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Antiquities Act

The Antiquities Act, enacted in 1906, was the United States’ first federal law recognizing the importance and value of the places and objects that represent the country’s history and prehistory. The act provided for protection of archaeological and…

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international civil and human rights movement organized in 2013 by three Black women: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. Formed after the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, the movement began as a social…

Cannabis (marijuana)

Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) is a cultivated annual herb. In Colorado it is best known for producing the medicinal and recreational drug “marijuana,” but it is also grown for a variety of other products, including seed oil, rope, ointments, and clothing. …

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…

Colorado Constitution

The Colorado Constitution establishes the basic framework of the state’s government. Written and ratified in 1876, it has served as the state’s original and only constitution. As in other states, ultimate power rests with the people and is exercised by…

Colorado’s New Energy Economy

The term New Energy Economy refers to the transition of a state’s energy economy from one based purely on fossil fuels to one that includes a higher percentage of renewable energy sources. State-level energy policies have been the primary force moving…

Eugenics in Colorado

“Eugenics” refers to a social-engineering project based on the unsubstantiated idea that humanity can be improved by eliminating supposedly defective or lesser genes in favor of others. During the twentieth century, American medical professionals and…

General Federation of Women’s Clubs

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) is an international women’s organization dedicated to community improvement and enhancing the lives of others. In 1906 the group’s Colorado chapter helped establish Mesa Verde National Park, its most…

History Colorado (Colorado Historical Society)

History Colorado (HC) was founded in 1879 by the state legislature as the State Historical and Natural History Society. Later known as the Colorado Historical Society, it assumed its current name in 2009. HC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational…

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in Chicago in 1905 as an explicitly anarchist-socialist alternative to the major labor unions of the time, which the IWW’s leaders deemed too conservative. In the following decades, the organization…

Land and Resource Management in Colorado

The ideologies of conservation and preservation have profoundly shaped Colorado’s physical landscapes and continue to shape Coloradans’ attitudes toward nature. Agencies such as Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and the United States Forest Service (USFS…

Origins of Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as the country’s ninth national park. The site was visited and considered sacred by multiple Indigenous nations before it began attracting interest from white Americans in the late nineteenth and early…

Populism in Colorado

Populism was a third-party political movement of the 1890s that left an enduring imprint on Colorado history. The Populist or People’s Party was especially strong in the south, Midwest, and west because it focused on the grievances of farmers, workers,…

Prohibition

Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) was a Progressive Era experiment, based on reform-minded and religious sentiments, to completely ban the sale and transport of alcohol. While the intention of reformers was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and…

The City Beautiful Movement in Denver

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the City Beautiful movement sought to create a livable urban environment with healthy and agreeable conditions and an abundance of recreational facilities in the midst of rapidly industrializing cities. Cities…

United Mine Workers of America

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) formed in 1890 to fight for better pay and working conditions for the nation’s coal miners. In Colorado the union was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the…

Western Federation of Miners

Founded in 1893, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was one of the largest and most active labor unions in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West. The union was involved in some of the most important labor disputes in Colorado…

Women of the Ku Klux Klan

Membership in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) spiked nationwide during the 1920s, and Colorado was no exception to the hysteria of nativism and religious prejudice that swept the country. Following World War I, national KKK recruiters helped local agitators form…

“Great American Desert”

Early nineteenth century Army explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen H. Long conceptualized the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains as the “Great American Desert.” Long’s report called it “unfit for cultivation,” while Pike compared it to “the sandy…