he says, ‘come on in.’”
Later that day, there was a family get-together, and Steve’s father told him the story.
Weil recalled, “My father says, ‘An English rock star came in and I took care of him,’ and I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, right. Who was it?’”
It took his father a few moments to remember, then he spat out, “David Bowie,” mispronouncing the name. Steve was still skeptical until Monday.
“And then the phone rings, and it’s David Bowie’s secretary. He wants a duplicate of the same order sent to Madison Square Garden overnight,” he laughed.
Weil says they try to respect the stars’ space, adding that there are the friendly ones and the more remote ones.
“Robert Plant was really fun,” explained Weil.
When he arrived in the store, Steve says he received a call from one of the workers. He could hear Led Zeppelin’s Plant in the background, crowing about what he’d found.
“I walk in and here’s this guy like, just beaming. He’s having fun,” Weil shared.
The staff ended up getting invited to three nights of shows by Plant and his band at the Fillmore, and Steve went out to breakfast with Plant.
Eric Clapton’s look seems well-branded by Rockmount. Weil says Clapton has been a regular customer over the years. He sent a picture of himself in a Rockmount shirt at one point.
“Can I use that you know in some of our material?” he recalled asking Clapton. “He says, ‘Yeah, what’s in it for me? I said how about a ten percent discount?”
One time, Clapton emailed that he needed shirts for a Cream reunion in London in two days.
“I said, ‘Well, it takes a week from Denver. But I know where you can have a shirt on Thursday, and that’s if I hand deliver one,” he explained.
And so he did. Weil and a friend, capable of making last-minute travel decisions, flew over, but then doubt set in.
“What if this is bogus?” Weil thought.
He had Clapton’s phone number but was too worried about the cost of calling from his cell phone, so he sought out a British phone booth and rang him. Turned out, it was legitimate, and they made the delivery at the Royal Albert Hall. They went to dinner with Clapton as well.
The book is another way to share the memories that go with the images and the stories about people who have found an image along with the clothing.
Weil says sales have changed over the years, with the web now a big component. But personal engagement is still a big part of the Rockmount experience.
“It’s kind of a rare art. And I don’t know, I hope with the internet we don’t lose that kind of stuff,” said Weil.
Legend has it that there are space aliens and lizard people living in the underground tunnels at Denver International Airport (DEN). But if it’s true (and why not?), the reptilian and otherworldly beings will soon need to find a new place to hang out.
That’s because DEN airport is planning to repurpose some of its subterranean real estate into pedestrian walkways that can serve as alternatives to, and backups for, the airport’s troubled train system.
At DEN airport, trains connect the main Jeppesen Terminal to concourses A, B and C.
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Passengers may skip the train and instead stroll or ride moving walkways from the main terminal to Concourse A. But the train — officially called the Automated Guideway Transit System — is the only transportation option for getting between concourses A and B and between concourses B and C.
The original circa-1995 train system is currently undergoing a much-needed $75 million upgrade as part of the DEN’s “Vision 100” strategic plan to serve 100 million annual passengers in the next several years.
Improvements include 16 new train cars and the replacement of aging infrastructure that is prone to malfunctions. The glitches sometimes last just a few minutes, but as recently as May 2026, mechanical problems with trains forced the airport to deploy shuttle buses to move passengers between concourses.
Train to the Gates Updates: Crews have repaired the mechanical issue and trains are now fully operational. Shuttle buses from Concourse A to Concourses C are also running to help move passengers while the train operation returns to normal service. https://t.co/BZRJheqi7V
— Denver Int’l Airport (@DENAirport) May 6, 2026
Although DEN’s records show that the airport trains run glitch-free more than 99% of the time, even short outages create stress, platform gridlock and missed flights “simply because we have so many people going through our airport,” Jim Starling, DEN’s chief construction and infrastructure officer, told TPG.
Finding an alternative to DEN’s trains
Installing ziplines between concourses as alternatives to the train sounds fun but is sadly impractical. Connecting all the concourses with bridges was considered but rejected due to time and cost.
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Instead, during planning workshops, airline and DEN officials determined that the best solution was to repurpose portions of the airport’s existing underground baggage tunnels into pedestrian walkways. Those tunnels were originally built for the airport’s ill-fated automated baggage system, whose technical failures delayed DEN’s planned 1993 opening by 16 months and left sections of the tunnel network largely unused for decades.
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In a statement announcing the underground walkway plan, Denver mayor Mike Johnston called it “a big win for Denver’s travelers.” The tunnel transformation also got thumbs up from United Airlines (Denver’s largest airline customer), American Airlines and Southwest Airlines (which counts DEN as its largest operation in terms of flights).
“The addition of pedestrian walkways at DEN is a significant investment and will give our customers more options for their connecting flights,” Jonna McGrath, United’s vice president of airport operations, said.
Lisa Hingson, vice president of customer experience and innovation at Southwest, said the new pedestrian walkways would be “a tremendous addition” to recent enhancements such as TSA PreCheck Touchless ID and Touchless ID self-bag drop. “The addition of pedestrian walkways adds flexibility and reliability for our customers and improves operational resilience,” Amanda Zhang, American Airlines’ vice president of corporate real estate, said.
Making it happen
The tunnels to be converted are wide enough for two-way pedestrian traffic and currently contain some of the equipment from the old, abandoned baggage system. So that will need to come out.
“If you go down there today, what you’ll see is a lot of concrete,” Starling said. “And that’s not the environment we’d want to have for people to walk through.”
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Making pedestrian walkways out of tunnels built to move baggage would entail upgrading the floors, adding walls and appropriate HVAC systems, and possibly installing moving walkways, Starling added.
And then there’s the challenge of what Starling termed “vertical circulation” — the tricky job of getting passengers down to the tunnels from one concourse and then back up at another.
Timeline and budget
DEN airport estimates the cost of creating pedestrian tunnels at DEN to be between $300 and $700 million.
“That’s a wide range,” Starling said, “but it reflects the fact that we are at the concept level.” Once design plans are finalized, construction of the tunnels could begin as early as 2027.
And what about the lizard people?
Over the years, DEN has neither confirmed nor denied rumors of secret Illuminati, outer space aliens and, yes, lizard people making their homes in the airport’s underground tunnels. Instead, the airport has good-naturedly leaned into the mysteries and conspiracy theories with exhibitions such as “Conspiracy Theories Uncovered.”
Johnston is happy to play along. In the announcement of plans for the pedestrian walkways at DEN, he said: “And who knows… maybe along the way, travelers will finally get a closer look at the underground tunnels and decide for themselves what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
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