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Bison

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 …

Brush

Brush is an agricultural community in Morgan County on the plains of eastern Colorado. It is located just east of Fort Morgan at the convergence of US Highway 34, US Highway 6, and State Highway 71 and is situated along the historic Texas Montana Trail…

Buffalo Peaks Ranch

Buffalo Peaks Ranch is one of the oldest ranches in South Park, with roots in Adolphe and Marie Guiraud’s 1862 homestead along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River between Hartsel and Fairplay. Over the next eighty years, three generations of the…

Colorado Water Institute

The Colorado Water Institute (CWI), an affiliate of Colorado State University (CSU) since 1965, exists for the express purpose of focusing the expertise of higher education on evolving water concerns and problems in the Centennial State.
 
…

Cottonwood Trees

One of the most ecologically and culturally significant trees in Colorado, the plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides monilifera) thrives near rivers and riparian areas throughout the state. It is one of the only tree species to grow on Colorado’s Great…

Denver

Denver is the capital of Colorado and the twenty-first largest city in the United States, sprawling over six counties and 3,497 square miles of the High Plains and the Rocky Mountain foothills. Centered at the confluence of the South Platte River and…

Early Irrigation in Denver

Like most places in the arid American West, Denver could not possibly sustain itself without water from irrigation systems. While easy to overlook, disputes over water rights began with the onset of irrigation and persist to the present day. Today,…

Flooding in Colorado

Coloradans have maintained a complex relationship with the natural process of flooding. On one hand, inhabitants of the arid West—from early indigenous communities to current metropolitan populations—have been attracted to the many resources floodplains…

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…

Fort Vasquez

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…

Front Range

The Front Range is a corridor of the Rocky Mountains and surrounding land stretching 200 miles from the Wyoming border on the north to the Arkansas River on the south. The western border of the Front Range consists of a collection of high mountain ranges…

Great Divide

The beautiful and imposing mountain scenery of Colorado’s Great Divide has led to the common belief that the state is home to a singular “Continental Divide.” The divide in Colorado, however, is only a piece of the larger Great Divide, a geologic crest…

Greeley

Greeley is a growing community of 100,000 people along the Front Range in northeastern Colorado. Founded as an agricultural colony in 1870, the city has an economic, political, and cultural reach that extends far beyond its municipal borders. Greeley is…

Sedgwick County

Sedgwick County covers 549 square miles in the northeastern corner of Colorado. It was established in 1889 and named for Fort Sedgwick. Straddling the South Platte River, the county is bordered by Nebraska’s Deuel and Perkins Counties to the north and…

South Platte Flood of 1965

The South Platte River flood of June 16, 1965 was one of the worst natural disasters in Denver’s history. It was part of a statewide flooding event that claimed a total of twenty-four lives across the Arkansas and South Platte River basins. The flooding…

South Platte River

The South Platte River flows from its headwaters in the Mosquito Range west of South Park across Colorado’s northeastern plains. From downtown Fairplay to the Nebraska border at Julesburg, its course through Colorado is approximately 380.3 miles.
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Sterling

Sterling is the county seat of Logan County in northeastern Colorado. Founded by homesteaders along the South Platte River in 1881, Sterling quickly developed into a commercial hub on Colorado’s eastern plains. Although it has been through its share of…

Treaty of Fort Laramie

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…