“Buffalo were feeding ravenously. Beaver were damming and storing with strange vigour. Horses and dogs were becoming shaggy-haired as never before. And it could be sensed in the booming, bustling mining town of Denver. Most historians agree that the events leading to the Battle of Whiskey Hills and the subsequent disaster at Quicksand Bottoms began here at a miners’ meeting …” So begins the opening narration of the 1965 film The Hallelujah Trail, a spoof on an imagined 1867 battle between the hard-drinking miners of Denver, Colorado, and the hard-hitting gals of the Denver Temperance Union. The miners, fearing a…