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Making Sense of Here: An Introduction to the Place Section

Colorado is quite a place.Thousands of residents and visitors have arrived independently at that insight, without the guidance of experts.Through the verticality of the state’s mountains, the horizontality of its plains, and the dynamic mixture of…

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…

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…

Art Goodtimes

Art Goodtimes of Norwood won a Colorado Council on the Arts poetry fellowship 29 years ago and served two years as Western Slope Poet Laureate. His most recent book is Looking South to Lone Cone: the Cloud Acre Poems (Sedona, AZ:…

Colorado Gold Rush

The discovery of gold near present-day Denver in 1858–59 drew thousands of people to present-day Colorado, prompting the political organization of first a US territory and later a state. Many current cities and towns, including Denver, Boulder,&nbsp…

Colorado: An Overview

Colorado, “the Centennial State,” was the thirty-eighth state to enter the Union on August 1, 1876. Its diverse geography encompasses 104,094 square miles of the American West and includes swathes of the Great Plains, southern Rocky Mountains, and the…

David Mason

David Mason’s books of poems include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, was published in 2007 and named best…

Jared Smith


 
 Jared Smith is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry. His work has appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies here and abroad. He is Poetry Editor of Turtle Island Quarterly (e-zine,) and has worked on the editorial staff of The New…

Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison, Poet Laureate of Colorado (2014–2019), is the award-winning author of seventeen poetry collections, including The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015; The Satire Lounge; Marked Men; Thread of the Real;…

Juliana Aragón Fatula


 
 Juliana Aragón Fatula, a southern Colorado native and a member of the Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Foundation, won the High Plains Book Festival Poetry Award 2016 for her second book, Red Canyon Falling on Churches. Her first book, Crazy Chicana…

Kierstin Bridger


 
 Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer who divides her time between Ridgway and Telluride. She is author of two books: Women Writing the West's 2017 WILLA Award-winning Demimonde (Lithic Press) and All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). She is a…

Panic of 1893

The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to…

Peter Anderson


 
 Peter Anderson’s most recent books include Heading Home: Field Notes (Conundrum Press, 2017), a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West; Going Down Grand: Poems…

Rita Brady Kiefer

Rita Brady Kiefer has published two full-length poetry collections—Nesting Doll, finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and Crossing Borders—and three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Face to Face (New…

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48). In the treaty, the Republic of Mexico agreed to cede 55 percent of its territory, some 525,000 square miles, to the United States. This land eventually…

Veronica Patterson

Veronica Patterson’s most recent full-length poetry collection is Sudden White Fan (Cherry Grove Collections, 2018). Others include How to Make a Terrarium (Cleveland State University, 1987), Swan, What Shores? (NYU Press Poetry Prize, 2000), Thresh …

Wendy Videlock


 
 
 Wendy Videlock is a writer, visual artist, teacher, and a life-long student of the world. She lives on the Western Slope of Colorado in Palisade. Her books include Nevertheless (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011), Slingshots &…

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,…