1908 Democratic National Convention
In 1908 the Democratic Party held its national convention in Denver to nominate candidates for president and vice president. The 1908 convention was the political culmination of a half-century of development in the city and the last time Denver would…
1936 Border Closure
For ten days in 1936, Colorado governor Edwin “Big Ed” Johnson declared martial law in the state, which allowed him to close Colorado’s southern border to migrant workers from nearby states and Mexico. Amid record unemployment during the Great Depression…
August Meyer
August Robert Meyer (1851–1905) was a mining engineer who played a central role in starting Leadville’s silver boom in the late 1870s. Meyer recognized the value of the area’s lead carbonate ores, built a smelter, developed local infrastructure, and…
Base and Industrial Metal Mining in Colorado
Beef Industry on the Colorado Plains
Colorado’s beef industry traces its roots back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when cowboys drove cattle across the plains in some of the most iconic imagery of the American West. However, the state’s modern beef industry did not begin…
Bob Beauprez
Bob Beauprez (1948–) is a rancher and former banker and politician from Boulder County. He represented Colorado’s Seventh Congressional District from 2003 to 2007 and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 and 2014. A devout Catholic and member of the…
Bulkeley Wells
Bulkeley Wells (1872–1931) was an influential mining investor and hydroelectric engineer best known for building the Smuggler-Union Hydroelectric Power Plant near Telluride and for his hostility toward unions. A controversial figure in Colorado history,…
Charles Boettcher
Charles Boettcher (1852–1948) was an entrepreneur and philanthropist best known for founding the Great Western Sugar Company and the Boettcher Foundation, an organization that made the Boettcher name synonymous with generosity in Colorado. Boettcher…
Climax Molybdenum Mine
Coal Mining in Colorado
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining was the most important industry in Colorado. Coal mines served as the crucibles of empire, churning out the fuel needed to power the railroads, precious-metal mines, and smelters that…
Colorado Congressional Districts
Colorado is divided into seven Congressional districts according to population, with each district represented by an elected member of the United States House of Representatives. Colorado representatives serve two-year terms, as required by the US…
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 Fuel & Iron
The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a coal and steel company based in Denver and Pueblo. Most of its coal mines were located in southern Colorado. Its only steel mill was located in Pueblo. The firm came into existence as a result of a…
Colorado Fuel and Iron Strike of 1959
In 1959 union members at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) in Pueblo participated in a nationwide strike for better job security. The strike led to a nationwide shortage of American-made steel, while the suspension of mining operations and…
Colorado Fuel and Iron Strike of 1997
The Colorado Fuel and Iron strike of 1997 was a labor dispute between Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA). Oregon Steel Mills had purchased Colorado Fuel and Iron in 1993 and maintained the Pueblo mill…
Colorado Gold Rush
Colorado in World War I
As Europe stumbled into war in late July and early August 1914, Coloradans viewed the conflict with mixed emotions. Some favored the English, French, Italians, Russians, and their allies. Others preferred the Germans and Austrians and their friends. The…
Colorado National Bank
Colorado State Capitol
Colorado’s Second Fur Trade
Colorado’s “Second Fur Trade” was typified by the burgeoning popularity of mink fur coats, a luxury item that enjoyed great popularity during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. As one of Colorado’s leading productive industries for several decades, mink…
Columbine Mine Massacre
On November 21, 1927, members of a Colorado militia fired into a crowd of hundreds of striking miners in the Weld County town of Serene, killing six and wounding twenty. The Columbine Massacre showed that little had changed in Colorado in terms of…
Crawford Hill
Crawford Hill (1862–1922) was a successful Denver businessman and philanthropist. The firstborn child and only son of Alice and Nathaniel P. Hill, Crawford inherited their fortune and carried his father’s prosperous businesses into the next generation. A…
David H. Moffat
Denver International Airport
Denver Ordnance Plant
Denver Tramway Company
Denver Tramway Strike of 1920
The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 typified the active militancy of many labor unions during the early 1900s. The strike brought the conversation surrounding labor relations to the forefront of Denver politics and would influence the larger labor…
Diana DeGette
Equitable Building
The Equitable Building (730 Seventeenth Street) is located in the heart of downtown Denver’s financial district. Built in 1892 as the town’s premier office structure, it arguably still is. It also signaled that eastern capitalists had begun focusing on…
Fritchle Electric Automobile
Great Western Sugar Company
Hastings Mine Explosion
The Hastings Mine Explosion was the deadliest mining disaster in Colorado history. Caused by the misguided striking of a match in the Hastings coal mine north of Trinidad on April 27, 1917, the blast killed 121 coal miners; one other worker died of…
Henderson Molybdenum Mine
Henry Teller
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…
Interstate 76
Construction of Interstate 80 South, later known as Interstate 76, began in 1958 and reflected the desire for easier transportation across the state of Colorado. The 184-mile highway connects Denver to western Nebraska and represents a vital link between…
J. Quigg Newton
Jared Polis
Joe Neguse
Joseph “Joe” D. Neguse (1984–) is a politician who represents Colorado’s Second Congressional District, which includes Boulder, Fort Collins, and most of the northern Front Range. A member of the Democratic Party, Neguse is the first African American…
John Hickenlooper
John Wright Hickenlooper II (1952– ) is a Colorado businessman and politician who served as mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and forty-third governor of the state from 2011 to 2019. In 2020 Hickenlooper was elected to the US Senate. In 1988 he founded…
John R. Smith
John R. Smith (1860–1927) was Colorado’s chief state prohibition officer during the years 1923–25. He successfully rooted out black-market alcohol crime but received harsh public criticism for his often-unconstitutional methods. He brought his friends on…
John Wesley Iliff
If there is a name in Colorado history that is synonymous with cattle and ranching, it is John Wesley Iliff (1831–78). At the time of his death, Iliff owned approximately 35,000 head of cattle and thousands of acres stretching from northeast Colorado to…
Jokerville Mine Explosion
On January 24, 1884, the Jokerville Mine outside of Crested Butte was full of methane gas and exploded, killing fifty-nine workers. As the third-deadliest mine disaster in Colorado history, the Jokerville explosion demonstrated the dangers of coal mining…
Josephine Roche
Ken Buck
Ken Buck (1959–) is an attorney and politician from Weld County. He represents Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District in the US House of Representatives, an office he has held since 2015, winning reelection in 2016 and 2018. Since March 2019, Buck has…
Leadville Strike of 1896–97
Ludlow Massacre
Mark Udall
Mexican Land Grants in Colorado
From the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, the king of Spain and the Mexican government awarded land grants to individuals and communities throughout the American Southwest. All seven of Colorado’s land grants, comprising more than 8 million acres…
Michael Hancock
Michael Hancock (1969– ) is the forty-fifth mayor of Denver, elected in 2011. Currently in his third term, Hancock succeeded fellow Democrat John Hickenlooper and interim mayor Guillermo Vidal. Widely seen as a pro-growth mayor, Hancock is credited with…
Mike Coffman
Nathaniel P. Hill
New Deal in Colorado
As the United States entered the third year of a great economic depression triggered by the 1929 stock market crash, many Americans put their hope in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his pledge to give them a “new deal.” During his first term …
Otto Mears
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to…
Pat Stryker
Patricia “Pat” Stryker (1956–) is a Colorado-based businesswoman and philanthropist. With an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, Stryker has donated more than $195 million to charity in her lifetime, mostly through the Bohemian Foundation, her Fort…
Philip Anschutz
Philip Anschutz (1939–) is a Denver-based businessman and Colorado’s richest person, with a wealth estimated at more than $10 billion. He has garnered comparisons to Gilded Age financier J. P. Morgan for his success across a wide range of businesses—oil…
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,…
Precious Metal Mining in Colorado
Progressive Era in Colorado
Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility
Shenandoah-Dives Mining Company
The Shenandoah-Dives Mining Company was active in the San Juan Mountains from the 1930s through the 1960s. As one of the largest mining operations in the region during the twentieth century, the company’s history exemplifies the boom and bust cycles and…
Ski Industry
Stan Kroenke
Stan Kroenke (1947–) is a Missouri-based billionaire whose extensive portfolio of real estate and sports franchises includes Denver’s Nuggets (basketball), Avalanche (hockey), Rapids (soccer), and Mammoth (lacrosse), as well as Ball Arena, Dick’s…
Sugar Beet Industry
Susan B. Anthony
The Denver Police Department since 1933
The Denver Police Department is the primary law enforcement apparatus for the city of Denver. Officially formed in 1859 as a small group of marshals, today’s Denver Police Department consists of more than 1,500 officers in sixteen units active in a…
The Denver Police Department, 1859–1933
The Denver Police Department was formed in 1859 to bring order to a rowdy, dusty mining camp. The department grew up with the city and with broader trends in American policing. Denver Police spent most of the late nineteenth century focused on drunks,…
The Great Die Up
“The Great Die Up” is one of three nicknames for the winter of 1886–87, when hundreds of thousands of cattle across the Great Plains died in harsh weather. The event changed the cattle industry forever, ending the practice of open-range grazing. Ranchers…
The Rocky Mountain Fleet
During World War II, Denver’s war production industry expanded to include the production of ship parts bound for assembly on the West Coast. Known colloquially as “the Rocky Mountain Fleet,” dozens of ships would eventually see production at the Colorado…
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…
Verner Zevola Reed
Vulcan Mine Explosions
Between 1896 and 1918, the Vulcan Mine in Garfield County exploded three times, killing a total of eighty-five workers. The successive blasts prompted action from labor unions and politicians to make coal mines safer. At the site of the Vulcan Mine today…
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…
William Dudley Haywood
William Dudley “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928), a labor activist in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was the most prominent leader of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), the largest union ever operating in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain states…
William Gray Evans
William Gray Evans (1855–1924) was a Denver businessman best known as the Denver Tramway Company president. The son of Territorial Governor John Evans, he was involved in many of Denver’s early foundational enterprises and played an integral role in…