The history of the Jews in Denver, Colorado extends from the discovery of gold in 1858 to the present day. Early Jewish pioneers were largely of German backgrounds and were deeply involved in politics and local affairs, and some were among the most prominent citizens of the time. Beginning in the 1880s, the influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to the U.S. expanded the Denver Jewish community and exposed cultural rifts between Jews from German versus Yiddish speaking backgrounds. As Denver became a center for those seeking tuberculosis treatment, Jews were among those who came seeking healing, and the Jewish community set up two important organizations that aided not only sick Jews, but the sick poor of all backgrounds. In the early 20th century, the Orthodox community in the city's West Side attracted religious new immigrants and built up a number of communal institutions. The community, especially the poor in the West Side, had to deal with anti-Semitism, sometimes violent, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, the community began to spread out of the West Side to the East Side, and then the suburbs. The community remains vibrant today, and as it has rapidly grown in the past decades so have the number of educational, recreational, and religious organizations and institutions that serve it. Early history By the year after the discovery of gold, 1859, there were about a dozen Jews in Denver, mostly from German or Central European backgrounds. Among them were four men – Hyman and Fred Salomon, Leopold Mayer, and Abraham Jacobs – who would go on to serve on the Denver City Council. They are also thought to have held the first religious service of any kind in Denver, in September 1859. In 1860, the first Jewish organization, the Hebrew Burial and Prayer Society, was formed. A B'nai B'rith lodge was started in 1872, and Colorado's first synagogue, Temple Emanuel, was established in 1874. In 1889, Wolfe Londoner became the city's first (and thus far, only) Jewish mayor, although his tenure was short as he had to step down over corruption charges. The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the U.S. that began in the 1880s, largely from Imperial Russia, changed the makeup of the Denver Jewish community. The first Jews to come to Denver and establish the community were largely