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As the world continues in full Olympic swing for the next week or so, all eyes will remain fixed on Vancouver. While the relevance of the Winter Olympics is debatable, the prestige of the Games is not. Even the most forgettable Olympics (does anyone remember who won anything in Torino in 2006?) demands global attention for at least those 17 days—an internationally televised 15 minutes of fame that far exceeds any recognition that cities such as Nagano, Albertville and Calgary would receive otherwise.

Despite the overall mediocrity of the Games in general—not to mention the extensive costs and headaches of hosting such a logistical nightmare on a literally global scale—civic leaders the world over still pull out all the stops when trying to win the honor of hosting the Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City wanted the privilege bad enough to just buy it. But then there was Denver; a brave American city whose simple townsfolk stood up to their vanity-seeking public officials and refused the Olympic spotlight.

Picture yourself in Denver, 1970. The air is clear, taxes are low and you drink your beer brewed with Rocky Mountain spring water in wide open spaces. And then the governor has big news: the Olympics are coming to the Mile High City in 1976.

At first you may have been delighted. It is the Olympics after all, and it might not be such a bad idea to show the world the natural beauty of the Colorado Rockies. That is, if the Olympics weren’t going to destroy them.

It turns out that the leaders of the Denver Olympic bid had their sights set on using nearby Mount Sniktau, a beautiful snowcap untouched by ski resort developers, into an Olympic venue, sullying its powder-white purity. When environmentalists protested, they decided to use sites more than 100 miles from Denver, opening the door to a disgusting cesspool of urban sprawl and development for miles and miles.

Then the bombshell drops: estimates on the costs of hosting the Olympics triple in a matter of months. Since this is before the age when corporate sponsorship made all things possible while simultaneously ruining them (i.e., 1981-Present), the Olympic committee in Denver formulate a solution: taxpayers will cover the tab. Of more than $30 million. Without being asked first. In the early stages of a recession. How could such a well-thought-out plan fail?

Long story short, it did. In the 1972 general election, a ballot referendum was introduced that would ban any public funding of the Olympics. I imagine stirring speeches being given decrying the taxation of the Colorado public, the tainting of the majestic Rockies and the Communist bastardization of hockey. The referendum passed by a 60-40 margin, taking the 1976 Winter Olympics from Denver as fast as they had come. Colorado’s reputation as a haven for sporting purists was preserved for another generation (until the abomination that is high altitude baseball arrived in 1993, but that is another story).

So did they make the right choice? On one hand, the Denver area in 2010 is just as inundated with urban sprawl as the environmentalists feared it would become in the wake of the Olympics. Most Denver area peaks have ski lifts and paved roads tracing their slopes. On the other hand, they’re not still paying off 30-year-old Olympic debts.

The most telling angle of this story, though, has to do with the cities currently vying to host the 2022 Olympics: Lake Placid, N.Y., Tahoe, Nevada – and Denver. The more things change, the more they stay the same.