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 (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…

Colorado’s most notable architect, Burnham “Bernie” Hoyt (1887–1960) designed eighty-five major constructed projects in a variety of styles, ranging from a fifteenth-century Scottish castle (Cherokee Castle, 1926) in Sedalia to the radically modern…

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…

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 Owen Tryba (1955–) is a prominent and prolific Denver architect known for designing the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, the Union Station renovation, and the History Colorado Center as well as the Google campus in Boulder. He has…

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…

Frank E. Edbrooke (1841–1921), Colorado’s best-known and most-celebrated architect, designed more than seventy buildings, including many now-landmarked structures that helped define Denver’s built environment. He gave the city its first fine commercial…

Herbert Bayer (1900–85) was an artist, architect, and designer best known in Colorado for his work in Aspen during the decades after World War II. Born in Austria and trained at the Bauhaus, Bayer brought to the United States a modernist belief in simple…

In 1882 a group of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled at the Cotopaxi Colony. The colony was the result of persistent efforts by several prominent American Jews and Jewish organizations to offer a better life for those fleeing the Pale of…

John Edward Williams (1922–94) was a novelist and professor at the University of Denver, where he founded Denver Quarterly and helped build the school’s creative writing program. He is best known for his three major novels: Butcher’s Crossing (1960), a…

Jacques Benedict (1879–1948), one of Colorado’s best-known and most-flamboyant architects, designed some of Colorado’s grandest Beaux Arts city homes and rustic mountain residences, as well as notable churches, libraries, schools, a town hall, shelters…

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…

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…

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…

Temple Hoyne Buell (1895–1990) was a leading Colorado architect, developer, socialite, and philanthropist from 1923 to 1990. By 1940, he headed the largest architectural firm in the Rocky Mountain region. A tall, handsome bon vivant noted for his wit,…

Albert Wilbur Steele (1862–1925) was an early twentieth-century artist and editorial cartoonist for Denver newspapers. The first American cartoonist to appear daily in a newspaper, Steele drew front-page cartoons that appeared above the fold in The…

William A. Lang (1846–97), one of Colorado’s premier residential architects, practiced in Denver between 1887 and 1895, both individually and in the firm of Lang and Pugh. During that period, Lang designed some 250 buildings and made a name for himself…

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846–1917) was neither born in Colorado nor lived in the state. In death, however, he became one of its most famous residents. Cody’s first experience in Colorado came in 1859, when he was a thirteen-year-old participant…