Beef Industry on the Colorado Plains
Colorado’s beef industry traces its roots back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when cowboys drove cattle across the plains in some of the most iconic imagery of the American West. However, the state’s modern beef industry did not begin…
Bison Reintroduction
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…
Grand Valley Irrigation
John Wesley Iliff
If there is a name in Colorado history that is synonymous with cattle and ranching, it is John Wesley Iliff (1831–78). At the time of his death, Iliff owned approximately 35,000 head of cattle and thousands of acres stretching from northeast Colorado to…
Painter Family
Richard Wetherill
Rock Art of Colorado
Sugar Beet Industry
Sunflowers
The Bee Family Farm
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…