Denver!
Denver is one of the romantic cities for modern archeologists; it changed hands a half-dozen times after the Discovery, had its own empire — and was left to fall into uninhabited ruins when the Dominion conquered the place, purely for the sake of its strategic location. There could be anything there, and now we can actually go look for it!
Well, once we got there. We traveled by coach and wagon; they’re talking about putting in a railroad, but even if they were constructing more rail all the east-west lines would be reserved for war materials. The Dominion is losing, but it’s not dead yet. But that was all right; I wanted to get acclimated to the mountains again. It wouldn’t do to be short of breath, the first few days of the dig.
Denver’s skyline is more romanticism; the city had more permacrete and transparent aluminum structures than other pre-Discovery cities, so it’s weathered the intervening centuries better. The Dominion apparently approved of the aesthetic, although it seeded the ruins with their usual devil’s brew of monsters. I understood that some were still out there, and that it was prudent not to go out by yourself alone. As if I’d explore abandoned ruins by myself! That’s a quick route to disaster. But as a practical matter it meant I would be assigned a partner for the dig, and the partner they found for me was a little… interesting.