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A Confluence of Cultures: An Introduction to the Community Section

Added by yongli on 09/13/2017 - 15:27, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
One popular vision of Colorado presents a region of open spaces where a lone man rides into the setting sun. He is strong, silent, and through individual effort manages to save the girl, bring in the cattle, and haul the “bad guys” off to jail, all before the credits roll. This is the individualist...

Dana Crawford

Added by yongli on 01/25/2021 - 17:21, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 02:40
Dana Crawford (1931–) is a nationally prominent preservationist and developer who exemplifies how one woman can transform a city. She started with Larimer Square and then Lower Downtown (LoDo), the hubs of Denver ’s skid row, and helped turn them into one of America’s most popular and dynamic urban...

History Colorado Center

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:34, last changed on 09/05/2022 - 09:00
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 of previous buildings, including the State...

Adolph Coors

Added by yongli on 02/03/2017 - 21:43, last changed on 06/23/2019 - 01:07
Adolph Coors (1847–1929) immigrated to the United States in 1868 after serving as a brewery apprentice in western Germany and then in the Kingdom of Prussia. After working in Chicago breweries, he moved to Colorado in 1872 and purchased a bottling company. He transformed it into the Coors Brewing...

Agapito Vigil

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 15:33, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:40
Agapito Vigil (1833–?) was a delegate to the Colorado Constitutional Convention in 1875­–76, representing Las Animas and Huerfano Counties, and a member of the state’s First General Assembly, representing Conejos County . At the constitutional convention, he joined Henry Bromwell as the only two...

Agnes W. Spring

Added by yongli on 07/06/2020 - 16:07, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 02:50
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 Wyoming and Colorado history through research,...

AIDS in Colorado

Added by yongli on 03/30/2017 - 13:58, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 20:43
HIV/AIDS represents one of the greatest public health crises of the latter half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first century. The disease affects thousands of families in Colorado alone and has motivated a public response unlike any other in the last fifty years. Today,...

Alan Berg

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 10:34, last changed on 10/03/2019 - 12:11
Alan Berg (1934–84) was an outspoken Denver radio broadcaster in the 1970s and 1980s known for his unapologetic attacks on the far right, religious extremism, and white supremacy. At the time of his assassination by the white supremacist group The Order in 1984, Berg was one of Denver ’s most...

Alan Berney Fisher

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 08:18, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 08:19
Alan Berney Fisher (1905–78), the son of architect William E. Fisher, was an important modernist architect in twentieth-century Denver . Alan received early training in his father’s office before finishing his education at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

Alan Swallow

Added by yongli on 06/16/2021 - 09:25, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 22:41
Alan Swallow (1915–66) founded the University of Denver ’s creative writing program and established Swallow Press, a small publisher that focused in part on books about the American West. He also ran the University of Denver Press from 1947 to 1953. Known for his intense personality, his critical...

Albina Washburn

Added by yongli on 10/14/2020 - 13:42, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 20:38
Albina Washburn (1837–1921) was an important early resident of what is now Loveland and later an influential proponent of women’s suffrage and temperance across Colorado. In 1876 she advocated for women’s suffrage at the state constitutional convention, and in 1880 she cofounded the Colorado branch...

Alice Hale Hill

Added by yongli on 02/16/2021 - 12:59, last changed on 02/16/2021 - 12:59
Alice Hale Hill (1840–1908) was a Denver philanthropist who helped lead institutions such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the Denver Free Kindergarten Association. Wife of Nathaniel P. Hill , a smelting entrepreneur and US senator, she created the first free kindergarten...

Alton “Glenn” Miller

Added by yongli on 07/07/2020 - 15:03, last changed on 11/23/2022 - 18:40
Glenn Miller (1904–44) rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful band leaders of the big band era, during the 1930s and 1940s. At the pinnacle of his popularity, in 1942, he volunteered to serve as a band leader in the army. The music he shared with the troops was met with...

Amendment 2

Added by yongli on 08/20/2019 - 14:52, last changed on 03/30/2023 - 16:41
Amendment 2 was a ballot initiative passed by Colorado voters in 1992 that prohibited the state from enacting antidiscrimination protections for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Voters in the state of Colorado set in motion a legal and constitutional fight when they approved Amendment 2. Passage of...

Amy Van Dyken

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 16:11, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 01:41
Amy Van Dyken (1973–) is a six-time Olympic gold medalist and former competitive swimmer for the United States. In 1996 she became the first American woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Despite an ATV crash in 2014 that left her paralyzed from the waist down, the Colorado...

Anna and Eugenia Kennicott

Added by yongli on 01/18/2017 - 15:49, last changed on 09/04/2021 - 12:26
Anna (1887–1963) and Eugenia Kennicott (1883–1934) grew up on a Colorado farm around the turn of the twentieth century and recorded their day-to-day lives in diaries and in rare photographic plates. Today, their chronicles of women’s experiences on a turn-of-the-century farm in the American west...

Anne Evans

Added by yongli on 10/14/2020 - 12:44, last changed on 09/03/2021 - 08:06
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 development of the Denver Public Library , led the...

Antonia Brico

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 15:53, last changed on 06/29/2021 - 15:53
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 University of Berlin and conducted many major...

Arthur Addison Fisher

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 08:27, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 08:27
Arthur Addison Fisher (1878–1965) worked with his older brother William Ellsworth Fisher in one of the largest and most influential architectural firms in the Rocky Mountain region. Arthur brought to the firm an interest in Spanish and Mediterranean styles. In addition to designing elaborate houses...

Arthur Carhart

Added by yongli on 05/06/2016 - 14:37, last changed on 11/08/2022 - 18:43
Arthur Hawthorne Carhart (1892–1978) was a novelist, US Forest Service (USFS) official, and landscape architect known for developing a commonsense, nonpartisan, and democratic approach to conservation and natural resource management. His legacy lives on today in the Arthur Carhart National...

Aspen Music Festival and School

Added by yongli on 12/02/2021 - 13:01, last changed on 01/25/2023 - 21:43
The Aspen Music Festival and School are together a prestigious summer music program that trace their roots to the music offerings at Aspen ’s Goethe Bicentennial celebration in 1949. The festival puts on a variety of concerts throughout the summer, and the school offers courses in orchestra, brass...

Augusta Tabor

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 13:57, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Augusta Tabor (1833–95), born Augusta Louise Pierce, came to Colorado with her husband Horace and young son during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59. As an astute businesswoman and careful money manager, she helped her husband become one of the country’s wealthiest men in the late nineteenth...

Baron Walter von Richthofen

Added by yongli on 07/08/2020 - 16:07, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 08:51
Baron von Richthofen (1859–98) was a flamboyant, versatile booster and developer who came to Colorado in 1878; he was one of many Germans who constituted the state’s largest foreign-born contingent between 1880 and 1910. Richthofen invested in Denver real estate, helped establish the suburban town...

Beaver Creek Resort

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 16:28, last changed on 03/16/2020 - 01:07
Tucked away in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Beaver Creek Resort has had a rich history since it first opened to the public in 1980. Located in Eagle County , Beaver Creek is a major ski resort owned and operated by Vail Associates. The valley that houses Beaver Creek Resort lies just south of Avon...

Belmont Hotel Fire of 1908

Added by yongli on 07/08/2020 - 16:00, last changed on 07/08/2020 - 16:00
On September 8, 1908, a fire broke out on the second floor of Denver ’s Belmont Hotel, claiming as many as fifteen lives and injuring several others in one of the city’s deadliest fires. After the fire, authorities suspected that theft may have been a motive for arson, as valuables had gone missing...

Billy Fiske

Added by yongli on 06/28/2021 - 17:20, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 22:51
Billy Fiske (1911–40) was a two-time Olympian who drove the US bobsled team to gold medals in the 1928 and 1932 Winter Olympics. A founder of Colorado’s ski industry , Fiske saw the potential for the state to rival the great winter resorts of Europe and helped lay the groundwork for Aspen to become...

Brush

Added by yongli on 08/24/2022 - 13:36, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:45
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. This trail allowed ranchers to graze their...

Burlington (Boulder County)

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 12:19, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
Burlington was a small homestead community along St. Vrain Creek , near present-day Longmont . Founded in 1860 by prospector Alonzo N. Allen, Burlington was named after Burlington, Iowa. The settlement grew to a population of about 150 before the Chicago-Colorado Colony absorbed it in 1871...

Byers-Evans House

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:45, last changed on 11/08/2022 - 10:42
Built in 1883, the Byers-Evans House at 1310 Bannock Street in Denver is a Victorian mansion notable for its association with two of the city’s most influential early families. William Byers , who built the house, had established the city’s first newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News , and during his...

Byron White

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 15:18, last changed on 12/29/2022 - 06:39
Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice, serving from 1962 to 1993, as well as a nationally known college athlete for the University of Colorado and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his belief in judicial restraint, writing brief...

Caribou Ranch Recording Studio

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 13:07, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 22:38
The famed Caribou Ranch recording studio, located near Nederland, Colorado, existed for about fifteen years from 1971 to 1985. During its brief history, the recording studio became a destination for dozens of famed musicians and performers, including Michael Jackson, Joe Walsh, Billy Joel, and John...

Caroline Bancroft

Added by yongli on 05/13/2016 - 16:32, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 02:50
Caroline Bancroft (1900–85) was a prominent author, journalist, organizer, and socialite in twentieth-century Denver. Bancroft’s extensive writings on Colorado’s local history established the importance of the genre and served as an example for generations of historians who followed in her...

Caroline Nichols Churchill

Added by yongli on 04/09/2020 - 10:51, last changed on 09/15/2020 - 11:31
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 progressive and feminist causes, Churchill...

Carrie Clyde Holly

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 14:37, last changed on 10/19/2022 - 05:41
Carrie Clyde Holly (1856–1943) of Pueblo County was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1894, making her one of the first three female legislators in the United States. In 1895 Holly became the first woman to get a bill she drafted made into law, the so-called Holly Law, which raised...

Carrie Welton

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 14:33, last changed on 10/04/2019 - 10:10
Carrie Welton (1842–84) was a relatively well-known socialite and amateur mountaineer who climbed Colorado Fourteeners in the 1880s. When Welton perished during an ill-advised autumn ascent of Longs Peak in 1884, she became the focal point of a national discussion concerning backcountry safety and...

Casa Mayan

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 12:09, last changed on 09/03/2022 - 08:35
Between 1946 and 1973, the Casa Mayan (1020 Ninth Street) served as a restaurant in the Auraria neighborhood of west Denver as well as a family home and multicultural meeting place for writers, musicians, artists, athletes, architects, politicians, and others. The Gonzalez family owned the...

Charles Deaton

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 11:17, last changed on 03/26/2018 - 14:10
Charles Deaton was an influential western American architect best known for his Sculptured House (better known as the Sleeper House ) in the hills around Denver . Deaton is remembered as a pioneering Colorado artist whose work was an example of architecture’s shifting visual aesthetic in the mid-...

Chauncey Billups

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 16:30, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
Chauncey Billups (1976–) is a retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player who played for seven teams, including the Denver Nuggets , before he retired in 2014. A Colorado native, Billups was a star player at the University of Colorado–Boulder before he was drafted into the NBA, where he...

Cheyenne Mountain

Added by yongli on 11/20/2015 - 09:58, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:29
Cheyenne Mountain, a geographical landmark southwest of Colorado Springs , is known for such famous attractions as the Broadmoor Hotel , the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo , and, more recently, a bunker underneath it housing the North American Aerospace Defense Command . The Cheyenne Mountain area has long...

Chicago-Colorado Colony

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 12:21, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
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 community that emphasized thrift, temperance, and...

Civilian Conservation Corps in Colorado

Added by yongli on 08/02/2016 - 16:40, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 01:43
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal program aimed at reducing unemployment among young men by giving them steady work improving the nation’s landscape, public lands, and infrastructure. When it was implemented in 1933, the CCC was the largest-ever public works program. Today, the...

Colorado Avalanche

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 16:01, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:32
The Colorado Avalanche, based in Denver , is the only National Hockey League (NHL) team in Colorado, competing in the Central Division of the league’s Western Conference. Formerly the Quebec Nordiques, the team arrived in Denver in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup—the NHL title—in its first season as...

Colorado Ballet

Added by yongli on 02/15/2022 - 15:12, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 23:44
Colorado Ballet is Denver ’s leading ballet-production company. Founded in 1951 by Freidann Parker and Lillian Covillo, the organization now encompasses a thirty-one-member professional performing company, a studio company, an academy for advanced students, and an education and outreach department...

Colorado History Museum

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:54, last changed on 06/30/2021 - 11:53
The Colorado History Museum, the second major home of the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado ), opened in 1977 to replace the Colorado State Museum (1915). Located on the south side of Civic Center in Denver , the modern museum was three times as large as the old State Museum,...

Colorado Poetry

Added by yongli on 09/30/2016 - 10:47, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 09:44
In 2007 Mary Crow, Colorado Poet Laureate from 1996–2010, wrote a “Poetic History of Colorado” suggesting five basic areas of Colorado poetry: “Western,” Chicano, Beat, performance, and experimental poetry. This essay leans on those themes she identified, with some additional thoughts. ...

Colorado Rockies

Added by yongli on 02/02/2017 - 15:54, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 15:41
The Colorado Rockies arrived in Denver in 1993 and is the only professional baseball team in the Rocky Mountain West. The Rockies compete in Major League Baseball’s National League West Division. Having made the MLB playoffs three times in their short history, the Rockies lost to the Boston Red Sox...

Colorado Symphony

Added by yongli on 02/08/2021 - 16:31, last changed on 11/16/2022 - 00:38
The Colorado Symphony is Denver ’s main orchestra and one of the few major orchestras in the Rocky Mountain region. The organization traces its roots to the Denver Symphony, which was established in 1934 under Horace Tureman and became fully professional in 1945. Led by conductor Saul Caston , the...

Columbine Massacre

Added by yongli on 06/24/2016 - 16:15, last changed on 09/04/2022 - 09:45
The massacre at Columbine High School in 1999 was, at the time, one of the worst school shootings perpetrated in the United States. Fifteen people, including the two shooters, were killed. In the months and years following the tragedy, discussions about public safety, access to firearms, and the...

Country Club Historic District

Added by yongli on 06/15/2021 - 17:09, last changed on 06/29/2021 - 12:48
Denver ’s Country Club Historic District has been one of the most prestigious and exclusive neighborhoods in Colorado for more than a century. Originally developed in conjunction with the Denver Country Club , which opened just to the south in 1904, the district contains 380 residences and has...

Crawford and Louise Hill Mansion

Added by yongli on 06/16/2021 - 09:11, last changed on 06/29/2021 - 12:44
Built in 1905–6, the Crawford and Louise Hill Mansion at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Sherman Street in Denver stands as one of three remaining mansions from the affluent neighborhood that occupied the Sherman-Grant Historic District prior to the construction of apartment buildings (known as “...

Cripple Creek Fires of 1896

Added by yongli on 02/16/2021 - 13:37, last changed on 08/14/2022 - 21:12
In April 1896, the mining town of Cripple Creek was devastated by two fires within four days. Frigid winter winds and scant water supply caused both fires to spread rapidly and created difficulty for volunteer firefighters who attempted to extinguish them. The fires leveled the central business...

Dale H. Maple

Added by yongli on 01/17/2017 - 13:59, last changed on 08/16/2022 - 16:15
Private First Class Dale H. Maple (1920–2001) was stationed at Camp Hale near Leadville during World War II when he assisted in the escape of three German prisoners-of-war prisoners of war in February 1944. Following Maple’s arrest along with the escapees in Mexico, he underwent one of the most...

Damon Runyon

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 16:02, last changed on 05/10/2020 - 01:07
Damon Runyon (1880–1946) was a newspaperman, political reporter, author, screenwriter, and playwright in the early 1900s. Best known for his work after leaving Colorado, particularly Guys and Dolls , Runyon was a prolific writer during his time in Colorado, working for many of the state’s...

Dean Reed

Added by yongli on 06/15/2016 - 16:00, last changed on 10/30/2019 - 11:40
Dean Reed (1938–86) was a singer-songwriter and actor from Denver who enjoyed a stint of popularity in the 1960s and 1970s before experiencing a slow slide into obscurity by the end of his life. Best known for his time spent living and recording in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, Reed’s life reflects the intense polarization of the world he wrote about as well as the political activism typical of many musicians at the time.

Denver Art Museum

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 12:45, last changed on 11/01/2021 - 08:43
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) (100 W. 14th Avenue) in the city’s Civic Center boasts more than 70,000 works from across the centuries and the world. Best known for its collection of Indigenous art, it was the first major museum to establish a separate Native American Arts Department (1925) to...

Denver Athletic Club

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 08:51, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 08:51
The Denver Athletic Club (DAC) is one of the oldest and largest private clubs in Colorado. Founded in 1884 in a rented hall in the First Baptist Church at Eighteenth and Curtis Streets, the DAC has grown into a social club as well as a place to work out. Its five-story home, first built in 1890 in...

Denver Broncos

Added by yongli on 08/03/2016 - 13:38, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 20:42
Denver is home to many professional sports teams, but the city and state’s major sports obsession is without question the Denver Broncos, its professional football team and three-time champions of the National Football League (NFL). The Broncos play home games at Empower Field at Mile High (...

Denver Center for the Performing Arts

Added by yongli on 02/15/2022 - 15:25, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 23:44
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) is a theatrical organization that puts on professional productions, brings Broadway shows to Denver , and offers educational programming. Established in 1979, DCPA grew out of a Denver theatrical legacy that included the University Civic Theatre and...

Denver Country Club

Added by yongli on 06/15/2021 - 17:38, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 22:41
Established in 1887, the Denver Country Club is one of the oldest, most exclusive private social clubs in the West. The 1904 clubhouse and its surrounding 142 acres of landscaping are significant features in the city of Denver , situated along Cherry Creek between the Country Club , Cherry Creek ,...

Denver Nuggets

Added by yongli on 02/22/2017 - 12:08, last changed on 04/08/2020 - 10:17
The Denver Nuggets, Colorado’s professional basketball team, compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as part of the Northwest Division in the association’s Western Conference. While an amateur-league team named the Denver Nuggets competed in the 1930s and 1940s, the current Nuggets...

Denver Zoo

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:59, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:51
The Denver Zoo started in 1896 with a single bear in City Park and has grown to an eighty-acre campus. There are 350 employees overseeing a total of about 3,700 animals from more than 600 species. The zoo draws more than 2 million visitors per year, making it one of Colorado’s most popular cultural...

Denver’s Capitol Hill

Added by yongli on 05/10/2016 - 11:25, last changed on 02/14/2020 - 15:39
The Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver is bounded by Broadway Street, Downing Street, Colfax Avenue, and Seventh Avenue. It contains the Capitol Building and many other landmarks, including the Molly Brown House . The history and development of the Capitol Hill neighborhood serves as a microcosm...

Dinosaur National Monument

Added by yongli on 10/22/2015 - 12:22, last changed on 11/20/2019 - 12:37
Located southeast of the Uinta Mountains at the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers on the Utah-Colorado border, Dinosaur National Monument is a federally protected area where dinosaur fossils can be found. The monument is one of the few places in the United States where such fossils can still...

Dr. Florence Rena Sabin

Added by yongli on 08/11/2016 - 15:42, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 04:41
One of the preeminent medical and scientific minds of the early twentieth century, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin (1871–1953) was a public servant devoted to improving public health. As the first woman to receive a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University, Sabin was also a successful woman in the...

Dr. Stanley Biber

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 12:30, last changed on 11/04/2019 - 10:25
Stanley Biber (1923–2006) was a surgeon in Trinidad during the twentieth century who specialized in sex reassignment surgeries. His clinic, one of the first in the country to offer sex reassignment surgeries, grew in reputation thanks to its compassionate treatment of transsexual patients. Biber’s...

East High School

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:31, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 22:51
Built in 1925, East High School (1545 Detroit Street, Denver ) is a public school that exemplifies the City Beautiful Movement ’s dedication to placing schools in generous park-like settings and making them lessons in distinctive design. East is prominently situated south of City Park along the...

Eddie Eagan

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 14:00, last changed on 10/28/2021 - 14:00
Edward “Eddie” Patrick Francis Eagan (1897–1967) is the only person to have won gold medals in two different sports at the summer and winter Olympics. Born in Denver , Eagan attended Longmont High School and the University of Denver before going on to Yale, Harvard, and Oxford, where he earned his...

Edward M. McCook

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/19/2022 - 08:49, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 12:42
Edward Moody McCook (1835–1909) was a prominent lawyer, soldier, and politician who served as the fifth and seventh governor of Colorado Territory (1869–73 and 1874–75). A successful Union cavalry general during the Civil War , McCook became friends with Ulysses S. Grant, a friendship that resulted...

Elitch Gardens

Added by yongli on 08/20/2019 - 14:40, last changed on 05/04/2023 - 21:35
Elitch Gardens is an amusement park in Denver that opened in 1890 as a zoological garden and amusement park with a renowned summer stock theater. John Elitch and his wife, Mary , founded Elitch Gardens on land that was formerly Chilcott Farm in northwest Denver. When Elitch Gardens opened, it...

Eliza Pickrell Routt

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 16:09, last changed on 09/11/2020 - 17:24
Eliza Pickrell Routt (1839–1907) was the first First Lady of the territory and later state of Colorado in 1875–79 and 1891–93. A strong supporter of women’s suffrage , she used her position as wife of Governor John Long Routt to advocate for expanded voting rights. When Colorado became the second...

Elizabeth Byers

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 15:37, last changed on 08/02/2022 - 11:46
Elizabeth “Libby” Minerva Sumner Byers (1834–1920) was a Colorado social reformer who arrived in Denver in the summer of 1859 and spent the next six decades establishing and supporting the city’s early charitable organizations, schools, and churches. Her focus on the poor led her to found...

Elizabeth Iliff Warren

Added by yongli on 06/10/2020 - 13:36, last changed on 08/11/2022 - 16:09
Elizabeth Fraser Iliff Warren (1844–1920) was one of Denver ’s most influential early citizens and was instrumental in founding the Iliff School of Theology . After arriving in Denver in 1869 as a twenty-four-year-old sewing-machine saleswoman, she married wealthy cattleman John Wesley Iliff . When...

Elizabeth Paepcke

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 13:41, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 23:39
Elizabeth Paepcke (1902–94) is best known for working with her husband, Walter , to transform the former mining town of Aspen into a cultural hub after World War II . Trained in art and design, she was perhaps most influential in getting Walter interested in the modernist styles that shaped much of...

Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor

Added by yongli on 06/21/2018 - 11:35, last changed on 12/27/2022 - 20:41
From her humble Midwestern origins to becoming the famous wife of a silver magnate to her demise as a madwoman living in a dilapidated cabin, Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor (1854–1935) has become one of the most popular figures in Colorado history. Since her death, Baby Doe Tabor’s tumultuous...

Emily Elizabeth Wilson

Added by yongli on 08/30/2016 - 12:37, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 01:43
Emily Elizabeth “Emmy” Wilson (1902–63) was a well-known Colorado business owner, entrepreneur, and socialite who ran the Glory Hole Tavern, a popular establishment in Central City . Wilson and her tavern played an integral role in reviving the ex- mining town’s social and cultural scene, and for...

Emily Griffith

Added by yongli on 07/07/2020 - 15:54, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 14:43
Emily Griffith (1868–1947) was a visionary educator in the field of adult, vocational, and alternative education. After working as a teacher and administrator in Denver , she started the Denver Opportunity School in 1916, premised on the idea that education should be accessible to everyone...

Emma Florence Langdon

Added by yongli on 10/11/2021 - 14:01, last changed on 10/12/2021 - 10:52
Emma Florence Langdon (1875–1937) was a linotype operator, historian, and labor leader celebrated for her courageous defense of the freedom of the press during the Colorado Labor Wars . When National Guardsmen arrested five prounion employees of the Victor Record , Langdon outraced the military to...

Fairmount Cemetery

Added by yongli on 01/21/2021 - 15:36, last changed on 01/21/2021 - 16:08
Fairmount Cemetery is Colorado’s most prominent and populous burial ground and mortuary. Founded in 1890 in southeast Denver , it is the city’s second-oldest active cemetery after Riverside (1876). Today the 280-acre cemetery is home to some 180,000 interments, including prominent Coloradans such...

Fannie Mae Duncan

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 16:05, last changed on 11/09/2022 - 08:42
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 integrated nightclub, which hosted jazz greats...

Fort Morgan

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 10:26, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
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 robust agricultural area, Fort Morgan was...

Frances Klock

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 16:41, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 09:51
Frances S. Klock (1844–1908) was one of the first three women—along with Clara Cressingham and Carrie Clyde Holly —to serve as a state legislator in the United States. The three ran for office in 1894, one year after women in Colorado achieved the right to vote . In addition to serving as a member...

Frank P. Marugg

Added by yongli on 08/31/2016 - 11:28, last changed on 11/07/2019 - 12:26
Frank Marugg (1887–1973) was an inventor who developed the “Denver Boot,” a device that immobilizes a vehicle for ticketing purposes. Despite a lifetime of pursuits in various other industries, the boot remains the most notable achievement of Marugg’s professional career. Still, his life story...

Gary Hart

Added by yongli on 09/13/2017 - 15:13, last changed on 10/05/2018 - 01:07
Gary Hart (1936 –) is a former US Senator from Colorado, serving from 1975 to 1987, and two-time presidential hopeful who became embroiled in one of the first modern political sex scandals. The so-called “Monkey Business” scandal set the tone for future media coverage of politicians’ personal lives...

Gene Cervi

Added by yongli on 03/30/2017 - 13:54, last changed on 12/29/2017 - 08:08
Gene Cervi (1906–70) was an influential Denver newspaperman, publisher, and politician who published one of the first business weeklies in the western United States. Known for his probing insights, razor wit, and short temper, Cervi’s journalism and political activism shaped Denver’s economic and...

General Federation of Women’s Clubs

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 11:16, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 08:47
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 enduring contribution to the state. Founded in 1890...

Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert

Added by yongli on 06/16/2021 - 08:45, last changed on 06/29/2021 - 12:43
Gertrude Hill Berger Cuthbert (1869–1944) was a Denver socialite and philanthropist. Born into a prominent family, she inherited drive and ambition from her successful parents and established a legacy for herself in politics, suffrage , and local charitable organizations. She was regarded as one of...

Golden

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 14:11, last changed on 10/19/2022 - 06:39
Now a small pocket city in the suburbs of Denver , Golden was once the most powerful city in the state and the capital of the Colorado Territory . Today, Golden is known for the Coors Brewery and the Colorado School of Mines and as the seat of Jefferson County . Over the years, a variety of...

Gray Goose Airways

Added by yongli on 08/31/2016 - 13:31, last changed on 08/25/2017 - 20:47
Denver’s history is full of innovation and success associated with the emergence of air travel, but perhaps just as many ventures failed. Though Gray Goose Airways was ultimately unsuccessful, founder Jonathan Edward Caldwell was doggedly persistent in its development and displayed an unwavering...

Great Fire of 1863

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:35, last changed on 01/30/2021 - 09:42
In the early morning hours of April 19, 1863, a fire raged through Denver , reducing much of the town’s business district to ash. As in most frontier towns of the American West, fire had been a concern for Denver citizens since the town’s founding in 1858, because flammable structures and almost...

Gumry Hotel Explosion

Added by yongli on 08/31/2016 - 13:43, last changed on 04/08/2020 - 10:10
On August 19, 1895, a steam boiler exploded in Denver’s Gumry Hotel, killing twenty-two people and injuring dozens. Hotel fires were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Colorado, but the Gumry explosion was the worst hotel disaster in Colorado history and prompted a complete rewrite of boiler...

Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 10:10, last changed on 05/24/2023 - 20:38
The Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run is a famously difficult and beautiful 100-mile trail race held annually in the San Juan Mountains . First organized in 1992, soon after the Sunnyside Mine shut down, the event honors the region’s mining history and its fragile high-alpine environment by taking...

Harry Buckwalter

Added by yongli on 05/06/2016 - 14:14, last changed on 12/28/2017 - 13:41
Photojournalist, radio reporter, and film producer Harry Buckwalter (1867–1930) is considered Colorado’s first photojournalist. He was also one of the great technological innovators of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West, known for his advances in X-ray photography, early...

Harry Tuft

Added by yongli on 03/31/2017 - 14:51, last changed on 10/08/2019 - 12:40
Harry Tuft (1935–) is a Denver businessman, music promoter, educator, and proprietor of the long-standing Denver Folklore Center . As one of Denver’s enterprising musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, Tuft brought the genre of folk music and its culture to Denver and was responsible for some of Red...

Helen G. Bonfils

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 16:28, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 13:43
Helen Gilmer Bonfils (1889–1972) was a well-known Colorado actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is best known as manager of The Denver Post and for her contributions to the theater in Colorado through her time as an actress, producer, and later benefactress of the Helen G. Bonfils...

Helen Ring Robinson

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 16:19, last changed on 08/26/2022 - 07:38
Helen Ring Robinson (c. 1860–1923) was the first woman elected to the Colorado State Senate in 1912 and the second woman elected to any state senate in the nation. In her role as senator during the Progressive Era , she was a passionate advocate for social reform that supported women, education,...

Helen Thorpe

Added by yongli on 01/26/2021 - 15:43, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 21:41
Helen Thorpe (1965–) is a Denver -based journalist and former first lady of Colorado. After spending the 1990s writing for the New York Observer, New Yorker, and Texas Monthly, she met and married Denver brewery owner John Hickenlooper just before he launched his political career. She served...

Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 14:13, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
Henrietta “Nettie” Bromwell (1859–1946) was a prominent artist and author active in Denver ’s social scene during the early to mid-1900s. In addition to her artistic success, she was a Denver socialite. Today, Bromwell’s legacy is her writings and artwork, especially landscape paintings. ...

Henry Browne Blackwell

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 13:42, last changed on 02/09/2023 - 15:42
Henry Blackwell (1825–1909) worked with his wife, Lucy Stone , to pave the way for women’s suffrage . Blackwell advocated for equal rights at the local, state, and national levels throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He worked to create nationwide change, but his contributions to...

Homeopathy in Colorado

Added by yongli on 01/18/2017 - 14:03, last changed on 11/18/2019 - 13:14
Homeopathy is a quasi-science espousing the treatment of maladies using small doses of poisonous or toxic substances. The practice was very popular throughout the United States and the world at large from the late-1700s to the early 1900s. Its popularity in Colorado Territory , and later the state...

Horace Tabor

Added by yongli on 08/20/2015 - 13:32, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Horace “Silver King” Tabor (1830–99) rose from a smalltime prospector to one of the wealthiest men in Colorado because of his luck in Leadville ’s silver mines . He became tabloid fodder through his romantic liaisons with Baby Doe Tabor and his fall from power when the United States changed to the...

Hose Company No. 1

Added by yongli on 06/21/2018 - 11:45, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 08:45
One of Denver ’s earliest firehouses, the Hose Company No. 1 building was built in the 1880s and has since served as a print shop, welding shop, and storage facility. It will soon reopen as a restaurant for a new hotel. The preservation of Hose Company No. 1 is an example of Colorado’s dedication...

Interstate 70

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 16:17, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 10:42
Interstate Highway 70 spans 2,100 miles across the United States, crossing the entire state of Colorado. The eastern end of the highway lies west of Baltimore, Maryland. From there it bisects the country until it reaches Cove Fort in Central Utah, where it merges into Interstate 15. In Colorado, I-...

Italian Murders of 1875

Added by yongli on 04/09/2020 - 10:58, last changed on 05/27/2020 - 17:36
In October 1875, the mutilated bodies of four Italian men were discovered in a house on Lawrence Street, shocking Denver citizens. Police eventually captured and charged nine members of a gang known only as the “Italian Banditti,” all of whom pled guilty to involvement in the crime. The so-called...

Jack Dempsey

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 14:03, last changed on 03/30/2023 - 10:43
William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey (1895–1983) was the US heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926 and a major American sporting icon of the twentieth century. Nicknamed “The Manassa Mauler” after his Colorado hometown, Dempsey was so popular that he helped remake sports into mass spectator...

Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin

Added by yongli on 06/28/2021 - 17:06, last changed on 01/25/2023 - 19:39
Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin (1914–2004) moved Colorado toward a more rights-based society for individuals with mental illness. As an assistant city attorney for Denver , first president of the Colorado Association for Mental Health, and a Democratic state representative, McLaughlin helped reform...

Jeff Campbell

Added by yongli on 02/11/2022 - 10:02, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 23:44
Jeff Campbell (1970–) is a Denver rapper, playwright, performance artist, and activist. Born in Alabama and raised along the Front Range , Campbell worked for a hip-hop label in California before returning to the Mile High City in the early 1990s and joining hip-hop group Kut-N-Kru. The group was a...

John Elway

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 11:21, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 15:45
John Elway (1960–) is a former National Football League quarterback and general manager of the Denver Broncos . Elway won two Super Bowls as a Broncos player (1997 and 1998) and a third (2015) as the team’s general manager. As perhaps the most popular and most accomplished player in Broncos history...

John Evans

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 15:22, last changed on 11/15/2022 - 09:39
John Evans (1814–97) served as second governor of Colorado Territory , from 1862 to 1865. His role in precipitating the massacre of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek in November 1864 forced him to resign. A doctor and Methodist minister who helped found Northwestern University in...

John L. Routt

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 16:41, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:45
John Long Routt (1826–1907) was Colorado’s last territorial governor and first state governor. A popular politician, he was elected to two separate, two-year terms as governor and is remembered for his leadership in bringing Colorado to statehood . He supported the cause of women’s suffrage in...

John W. Gunnison

Added by yongli on 08/02/2016 - 16:26, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
John Williams Gunnison (1812–53) was a nineteenth-century US Army officer and explorer. In 1853 he was charged with finding a railroad route across the Rocky Mountains , and while carrying out his mission he explored the Western Slope of Colorado. His expedition moved on to Utah, where members of...

Josephine Meeker

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:12, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:08
Josephine Meeker (1857–82) was the daughter of Nathan Meeker , the Indian agent who oversaw the White River Indian Agency during the Meeker Incident , a Ute uprising in 1879. After the revolt, Utes took Josephine, her mother, another woman, and her two children captive for nearly a month. Following...

Julia Greeley

Added by yongli on 06/19/2018 - 13:23, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
Julia Greeley (c. 1840–1918) was born into slavery in Missouri. Around 1880 she moved to Denver and became a Catholic. Despite being poor herself, Greeley spent the rest of her life doing good deeds for the impoverished. In 2016 the Catholic Church opened the Cause for Sainthood to determine...

Julie Penrose

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 12:35, last changed on 10/19/2022 - 07:40
Julie Villiers Lewis McMillan Penrose (1870–1956) was one of the primary benefactors of Colorado Springs institutions in the interwar years. Her husband, multimillionaire Spencer (“Speck”) Penrose , profited from Cripple Creek gold and Utah copper in the early twentieth century. He used his wealth...

Kate Ferretti

Added by yongli on 10/25/2021 - 15:03, last changed on 11/01/2021 - 08:27
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 to some of the city’s most elite clientele...

Katharine Grafton Patterson

Added by yongli on 10/11/2021 - 15:58, last changed on 10/11/2021 - 15:58
Katharine Grafton Patterson (1839–1902) came to Colorado in 1872 with her husband, Thomas Patterson , and soon established herself as an influential clubwoman, suffragist, and philanthropist. Devoutly religious, Patterson dedicated the majority of her life to the service of others. She was a...

Kent Haruf

Added by yongli on 01/26/2021 - 16:38, last changed on 12/21/2022 - 03:42
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 style and humane outlook, Haruf is generally...

Koshare Scouts

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 12:55, last changed on 10/23/2019 - 01:07
The Koshare Scouts is primarily made up of Boy Scout troop 2230 in La Junta , Otero County , that has studied Native American lore and performed tribal rituals since the 1930s. This imitative white group is part of a long American history of “playing Indian.” In the twentieth century, groups like...

Ku Klux Klan in Colorado

Added by yongli on 08/20/2019 - 14:18, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 07:47
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is an American white supremacist and terrorist organization whose history includes two distinct waves of activity. The first KKK was created in Tennessee in 1866 and was not active in Colorado. A chapter was not established in the Centennial State until 1915, after the group’...

Lake County War

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 15:28, last changed on 03/13/2020 - 15:28
The Lake County War of 1874–75 grew out of a personal dispute over land and water rights in an area where increasing settlement was making both resources relatively scarce. The conflict ultimately turned into a test of law, justice, and state legitimacy in a frontier community. After Elijah Gibbs...

Lakewood

Added by yongli on 08/08/2022 - 15:38, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:30
Located immediately west of Denver in Jefferson County , the city of Lakewood began as a scattered farming community and was incorporated in 1969 during its post- World War II population boom. With a 2020 population of 155,984, Lakewood is now the fifth most populous city in Colorado and the third...

Leadville Trail 100 MTB

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:03, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race, currently known as the Stages Cycling Leadville Trail 100 MTB, covers 100 miles in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado on a mix of alpine trail, dirt road, and pavement. Created by Leadville resident Ken Chlouber in 1994 as an outgrowth of the Leadville Trail...

Leadville Trail 100 Run

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 15:00, last changed on 05/24/2023 - 20:38
First held in 1983, the Leadville Trail 100 Run is one of the oldest and largest 100-mile trail-running races in the United States. Known for its tough, high-elevation course in the shadow of central Colorado’s Sawatch Range , the race has resulted in remarkable performances by the Rarámuri (...

Legislative Sessions and Women’s Suffrage (1861–93)

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 14:44, last changed on 08/26/2022 - 07:41
In 1893 Colorado became the first state to enact women’s suffrage by popular referendum, when a majority of male voters approved an amendment to the Colorado Constitution . The passage of women’s suffrage built on decades of earlier work in the Colorado Territorial Legislature (1861–76) and state...

Lena Stoiber

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 11:36, last changed on 08/26/2022 - 19:52
Lena Alma Allen Webster Stoiber Rood Ellis (1862–1935) was the “Bonanza Queen” of Silverton . Known as “Captain Jack” or “Jack Pants” to the miners who worked for her, she was a tough boss who worked in conjunction with her second husband, Edward G. Stoiber, at the Silver Lake Mine. He managed the...

Longmont

Added by yongli on 12/11/2017 - 13:09, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 08:47
Longmont is a city of about 92,000 along the Front Range in eastern Boulder County . Named after the prominent Longs Peak to the west, the city was founded in 1871 by members of the Chicago-Colorado Colony , near the confluence of Left Hand and St. Vrain Creeks. After its founding,...

Louise Bethel Sneed Hill

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 15:23, last changed on 02/08/2023 - 20:38
Louise Bethel Sneed Hill (1862–1955) was a socialite, philanthropist, and creator of Denver ’s Sacred Thirty-Six, the first internationally recognized elite society in the city. Hill helped Denver attain international attention as a refined city and desirable destination. Her life reflected the...

Lowry Neighborhood

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 09:11, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 09:18
Located on the eastern edge of Denver , Lowry is one of the city’s newest neighborhoods but has old roots. The area was first developed in the early 1900s, when it became home to the Agnes C. Phipps Memorial Sanatorium, one of the largest of Colorado’s many tuberculosis sanitoria. With the advent...

Lucy Stone

Added by yongli on 03/12/2020 - 15:12, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 08:51
Lucy Stone (1818–93) was an orator, abolitionist, and suffragette who founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1877 she campaigned for a women’s suffrage referendum in Colorado alongside fellow suffrage champion Susan B. Anthony . Although the 1877 measure was defeated, Stone and Anthony...

Lynching in Colorado

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 16:13, last changed on 10/04/2019 - 09:21
Lynching, a form of vigilante punishment involving mob execution, has an active history in Colorado. Between 1859 and 1919, Coloradans carried out 175 lynchings. Lynching is usually associated with the Reconstruction Era in the American South, but before Colorado’s statehood in 1876, lynching was...

Lyulph Ogilvy

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 15:33, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:52
Lyulph Gilchrist Stanley Ogilvy (1861–1947) was an influential irrigator, rancher, journalist, and soldier in early Colorado. An immigrant son of Scottish aristocrats, Ogilvy helped build and maintain irrigation ditches in Weld County and later became a successful agricultural journalist in Denver...

Mallory Pugh

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 11:32, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 21:39
Mallory Diane Pugh (1998–) is an American professional soccer player for the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) and the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). One of the most accomplished Colorado soccer players in history, she also became the youngest American...

Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 15:16, last changed on 10/16/2019 - 09:54
The Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway climbs the 8.9 miles to the 14,110-foot summit of Pikes Peak . The railway is the highest in North America and was built as a tourist attraction in the late nineteenth century. Other cog railways can be found on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire and throughout...

Margaret Coel

Added by yongli on 01/08/2019 - 14:36, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 12:49
Margaret Coel (1937– ) is a New York Times best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her Wind River Mystery Series but has also published five nonfiction books, a book of short stories, and two additional mystery novels that take place in Denver . She is...

Margaret W. Campbell

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 16:06, last changed on 03/02/2023 - 03:39
Margaret West Norton Campbell (1827–1908) was an ardent advocate of women’s rights and one of the nation’s most sought-after suffrage speakers. In Colorado she was instrumental in the 1877 campaign for women’s suffrage . The measure failed, but her work paved the way for suffrage to be enacted in...

Mari Sandoz

Added by yongli on 08/12/2016 - 15:07, last changed on 02/21/2023 - 06:07
Mari Sandoz (1896–1966) was a popular author in the early- to mid-twentieth century whose works of both fiction and non-fiction focused on life in the Rocky Mountain West. Sandoz’s work represents some of the most widely read literature concerning the American West and has done much to influence...

Mary Hauck Elitch Long

Added by yongli on 06/18/2021 - 14:53, last changed on 06/18/2021 - 14:53
Mary Hauck Elitch Long (1856–1936) was the first woman in the world to own and operate a zoo, located at Elitch Gardens in Denver . She and her husband, John Elitch, Jr. , opened the attraction in 1890, and after his death in 1891, Mary continued on as a pioneering businesswoman and entrepreneur...

Matt Carpenter

Added by yongli on 06/10/2020 - 13:30, last changed on 04/06/2023 - 19:41
Matthew Carpenter (1964–) is a mountain runner best known for his performances at high-altitude races such as the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon , where he set the course record in 1993, and the Leadville Trail 100 Run , where he set the record in 2005. In the 1990s, he traveled the world as a...

Max Goldberg

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 16:08, last changed on 11/04/2019 - 11:41
Max Goldberg (1911–72) was a pioneer of early television broadcasting and a television personality in the 1950s and 1960s. Goldberg worked to promote the growth of television in Denver , and his weekly talk show On the Spot set the stage for television’s early success in the local market. Today,...

Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 11:48, last changed on 08/16/2022 - 10:42
Minnie Reynolds Scalabrino (1865–1936) was a newspaperwoman, candidate for political office, and lifelong suffragette in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. She played an important role in the women’s suffrage movement in Colorado and worked tirelessly in other states to secure the...

Mistanta (Owl Woman)

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 13:44, last changed on 12/28/2017 - 13:41
Mistanta (Mis-stan-stur, ca. 1810–47), also known as Owl Woman, was the Southern Cheyenne wife of the American trader William Bent . Born about 1810, she is credited with helping maintain good relations between the white settlers and the Native Americans of the Colorado plains . As the eldest...

Montclair

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 09:38, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 09:40
Situated on the east side of Denver and rising some 330 feet above the State Capitol ’s gold dome, the town of Montclair was platted in 1885. The common French place-name means “clear mountain,” and Montclair was so named for its panoramic view of the Front Range between Pikes and Longs Peaks . At...

Neil Gorsuch

Added by yongli on 09/14/2020 - 16:22, last changed on 02/27/2021 - 01:07
Neil Gorsuch (1967–) is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in D enver to a prominent legal and political family, he moved as a teenager to Washington, DC, where his mother, Anne Gorsuch , served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. His education and...

Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 16:19, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 01:43
The Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association was the main organization in Colorado working toward granting women the right to vote . The association and its precursors were influential for more than thirty years, from Colorado’s failed suffrage referendum in 1877 to its successful suffrage...

NORAD

Added by yongli on 01/04/2016 - 15:49, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 09:43
Built at the height of the Cold War, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) collects all data and information concerning air activity in North America. Currently located near the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport on Peterson Air Force Base, NORAD houses a command center to monitor...

Opera Colorado

Added by yongli on 02/15/2022 - 15:29, last changed on 02/15/2022 - 15:29
Opera Colorado started in the early 1980s as Denver ’s main opera-production company. Founded by the husband-and-wife team of Nathaniel Merrill and Louise Sherman, the company performed at the Denver Performing Arts Complex’s Boettcher Concert Hall before moving to the new Temple Hoyne Buell...

Painter Family

Added by yongli on 01/23/2017 - 11:00, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
The Painter was a prosperous ranching family in Colorado during the early 1900s. Even though ranching went into universal decline following a brutal winter in 1886, the Painter family remained successful due to equal parts luck, persistence, and scientific management of their cattle herds. They...

Paramount Theater

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:41, last changed on 06/30/2021 - 11:17
The Paramount Theater (1621 Glenarm Place, Denver ) is the best-known Art Deco design of architect Temple Hoyne Buell . Buell created this 1930 palace as the most ornate of all Colorado movie theaters and a gem in the coast-to-coast chain of exuberant movie houses planted by Paramount Publix. Like...

Peter Heller

Added by yongli on 07/09/2020 - 11:07, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 10:41
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 landscape of Colorado and the West, where he has...

Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon

Added by yongli on 04/10/2020 - 15:26, last changed on 04/05/2023 - 05:38
First held in 1956 as a contest between smokers and nonsmokers, the Pikes Peak Marathon is an annual trail-running race that takes competitors from Manitou Springs to the summit of 14,115-foot Pikes Peak and back, mostly via the mountain’s famous Barr Trail . The third-oldest marathon in the United...

Prohibition

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 14:51, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 09:51
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 crime, outlawing alcohol instead created more...

Public Lands History Center

Added by yongli on 08/09/2022 - 15:36, last changed on 08/09/2022 - 15:38
The Public Lands History Center (PLHC) is a special unit of the History Department at Colorado State University in Fort Collins . Since 2007 it has partnered with students, communities, and land management agencies of all types to document the history of the nation’s public lands. While the PLHC’s...

Pueblo Chemical Depot

Added by yongli on 11/20/2015 - 09:17, last changed on 08/30/2018 - 01:07
Pueblo Chemical Depot was established in 1942 as the Pueblo Ordnance Depot. The facility’s mission has changed over the years, from starting with receiving, storing, and issuing general supplies of ammunition during World War II, to later handling the disposal of munitions. Today, the depot’s...

Ralph Carr

Added by yongli on 10/06/2016 - 16:46, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
Ralph Lawrence Carr (1887–1950) was governor of Colorado from 1939 to 1943. Carr is remembered for his outspoken criticism of the federal government’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II , even though a regional concentration camp, Amache , operated inside his state’s borders. His...

Rev. John O. Ferris

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 14:49, last changed on 01/31/2021 - 16:45
The Reverend John O. Ferris (d. 1942) was a spiritual leader in Trinidad during the Coalfield War and Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Ferris was one of the few people permitted to search the ruined Ludlow tent city for the bodies of slain miners, women, and children, and his account of the days after the...

Rick Trujillo

Added by yongli on 06/10/2020 - 13:33, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 13:43
Richard “Rick” Trujillo (1948–) is a Colorado mountain runner best known for starting the Imogene Pass Run in 1974 and winning the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon { six times in the 1970s, long before trail and mountain running became popular activities. Later in his career, Trujillo helped scout...

River House Saloon Fire of 1862

Added by yongli on 06/10/2020 - 12:11, last changed on 06/10/2020 - 12:11
Seeing them as public nuisances that bred sin, enraged citizens burned down several saloons and dance halls in Denver during the 1860s. One of the first and most significant of these attacks was the burning of the River House Saloon on Ferry Street on November 1, 1862. The River House fire was...

Riverside Cemetery

Added by yongli on 10/16/2020 - 11:43, last changed on 11/24/2022 - 04:44
Riverside Cemetery was established along the South Platte River in 1876, making it the oldest surviving cemetery in Denver . It is the final resting place for many prominent early Coloradans, including John Evans , Augusta Tabor , Miguel Otero , and Barney Ford . The seventy-seven-acre cemetery was...

Robert S. Roeschlaub

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 15:04, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 11:42
Robert Roeschlaub (1843–1923) was Colorado’s first officially licensed architect, working in Denver during the early settlement era. Roeschlaub played a central role in defining the city’s building code, which has affected the development of Denver’s built environment through the present. Today,...

Robert W. Speer

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 16:00, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 07:47
Robert Walter Speer (1855–1918) served as mayor of Denver for two terms, from 1904 to 1912, then was reelected in 1916, serving another two years as mayor before passing away in 1918 during the Spanish influenza pandemic. Speer is remembered primarily for implementing the City Beautiful plan that...

Ruth Underhill

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 15:40, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 11:44
Ruth Underhill (1883–1984) was a prominent anthropologist in the mid- to-late twentieth century, and one of the first female anthropologists to reach the stature regularly enjoyed by male colleagues. As a professor at the University of Denver later in life, Underhill published dozens of works on...

Saco Rienk DeBoer

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 15:54, last changed on 10/19/2022 - 01:40
Saco Rienk DeBoer (1883–1974) was a prolific Denver -based landscape architect and city planner in the early twentieth century. DeBoer played a significant role in the development of Denver’s built environment, particularly the city’s parks and the establishment of its zoning codes. His work...

Sadie Likens

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 15:16, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:09
Sadie Likens (c. 1840–1920) was a prominent officer of the court in Denver ’s formative period, served as Colorado’s first prison matron, and was also known for her charitable work on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other women’s organizations. Before losing her job as prison...

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Added by yongli on 01/21/2021 - 16:17, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 17:40
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850–1917) was an Italian Catholic nun who came to the United States in 1889 as a missionary tasked with ministering to the country’s growing population of Italian immigrants . Over the next three decades, during her missionary work, Cabrini established sixty-seven...

Sakura Square

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 10:03, last changed on 03/09/2023 - 13:42
Located in the historic heart of Denver ’s Japanese community, Sakura Square is bounded by Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets and Larimer and Lawrence Streets in the Lower Downtown district, or LoDo . The square, named for the Japanese word for “cherry blossom,” was built in the early 1970s as part...

Sarah Platt Decker

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 14:18, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 08:47
Sarah Platt Decker (1855–1912) was a beloved leader of women, known nationwide for her advocacy of women’s suffrage and social reform. Her influence was instrumental in the 1893 vote that gave Colorado women equal suffrage. She later became the founder and first president of the Woman’s Club of...

Sixteenth Street (Denver)

Added by yongli on 05/01/2020 - 15:16, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Sixteenth Street has been Denver ’s main street for shopping, commerce, and celebrations since the late nineteenth century. Starting from Broadway just north of Civic Center , it stretches about 1.75 miles northwest to Tejon Street in Highland. To help revive downtown commerce and relieve...

Spencer Penrose

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 14:19, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 17:45
Spencer Penrose (1865–1939) was a businessman, miner , entrepreneur, philanthropist, and investor who worked primarily in the Pikes Peak region. Penrose had assets in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Kansas, including mines and real estate properties. He is most notable for owning the C.O.D. mine in...

St. James Hotel Fire of 1895

Added by yongli on 07/08/2020 - 16:02, last changed on 07/08/2020 - 16:02
On March 23, 1895, a blaze at the St. James Hotel in Denver killed four firefighters, three of whom were black. Despite ongoing racial tensions that had intensified during the depths of an economic depression, the city mourned all four men together, without regard to race. The public response was a...

St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:51, last changed on 10/30/2021 - 10:53
St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral (1350 Washington Street, Denver ) was the first Episcopal congregation in Colorado and serves as the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. The 1911 cathedral is a fine example of the Late English Gothic style, and the entire cathedral complex occupies a full...

St. Leo’s Catholic Church

Added by yongli on 12/01/2021 - 16:56, last changed on 12/06/2021 - 09:30
Between 1888 and 1965, St. Leo’s Catholic Church at Tenth Street and West Colfax Avenue in West Denver was the primary center of worship for Irish Catholics in the city. From the time it was built, St. Leo’s faced controversy over its role in enforcing the cultural and ethnic divisions of early...

St. Luke’s Hospital

Added by yongli on 10/06/2016 - 16:52, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 11:44
St. Luke’s Hospital was a Denver fixture for over a century, serving the community as one of several hospitals in the capitol. St. Luke’s role in training several generations of doctors and nurses garners historical significance for the building complex. Today, only one of the hospital’s buildings...

State Folk Dance

Added by admin on 02/17/2015 - 17:33, last changed on 12/22/2020 - 01:07
The Square Dance was adopted as the official state folk dance on March 16, 1992 by an act of the General Assembly. Square dancing is the American folk dance which traces its ancestry to the English country dance and the French ballroom dance, and which is called, cued, or prompted to the dancers...

Swedish National Sanatorium

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 15:39, last changed on 11/18/2019 - 13:24
The Swedish National Sanatorium in Denver was a tuberculosis treatment center active throughout the 1900s. As tuberculosis swept the nation, thousands of consumptives turned to the dry mountain air of Colorado to alleviate their symptoms, and sanatoriums sprang up across the state. The Swedish...

Tabor Grand Opera House

Added by yongli on 02/22/2017 - 12:00, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:54
The Tabor Grand Opera House, constructed by the state’s famed Tabor family, was one of the city’s primary cultural institutions during the late 1800s. The Grand Opera enjoyed a period of popularity and success before falling by the wayside, a story that paralleled the fate of the Tabor family...

Telluride

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 13:24, last changed on 04/25/2023 - 08:18
Telluride is a small town located in the San Juan range of the Rocky Mountains . It is the county seat of San Miguel County . Like many other mountain towns, it was founded as a mining center in 1878. Originally, it was named “Columbia,” but in order to avoid being mistaken for a town in California...

Temple Grandin

Added by yongli on 05/17/2022 - 16:32, last changed on 12/28/2022 - 13:40
Temple Grandin (1947–) is a renowned advocate and expert in two very different fields: animal welfare and autism. A prolific author on both subjects, Grandin has taught at Colorado State University (CSU) since 1990. Her focus on animal welfare, particularly cattle, changed the way animals are...

The First National Western Stock Show

Added by yongli on 08/03/2016 - 10:56, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:55
The origins of Denver ’s annual National Western Stock Show , today one of the city’s biggest tourism draws, date to 1898, a time when American cities competed for the attention of various national organizations in the hope of hosting conventions to bring in revenue. The first stock show helped...

The Hilltop Bomber Crash

Added by yongli on 01/18/2017 - 13:56, last changed on 12/16/2020 - 09:04
In 1951, a B-29 Superfortress taking off from Lowry Air Force Base crashed in Denver ’s Hilltop neighborhood. As the smoke cleared, the deadly crash illustrated the need for better safety procedures at military bases near residential areas and the necessity of regulating the expansion of military...

The Tenth Mountain Division

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 13:11, last changed on 10/03/2022 - 01:45
The Tenth Mountain Division (hereafter, the Tenth), was US Army division created in 1941. The Allies took notice of a Finnish division of soldiers on skis that defeated and embarrassed a larger and better-equipped invading Soviet force during the Winter War of 1939. Inspired by Finland’s success,...

The “Nude” Silks-Fulton Duel

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 14:28, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:40
The so-called Nude Duel was a legend that sprouted from a drunken brawl involving two well-known madams—Mattie Silks and Kate Fulton—at Denver Gardens in 1877. Although the original accounts of the fight are hardly remarkable, the story took on a life of its own thanks to the diligent exaggerations...

Theodosia Ammons

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 12:42, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 21:39
Theodosia Ammons (1862–1907) worked extensively throughout her life to advance the cause of women’s suffrage . She became president of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association and was cofounder of the department of domestic economy at Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University ),...

Thomas E. Ketchum

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 15:46, last changed on 03/26/2018 - 14:10
Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum was a famous outlaw in the late 1800s who, along with his brother Sam and their gang, was responsible for a number of high-profile robberies and murders. While his criminal career achieved great notoriety, it was Ketchum’s eventual hanging, which was badly botched by New...

Tivoli Brewery

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 16:22, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 22:51
Constructed in 1864, the Tivoli Brewery in Denver was the first brewery built in Colorado and the second in the nation. Over the course of its complex history, the brewery changed hands multiple times until it was abandoned in 1969. The Tivoli building became part of the Auraria Higher Education...

Union Depot Fire of 1894

Added by yongli on 07/06/2020 - 16:04, last changed on 07/06/2020 - 16:04
In 1894 a fire at Denver ’s original Union Depot destroyed much of the building within an hour. The burning of the railroad station, which had been completed in 1881 and was regarded as one of the largest and grandest in the West, shocked Denver citizens. Reconstruction efforts began almost...

United States Air Force Academy

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 15:23, last changed on 01/17/2023 - 21:40
Established in April 1954, the United States Air Force Academy occupies 18,000 acres on the north end of Colorado Springs . It serves as an air force base and undergraduate college for officer candidates. The academy currently enrolls 4,000 cadets as undergraduates, employs 723 faculty members, and...

Walter Paepcke

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 12:59, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 19:41
Walter P. Paepcke, a Chicago businessman, was pivotal in developing Aspen into a resort known for its exceptional skiing and as a hub for intellectuals, artists, politicians, and celebrities. Paepcke’s efforts have made Aspen stand out among Colorado’s many ski towns and resorts. Born...

Western History and Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library

Added by yongli on 02/08/2021 - 16:11, last changed on 10/30/2021 - 10:52
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, atlases, pamphlets, and microform titles, as...

Wichita State University Plane Crash

Added by yongli on 10/03/2016 - 12:07, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
In early October 1970, a twin-engine aircraft carrying forty people associated with the Wichita State University football team crashed into Mt. Bethel along Colorado’s Continental Divide , killing thirty-one passengers. The crash spurred the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to review and revise its...

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 16:06, last changed on 12/11/2022 - 09:42
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 in the Colorado Gold Rush . Like many other...

William Fisher

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/20/2022 - 09:46, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 09:46
William Ellsworth Fisher (1871–1937) headed one of the largest and most influential architectural firms in the Rocky Mountain region. Working most notably with his younger brother, Arthur Addison Fisher, he designed many elaborate houses for the wealthy, especially in Denver ’s Polo Club, Cheesman...

William H. Dickens

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 13:51, last changed on 11/11/2019 - 11:48
William Henry Dickens (c. 1842–1915) was a homestead er , farmer, and businessman in the St. Vrain valley. A prominent early citizen of Longmont , Dickens built the Dickens Opera House , established Farmers National Bank, and helped organize the Farmers Milling and Elevator Company, among other...

William Jackson Palmer

Added by yongli on 08/01/2016 - 13:33, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 08:43
William Jackson Palmer (1836–1909) was a military general, railroad tycoon, and founder of Colorado Springs . Though a Quaker from Delaware, Palmer fought for the Union Army during the Civil War . After the war, he moved west and became a civil engineer and philanthropist who played an integral...

William N. Byers

Added by yongli on 01/16/2020 - 15:27, last changed on 11/16/2022 - 08:40
William Newton Byers (1831–1903) founded the first newspaper in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News (1859–2009) and was Denver ’s biggest booster during the city’s early days. Byers used his newspaper as a platform for his advocacy, as his knowledge of the territory allowed him to broker land deals...

William “Bat” Masterson

Added by yongli on 01/17/2017 - 13:06, last changed on 08/27/2022 - 07:46
William Barclay “Bat” Masterson (1853–1921) was a US marshal whose life and work in the American west during the mid-to-late 1800s granted him legendary status in the region’s folklore. In Colorado, where he spent several years during the 1880s, Masterson’s run-ins with the law and other important...

William “Cement Bill” Williams

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 15:55, last changed on 02/12/2021 - 01:07
William “Cement Bill” Williams (1868–1945) was a prominent contractor, political agitator, and personality in Golden during the early 1900s. Williams’s tireless campaigning brought crucial road construction to Golden, much of which he built himself. Today, Williams’s legacy as a businessman and the...

Women During Prohibition

Added by yongli on 06/10/2020 - 13:27, last changed on 05/26/2023 - 03:39
Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) disrupted social and gender relations in ways that would shape the state long after the law was repealed. Not only did women help enact the law, but they also helped enforce the law and even broke it, taking advantage of a new outlaw industry. Women...

Women in Early Colorado

Added by yongli on 05/06/2016 - 15:01, last changed on 02/22/2023 - 05:41
In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Colorado, women’s labor was often vital to a family’s economic survival. Historian Katherine Harris demonstrated in her study of Logan and Washington Counties that women’s earnings from butter, eggs, and the garden often provided much of a farm family’s...

Women of the Ku Klux Klan

Added by yongli on 09/12/2017 - 10:57, last changed on 08/18/2022 - 10:59
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 a men’s KKK in Colorado. The women’s...

Women's Suffrage Movement

Added by yongli on 05/06/2016 - 15:15, last changed on 02/22/2023 - 05:41
The women’s suffrage movement was a sociopolitical movement in the late nineteenth century that secured voting rights for Colorado women by state referendum on November 7, 1893. The movement’s success made Colorado the first state to enact women’s suffrage by popular referendum. Origins...

Wonderbound

Added by admin on 07/15/2015 - 14:39, last changed on 11/10/2022 - 00:41
Based in Denver , Wonderbound was established in 2002 and has quickly grown into the second-largest professional dance company in Colorado. Originally called Ballet Nouveau Colorado and affiliated with a Broomfield -based dance school of the same name, in 2012–13 the company split with the dance...
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