Colorado: An Overview

Colorado, “the Centennial State,” was the thirty-eighth state to enter the Union on August 1, 1876. Its diverse geography encompasses 104,094 square miles of the American West and includes swathes of the Great Plains, southern Rocky Mountains, and the Colorado Plateau. Colorado has an average elevation of 6,800 feet, the highest in the nation. As of 2020, the state has a population of 5.7 million and was one of the fastest-growing states in the previous decade. The metropolitan area of Denver, the state capitol and largest city, has a population of 2,754,258. Other large cities include Colorado Springs (population 445,830), Fort Collins (156,480), and Grand Junction (59,899). The name “Colorado”—a Spanish word meaning “turned red”—comes from an early Spanish description of the reddish sediments carried by the Colorado River. Residents of the state are referred to as “Coloradans.”

2020 Census Data