Dana Crawford
Dana Crawford (1931–) is a nationally prominent preservationist and developer who exemplifies how one woman can transform a city. She started with Larimer Square and then Lower Downtown (LoDo), the hubs of Denver’s skid row, and helped turn them into one…
History Colorado Center
The History Colorado Center (1200 Broadway, Denver) opened in 2012 as the headquarters, museum, and research center of History Colorado. Established in 1879 as the State Historical and Natural History Society, History Colorado had outgrown a succession…
Adolph Coors
Agapito Vigil
Agapito Vigil (1833–?) was a delegate to the Colorado Constitutional Convention in 1875–76, representing Las Animas and Huerfano Counties, and a member of the state’s First General Assembly, representing Conejos County. At the constitutional convention,…
Agnes W. Spring
Agnes Wright Spring (1894–1988) was the first Wyoming state historian (1918–19) and the first female Colorado state historian (1950–51 and 1954–63), making her the only person to serve as state historian of more than one state. She contributed to…
AIDS in Colorado
HIV/AIDS represents one of the greatest public health crises of the latter half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first century. The disease affects thousands of families in Colorado alone and has motivated a public response…
Alan Berg
Alan Berney Fisher
Alan Berney Fisher (1905–78), the son of architect William E. Fisher, was an important modernist architect in twentieth-century Denver.
Alan received early training in his father’s office before finishing his education at the University of…
Alan Swallow
Alan Swallow (1915–66) founded the University of Denver’s creative writing program and established Swallow Press, a small publisher that focused in part on books about the American West. He also ran the University of Denver Press from 1947 to 1953. Known…
Albina Washburn
Albina Washburn (1837–1921) was an important early resident of what is now Loveland and later an influential proponent of women’s suffrage and temperance across Colorado. In 1876 she advocated for women’s suffrage at the state constitutional convention,…
Alice Hale Hill
Alice Hale Hill (1840–1908) was a Denver philanthropist who helped lead institutions such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the Denver Free Kindergarten Association. Wife of Nathaniel P. Hill, a smelting entrepreneur and US senator,…
Alton “Glenn” Miller
Amendment 2
Amendment 2 was a ballot initiative passed by Colorado voters in 1992 that prohibited the state from enacting antidiscrimination protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Voters in the state of Colorado set in motion a legal and constitutional fight…
Amy Van Dyken
Anna and Eugenia Kennicott
Anne Evans
Anne Evans (1871–1941) was a Colorado civic leader and patron of the arts who transformed the Denver cultural community. Among her numerous activities, Evans started and helped guide the Denver Art Museum to national prominence, assisted in the…
Antonia Brico
Antonia Brico (1902–89) was the first woman to gain wide acceptance and recognition in the field of symphony conducting. Despite being told that women could not and should not be symphony conductors, she completed the rigorous conducting course at the…
Arthur Addison Fisher
Arthur Addison Fisher (1878–1965) worked with his older brother William Ellsworth Fisher in one of the largest and most influential architectural firms in the Rocky Mountain region. Arthur brought to the firm an interest in Spanish and Mediterranean…
Arthur Carhart
Aspen Music Festival and School
The Aspen Music Festival and School are together a prestigious summer music program that trace their roots to the music offerings at Aspen’s Goethe Bicentennial celebration in 1949. The festival puts on a variety of concerts throughout the summer, and…
Augusta Tabor
Baron Walter von Richthofen
Beaver Creek Resort
Tucked away in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Beaver Creek Resort has had a rich history since it first opened to the public in 1980. Located in Eagle County, Beaver Creek is a major ski resort owned and operated by Vail Associates. The valley that houses…
Belmont Hotel Fire of 1908
On September 8, 1908, a fire broke out on the second floor of Denver’s Belmont Hotel, claiming as many as fifteen lives and injuring several others in one of the city’s deadliest fires. After the fire, authorities suspected that theft may have been a…
Billy Fiske
Billy Fiske (1911–40) was a two-time Olympian who drove the US bobsled team to gold medals in the 1928 and 1932 Winter Olympics. A founder of Colorado’s ski industry, Fiske saw the potential for the state to rival the great winter resorts of Europe and…
Brush
Burlington (Boulder County)
Burlington was a small homestead community along St. Vrain Creek, near present-day Longmont. Founded in 1860 by prospector Alonzo N. Allen, Burlington was named after Burlington, Iowa. The settlement grew to a population of about 150 before the Chicago…
Byers-Evans House
Built in 1883, the Byers-Evans House at 1310 Bannock Street in Denver is a Victorian mansion notable for its association with two of the city’s most influential early families. William Byers, who built the house, had established the city’s first…
Byron White
Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice, serving from 1962 to 1993, as well as a nationally known college athlete for the University of Colorado and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his…
Caribou Ranch Recording Studio
The famed Caribou Ranch recording studio, located near Nederland, Colorado, existed for about fifteen years from 1971 to 1985. During its brief history, the recording studio became a destination for dozens of famed musicians and performers, including…
Caroline Bancroft
Caroline Nichols Churchill
Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–1926) was a writer and newspaper editor best known for founding and editing the Queen Bee, a Denver weekly newspaper dedicated to “the interests of humanity, woman’s political equality and individuality.” Embracing…
Carrie Clyde Holly
Carrie Clyde Holly (1856–1943) of Pueblo County was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1894, making her one of the first three female legislators in the United States. In 1895 Holly became the first woman to get a bill she drafted made into…
Carrie Welton
Casa Mayan
Between 1946 and 1973, the Casa Mayan (1020 Ninth Street) served as a restaurant in the Auraria neighborhood of west Denver as well as a family home and multicultural meeting place for writers, musicians, artists, athletes, architects, politicians, and…
Charles Deaton
Charles Deaton was an influential western American architect best known for his Sculptured House (better known as the Sleeper House) in the hills around Denver. Deaton is remembered as a pioneering Colorado artist whose work was an example of…
Chauncey Billups
Chauncey Billups (1976–) is a retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player who played for seven teams, including the Denver Nuggets, before he retired in 2014. A Colorado native, Billups was a star player at the University of Colorado–Boulder…
Cheyenne Mountain
Chicago-Colorado Colony
The Chicago-Colorado Colony (1871–73) established the city of Longmont near the confluence of St. Vrain and Left Hand Creeks in 1871. Financed by wealthy Chicagoans and consisting mostly of immigrants from the Midwest, the colony was an agricultural…
Cigar Making in Colorado
Civilian Conservation Corps in Colorado
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal program aimed at reducing unemployment among young men by giving them steady work improving the nation’s landscape, public lands, and infrastructure. When it was implemented in 1933, the CCC was the…
Colorado Avalanche
The Colorado Avalanche, based in Denver, is the only National Hockey League (NHL) team in Colorado, competing in the Central Division of the league’s Western Conference. Formerly the Quebec Nordiques, the team arrived in Denver in 1995 and won the…
Colorado Ballet
Colorado Ballet is Denver’s leading ballet-production company. Founded in 1951 by Freidann Parker and Lillian Covillo, the organization now encompasses a thirty-one-member professional performing company, a studio company, an academy for advanced…
Colorado History Museum
The Colorado History Museum, the second major home of the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado), opened in 1977 to replace the Colorado State Museum (1915). Located on the south side of Civic Center in Denver, the modern museum was three…
Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo (CMHIP)
The Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo (CMHIP) is Colorado’s original and largest public psychiatric institution. It has a long and complicated history of housing and rehabilitating adults and children living with mental illness, physical and…
Colorado Poetry
Colorado Rockies
Colorado Symphony
The Colorado Symphony is Denver’s main orchestra and one of the few major orchestras in the Rocky Mountain region. The organization traces its roots to the Denver Symphony, which was established in 1934 under Horace Tureman and became fully professional…
Columbine Massacre
The massacre at Columbine High School in 1999 was, at the time, one of the worst school shootings perpetrated in the United States. Fifteen people, including the two shooters, were killed. In the months and years following the tragedy, discussions about…
Country Club Historic District
Denver’s Country Club Historic District has been one of the most prestigious and exclusive neighborhoods in Colorado for more than a century. Originally developed in conjunction with the Denver Country Club, which opened just to the south in 1904, the…
Crawford and Louise Hill Mansion
Built in 1905–6, the Crawford and Louise Hill Mansion at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Sherman Street in Denver stands as one of three remaining mansions from the affluent neighborhood that occupied the Sherman-Grant Historic District prior to the…
Cripple Creek Fires of 1896
In April 1896, the mining town of Cripple Creek was devastated by two fires within four days. Frigid winter winds and scant water supply caused both fires to spread rapidly and created difficulty for volunteer firefighters who attempted to extinguish…
Dale H. Maple
Private First Class Dale H. Maple (1920–2001) was stationed at Camp Hale near Leadville during World War II when he assisted in the escape of three German prisoners-of-war prisoners of war in February 1944. Following Maple’s arrest along with the…
Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon (1880–1946) was a newspaperman, political reporter, author, screenwriter, and playwright in the early 1900s. Best known for his work after leaving Colorado, particularly Guys and Dolls, Runyon was a prolific writer during his time in…
Dean Reed
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) (100 W. 14th Avenue) in the city’s Civic Center boasts more than 70,000 works from across the centuries and the world. Best known for its collection of Indigenous art, it was the first major museum to establish a separate…
Denver Athletic Club
Denver Broncos
Denver Center for the Performing Arts
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) is a theatrical organization that puts on professional productions, brings Broadway shows to Denver, and offers educational programming. Established in 1979, DCPA grew out of a Denver theatrical legacy…
Denver Country Club
Established in 1887, the Denver Country Club is one of the oldest, most exclusive private social clubs in the West. The 1904 clubhouse and its surrounding 142 acres of landscaping are significant features in the city of Denver, situated along Cherry…
Denver Nuggets
The Denver Nuggets, Colorado’s professional basketball team, compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as part of the Northwest Division in the association’s Western Conference. While an amateur-league team named the Denver Nuggets competed in…
Denver Zoo
Denver’s Capitol Hill
Dinosaur National Monument
Dr. Florence Rena Sabin
One of the preeminent medical and scientific minds of the early twentieth century, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin (1871–1953) was a public servant devoted to improving public health. As the first woman to receive a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University…
Dr. Stanley Biber
Stanley Biber (1923–2006) was a surgeon in Trinidad during the twentieth century who specialized in sex reassignment surgeries. His clinic, one of the first in the country to offer sex reassignment surgeries, grew in reputation thanks to its…
East High School
Built in 1925, East High School (1545 Detroit Street, Denver) is a public school that exemplifies the City Beautiful Movement’s dedication to placing schools in generous park-like settings and making them lessons in distinctive design. East is…
Eddie Eagan
Edward “Eddie” Patrick Francis Eagan (1897–1967) is the only person to have won gold medals in two different sports at the summer and winter Olympics. Born in Denver, Eagan attended Longmont High School and the University of Denver before going on to…
Edward M. McCook
Elitch Gardens
Eliza Pickrell Routt
Elizabeth Byers
Elizabeth Iliff Warren
Elizabeth Fraser Iliff Warren (1844–1920) was one of Denver’s most influential early citizens and was instrumental in founding the Iliff School of Theology. After arriving in Denver in 1869 as a twenty-four-year-old sewing-machine saleswoman, she married…
Elizabeth Paepcke
Elizabeth Paepcke (1902–94) is best known for working with her husband, Walter, to transform the former mining town of Aspen into a cultural hub after World War II. Trained in art and design, she was perhaps most influential in getting Walter interested…
Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor
Emily Elizabeth Wilson
Emily Griffith
Emily Griffith (1868–1947) was a visionary educator in the field of adult, vocational, and alternative education. After working as a teacher and administrator in Denver, she started the Denver Opportunity School in 1916, premised on the idea that…
Emma Florence Langdon
Emma Florence Langdon (1875–1937) was a linotype operator, historian, and labor leader celebrated for her courageous defense of the freedom of the press during the Colorado Labor Wars. When National Guardsmen arrested five prounion employees of the…
Fairmount Cemetery
Fannie Mae Duncan
Fannie Mae Duncan (1918–2005) was an entrepreneur and an activist for racial equality at a time of segregation in Colorado Springs. From 1947 to 1975, she owned and operated a series of businesses including the Cotton Club, the city’s first racially…
Fort Morgan
Fort Morgan is a city of about 12,000 people along the South Platte River, about seventy miles northeast of Denver. It is part of the high plains region that an early explorer, Major Stephen Long, called the “Great American Desert.” As the center of a…
Frances Klock
Frances S. Klock (1844–1908) was one of the first three women—along with Clara Cressingham and Carrie Clyde Holly—to serve as a state legislator in the United States. The three ran for office in 1894, one year after women in Colorado achieved the right…
Frank P. Marugg
Gary Hart
Gene Cervi
General Federation of Women’s Clubs
The General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) is an international women’s organization dedicated to community improvement and enhancing the lives of others. In 1906 the group’s Colorado chapter helped establish Mesa Verde National Park, its most…
Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert
Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert (1869–1944) was a Denver socialite and philanthropist. Born into a prominent family, she inherited drive and ambition from her successful parents and established a legacy for herself in politics, suffrage, and local…
Golden
Gray Goose Airways
Denver’s history is full of innovation and success associated with the emergence of air travel, but perhaps just as many ventures failed. Though Gray Goose Airways was ultimately unsuccessful, founder Jonathan Edward Caldwell was doggedly persistent in…
Great Fire of 1863
In the early morning hours of April 19, 1863, a fire raged through Denver, reducing much of the town’s business district to ash. As in most frontier towns of the American West, fire had been a concern for Denver citizens since the town’s founding in 1858…
Gumry Hotel Explosion
On August 19, 1895, a steam boiler exploded in Denver’s Gumry Hotel, killing twenty-two people and injuring dozens. Hotel fires were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Colorado, but the Gumry explosion was the worst hotel disaster in Colorado history and…
Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run
Harry Buckwalter
Photojournalist, radio reporter, and film producer Harry Buckwalter (1867–1930) is considered Colorado’s first photojournalist. He was also one of the great technological innovators of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West, known for…
Harry Tuft
Harry Tuft (1935–) is a Denver businessman, music promoter, educator, and proprietor of the long-standing Denver Folklore Center. As one of Denver’s enterprising musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, Tuft brought the genre of folk music and its culture to…
Helen G. Bonfils
Helen Gilmer Bonfils (1889–1972) was a well-known Colorado actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is best known as manager of The Denver Post and for her contributions to the theater in Colorado through her time as an actress, producer, and…
Helen Ring Robinson
Helen Ring Robinson (c. 1860–1923) was the first woman elected to the Colorado State Senate in 1912 and the second woman elected to any state senate in the nation. In her role as senator during the Progressive Era, she was a passionate advocate for…
Helen Thorpe
Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell
Henry Browne Blackwell
Henry Blackwell (1825–1909) worked with his wife, Lucy Stone, to pave the way for women’s suffrage. Blackwell advocated for equal rights at the local, state, and national levels throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He worked to create…
Hispano Settlement in the Purgatoire Valley
Adobe buildings in towns such as Trinidad and the remnants of plazas or villages attest to early Hispano settlement along the Purgatoire River in southern Colorado. Today, Hispanos—descendants of Mexicans who lived in what became the US southwest after…
History Colorado (Colorado Historical Society)
History Colorado (HC) was founded in 1879 by the state legislature as the State Historical and Natural History Society. Later known as the Colorado Historical Society, it assumed its current name in 2009. HC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational…
Homeopathy in Colorado
Horace Tabor
Hose Company No. 1
One of Denver’s earliest firehouses, the Hose Company No. 1 building was built in the 1880s and has since served as a print shop, welding shop, and storage facility. It will soon reopen as a restaurant for a new hotel. The preservation of Hose Company No…
Interstate 70
Italian Murders of 1875
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey (1895–1983) was the US heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926 and a major American sporting icon of the twentieth century. Nicknamed “The Manassa Mauler” after his Colorado hometown, Dempsey was so popular that he…
Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin
Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin (1914–2004) moved Colorado toward a more rights-based society for individuals with mental illness. As an assistant city attorney for Denver, first president of the Colorado Association for Mental Health, and a Democratic state…
Jeff Campbell
Jeff Campbell (1970–) is a Denver rapper, playwright, performance artist, and activist. Born in Alabama and raised along the Front Range, Campbell worked for a hip-hop label in California before returning to the Mile High City in the early 1990s and…
John Elway
John Elway (1960–) is a former National Football League quarterback and general manager of the Denver Broncos. Elway won two Super Bowls as a Broncos player (1997 and 1998) and a third (2015) as the team’s general manager. As perhaps the most popular and…
John Evans
John L. Routt
John W. Gunnison
Josephine Meeker
Josephine Meeker (1857–82) was the daughter of Nathan Meeker, the Indian agent who oversaw the White River Indian Agency during the Meeker Incident, a Ute uprising in 1879. After the revolt, Utes took Josephine, her mother, another woman, and her two…
Julia Greeley
Julia Greeley (c. 1840–1918) was born into slavery in Missouri. Around 1880 she moved to Denver and became a Catholic. Despite being poor herself, Greeley spent the rest of her life doing good deeds for the impoverished. In 2016 the Catholic Church…
Julie Penrose
Julie Villiers Lewis McMillan Penrose (1870–1956) was one of the primary benefactors of Colorado Springs institutions in the interwar years. Her husband, multimillionaire Spencer (“Speck”) Penrose, profited from Cripple Creek gold and Utah copper in the…
Kate Ferretti
Henrietta “Kate” Malnati Ferretti (1891–1987) was an early twentieth-century entrepreneur who established a successful millinery business in Denver. A first-generation Italian American, Ferretti founded her business in Denver’s Little Italy and catered…
Katharine Grafton Patterson
Katharine Grafton Patterson (1839–1902) came to Colorado in 1872 with her husband, Thomas Patterson, and soon established herself as an influential clubwoman, suffragist, and philanthropist. Devoutly religious, Patterson dedicated the majority of her…
Katherine Slaughterback (Rattlesnake Kate)
Katherine Slaughterback (1893–1969) was a dryland prairie homesteader on the Colorado plains. In 1925 she became known as Rattlesnake Kate after she killed 140 rattlesnakes, allegedly in self-defense, in Weld County. Her story, which is likely an…
Kent Haruf
Kent Haruf (1943–2014) was a novelist best known for Plainsong (1999). Set in the fictional town of Holt in northeast Colorado, Plainsong and Haruf’s other novels examine the lives of ordinary people on the high plains. Often praised for his unadorned…
Koshare Scouts
The Koshare Scouts is primarily made up of Boy Scout troop 2230 in La Junta, Otero County, that has studied Native American lore and performed tribal rituals since the 1930s. This imitative white group is part of a long American history of “playing…
Ku Klux Klan in Colorado
Lake County War
The Lake County War of 1874–75 grew out of a personal dispute over land and water rights in an area where increasing settlement was making both resources relatively scarce. The conflict ultimately turned into a test of law, justice, and state legitimacy…
Lakewood
Leadville Trail 100 MTB
The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race, currently known as the Stages Cycling Leadville Trail 100 MTB, covers 100 miles in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado on a mix of alpine trail, dirt road, and pavement. Created by Leadville resident Ken Chlouber…
Leadville Trail 100 Run
Legislative Sessions and Women’s Suffrage (1861–93)
In 1893 Colorado became the first state to enact women’s suffrage by popular referendum, when a majority of male voters approved an amendment to the Colorado Constitution. The passage of women’s suffrage built on decades of earlier work in the Colorado…
Lena Stoiber
Lena Alma Allen Webster Stoiber Rood Ellis (1862–1935) was the “Bonanza Queen” of Silverton. Known as “Captain Jack” or “Jack Pants” to the miners who worked for her, she was a tough boss who worked in conjunction with her second husband, Edward G…
Longmont
Louise Bethel Sneed Hill
Lowry Neighborhood
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone (1818–93) was an orator, abolitionist, and suffragette who founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1877 she campaigned for a women’s suffrage referendum in Colorado alongside fellow suffrage champion Susan B. Anthony. Although the…
Lynching in Colorado
Lynching, a form of vigilante punishment involving mob execution, has an active history in Colorado. Between 1859 and 1919, Coloradans carried out 175 lynchings. Lynching is usually associated with the Reconstruction Era in the American South, but before…
Lyulph Ogilvy
Lyulph Gilchrist Stanley Ogilvy (1861–1947) was an influential irrigator, rancher, journalist, and soldier in early Colorado. An immigrant son of Scottish aristocrats, Ogilvy helped build and maintain irrigation ditches in Weld County and later became a…
Mallory Pugh
Mallory Diane Pugh (1998–) is an American professional soccer player for the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) and the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). One of the most accomplished Colorado soccer players in…
Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway
Margaret Coel
Margaret Coel (1937– ) is a New York Times best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her Wind River Mystery Series but has also published five nonfiction books, a book of short stories, and two additional…
Margaret W. Campbell
Margaret West Norton Campbell (1827–1908) was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and one of the nation’s most sought-after suffrage speakers. In Colorado she was instrumental in the 1877 campaign for women’s suffrage. The measure failed, but her work…
Mari Sandoz
Mary Hauck Elitch Long
Mary Hauck Elitch Long (1856–1936) was the first woman in the world to own and operate a zoo, located at Elitch Gardens in Denver. She and her husband, John Elitch, Jr., opened the attraction in 1890, and after his death in 1891, Mary continued on as a…
Matt Carpenter
Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg (1911–72) was a pioneer of early television broadcasting and a television personality in the 1950s and 1960s. Goldberg worked to promote the growth of television in Denver, and his weekly talk show On the Spot set the stage for television’s…
Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino
Mistanta (Owl Woman)
Montclair
Neil Gorsuch
Neil Gorsuch (1967–) is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in Denver to a prominent legal and political family, he moved as a teenager to Washington, DC, where his mother, Anne Gorsuch, served in the administration of…
Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association
NORAD
Opera Colorado
Opera Colorado started in the early 1980s as Denver’s main opera-production company. Founded by the husband-and-wife team of Nathaniel Merrill and Louise Sherman, the company performed at the Denver Performing Arts Complex’s Boettcher Concert Hall before…
Painter Family
Paramount Theater
The Paramount Theater (1621 Glenarm Place, Denver) is the best-known Art Deco design of architect Temple Hoyne Buell. Buell created this 1930 palace as the most ornate of all Colorado movie theaters and a gem in the coast-to-coast chain of exuberant…
Peter Heller
Peter Heller (1959–) is a novelist and travel writer based in Denver. Best known for his 2012 debut novel, The Dog Stars, he is also the author of three other best-selling novels and four nonfiction books. His writing powerfully evokes the natural…
Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon
First held in 1956 as a contest between smokers and nonsmokers, the Pikes Peak Marathon is an annual trail-running race that takes competitors from Manitou Springs to the summit of 14,115-foot Pikes Peak and back, mostly via the mountain’s famous Barr…
Prohibition
Public Lands History Center
Pueblo Chemical Depot
Ralph Carr
Rev. John O. Ferris
Rick Trujillo
Richard “Rick” Trujillo (1948–) is a Colorado mountain runner best known for starting the Imogene Pass Run in 1974 and winning the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon{ six times in the 1970s, long before trail and mountain running became popular activities…
River House Saloon Fire of 1862
Seeing them as public nuisances that bred sin, enraged citizens burned down several saloons and dance halls in Denver during the 1860s. One of the first and most significant of these attacks was the burning of the River House Saloon on Ferry Street on…
Riverside Cemetery
Riverside Cemetery was established along the South Platte River in 1876, making it the oldest surviving cemetery in Denver. It is the final resting place for many prominent early Coloradans, including John Evans, Augusta Tabor, Miguel Otero, and Barney…
Robert S. Roeschlaub
Robert W. Speer
Ruth Underhill
Ruth Underhill (1883–1984) was a prominent anthropologist in the mid- to-late twentieth century, and one of the first female anthropologists to reach the stature regularly enjoyed by male colleagues. As a professor at the University of Denver later in…
Saco Rienk DeBoer
Sadie Likens
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
Sakura Square
Sarah Platt Decker
Scientific and Cultural Facilities District
The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD) is a metropolitan district that generates funding for nonprofit arts and culture organizations across Denver, Boulder, Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, Douglas, and Broomfield Counties through a 0.1…
Sixteenth Street (Denver)
Spencer Penrose
St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church
Towering above Eleventh and Curtis Streets with its Gothic spires and Romanesque arches, St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church has served Catholics in Denver for more than a century. Established in 1878, St. Elizabeth’s was the second Catholic parish…
St. James Hotel Fire of 1895
On March 23, 1895, a blaze at the St. James Hotel in Denver killed four firefighters, three of whom were black. Despite ongoing racial tensions that had intensified during the depths of an economic depression, the city mourned all four men together,…
St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral
St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral (1350 Washington Street, Denver) was the first Episcopal congregation in Colorado and serves as the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. The 1911 cathedral is a fine example of the Late English Gothic style, and the…
St. Leo’s Catholic Church
Between 1888 and 1965, St. Leo’s Catholic Church at Tenth Street and West Colfax Avenue in West Denver was the primary center of worship for Irish Catholics in the city. From the time it was built, St. Leo’s faced controversy over its role in enforcing…
St. Luke’s Hospital
St. Luke’s Hospital was a Denver fixture for over a century, serving the community as one of several hospitals in the capitol. St. Luke’s role in training several generations of doctors and nurses garners historical significance for the building complex…
State Folk Dance
Swedish National Sanatorium
The Swedish National Sanatorium in Denver was a tuberculosis treatment center active throughout the 1900s. As tuberculosis swept the nation, thousands of consumptives turned to the dry mountain air of Colorado to alleviate their symptoms, and sanatoriums…
Tabor Grand Opera House
Telluride
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin (1947–) is a renowned advocate and expert in two very different fields: animal welfare and autism. A prolific author on both subjects, Grandin has taught at Colorado State University (CSU) since 1990. Her focus on animal welfare,…
The First National Western Stock Show
The origins of Denver’s annual National Western Stock Show, today one of the city’s biggest tourism draws, date to 1898, a time when American cities competed for the attention of various national organizations in the hope of hosting conventions to bring…
The Hilltop Bomber Crash
The Tenth Mountain Division
The “Nude” Silks-Fulton Duel
Theodosia Ammons
Thomas E. Ketchum
Tivoli Brewery
Constructed in 1864, the Tivoli Brewery in Denver was the first brewery built in Colorado and the second in the nation. Over the course of its complex history, the brewery changed hands multiple times until it was abandoned in 1969. The Tivoli building…
Union Depot Fire of 1894
In 1894 a fire at Denver’s original Union Depot destroyed much of the building within an hour. The burning of the railroad station, which had been completed in 1881 and was regarded as one of the largest and grandest in the West, shocked Denver citizens…
United States Air Force Academy
Walter Paepcke
Walter P. Paepcke, a Chicago businessman, was pivotal in developing Aspen into a resort known for its exceptional skiing and as a hub for intellectuals, artists, politicians, and celebrities. Paepcke’s efforts have made Aspen stand out among Colorado’s…
Western History and Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library
The Denver Public Library (DPL) has one of the nation’s largest and finest collections on the history of the American West. Created in 1935, the collection continues to grow and currently includes more than 250,000 cataloged books, architectural records,…
Wichita State University Plane Crash
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody
William Fisher
William Ellsworth Fisher (1871–1937) headed one of the largest and most influential architectural firms in the Rocky Mountain region. Working most notably with his younger brother, Arthur Addison Fisher, he designed many elaborate houses for the wealthy,…
William H. Dickens
William Henry Dickens (c. 1842–1915) was a homesteader, farmer, and businessman in the St. Vrain valley. A prominent early citizen of Longmont, Dickens built the Dickens Opera House, established Farmers National Bank, and helped organize the Farmers…
William Jackson Palmer
William N. Byers
William “Bat” Masterson
William “Cement Bill” Williams
William “Cement Bill” Williams (1868–1945) was a prominent contractor, political agitator, and personality in Golden during the early 1900s. Williams’s tireless campaigning brought crucial road construction to Golden, much of which he built himself…
Women During Prohibition
Women in Early Colorado
In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Colorado, women’s labor was often vital to a family’s economic survival. Historian Katherine Harris demonstrated in her study of Logan and Washington Counties that women’s earnings from butter, eggs, and the…
Women of the Ku Klux Klan
Membership in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) spiked nationwide during the 1920s, and Colorado was no exception to the hysteria of nativism and religious prejudice that swept the country. Following World War I, national KKK recruiters helped local agitators form…
Women's Suffrage Movement
Wonderbound
Based in Denver, Wonderbound was established in 2002 and has quickly grown into the second-largest professional dance company in Colorado. Originally called Ballet Nouveau Colorado and affiliated with a Broomfield-based dance school of the same name, in…