Birdsill Holly(isn’t that a delightful name?) was born in 1820 in Upstate New York. He liked to invent things. In 1851, he was living in Lockport, N.Y., which is very near Niagara Falls. He built a large steam boiler and then ran pipe under the streets of Lockport to deliver steam heat, which was brand-new at the time, to his neighbors. And that’s how district heating was born.
Some folks from Denver showed up in 1880 to take a peek at what Birdsill had built. They returned to Colorado and constructed a much larger district steam system in their city, which was only 22 years old. It continues to serve downtown Denver today. Nice.