The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is native to Colorado, and its role as both an environmental engineer and a keystone species has profoundly impacted the state’s ecology and history. Although their populations today are low, beavers continue…

In the early and mid-nineteenth century, when the western United States was in a seemingly unending state of flux as people competed for dominance over the land and its resources, three men moved to what would eventually become southeastern Colorado and…

The American Plains Bison (Bison bison) are large mammals in the Bovidae family, recognizable for their large head, shaggy coats, pronounced hump, and close association with the American West. Bison are commonly and incorrectly referred to as …

Fort Davy Crockett was one of three known nineteenth-century forts and trading posts on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, in the drainage systems of the Green and Colorado Rivers. From the mid-1830s to 1840, Fort Davy Crockett, along with Fort…

In the summer of 1837, Henry Fraeb and Peter Sarpy arrived at a location on the South Platte River a few miles north of present-day Fort Lupton. They arrived with $10,909.75 worth of goods for trade with the Cheyenne and Arapaho who frequented the area…

Fort Uncompahgre was constructed in 1828 by Antoine Robidoux, a trader based out of Mexican Santa Fé. The trading post was situated about two miles down from the confluence of the Gunnison and Uncompahgre Rivers near the present-day community of Delta in…

Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette operated the fur-trading post Fort Vasquez from 1835 to 1842. After ruthless competition and changing trade patterns caused the pair to leave the fort, it served as a landmark along the South Platte River Trail before…

Louis Vasquez (1798–1868) was a fur trapper and mountain man active in Colorado during the 1820s and 1830s. He reportedly constructed Fort Convenience and a hunter’s cabin that predated the majority of settlement in the region. One of the Colorado fur…

The historic fur trade era in the Colorado region, which began in the early nineteenth century, ushered in a period of direct contact between Native Americans and whites. By this time, the hides and robes provided by Colorado’s furbearing animals had…

The Flat Tops Wilderness covers more than 235,000 acres of remote mountains and forests in Garfield, Rio Blanco, and Eagle Counties on Colorado’s Western Slope. Its most popular natural feature is Trappers Lake, the state’s second-largest natural lake,…

Signed in 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was made between the US government and several Indigenous nations of the Great Plains—including the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota—who occupied parts of present southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. The treaty…