There is nothing competitive about the wages in Denver when you're comparing to CA. Cost of living is lower than SV, but still one of the highest in the country.
Have any numbers you'd care to furnish? Cost of living may be one of the highest, but you can easily get a 2 bedroom or a house in the burbs for $1500. It's quite easy to allocated less than a third of your take home to rent, unlike SV, Seattle, NYC, Boston, etc.
I agree with you, here are some numbers to back up Denver is great COL vs salary wise. I work remotely as a mid-level DevOps guy for about $115k and no equity. I bought a 3 br house with a yard next to a light rail station 10 min drive 20 min train ride to downtown. I bought during the recession for ~220k ($350k ish now) but rent in our neighborhood for a similar house would be $1800 total. If I were moving here today and renting, we'd rent a 1 br apartment nearby for about $1100.