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Colorado Women's Prison

The Colorado Women’s Prison in Cañon City was built in 1935, after three previous women’s buildings at the State Penitentiary had been appropriated for other uses. Standing just east of the penitentiary walls, the women’s prison housed female inmates…

Cotopaxi Train Robbery

The 1891 Cotopaxi train robbery typified a new era of crime in the American West—robbing trains carrying railroad and federal property—and set off one of the highest-profile manhunts of the era. The robbers, Peg Leg Watson and Bert Curtis, took thousands…

Florence Post Office

The Florence Post Office was built in 1936–37 as a Public Works Administration (PWA) project. The building has a simple Neoclassical design with some Art Deco details and a mural by Olive Rush in the lobby. In 1986 the post office was listed on the…

Fremont County

Fremont County is located in south-central Colorado, bordered by Park and Teller Counties to the north, El Paso County to the east, Pueblo County to the southeast, Custer County to the south, and Saguache and Chaffee Counties to the north. Fremont County…

Jewish Colony at Cotopaxi

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

John C. Frémont

John Charles Frémont (1813–90) was an American explorer and cartographer for the US Topographical Engineers who crossed Colorado on various expeditions. Between 1842 and 1853, Frémont led five western expeditions with numerous objectives. He was…

Oil Spring

Located along Fourmile Creek (also known as Oil Creek) about six miles north of Cañon City, Oil Spring is a shallow oil seep that was the site of the first commercial oil production in Colorado. Primarily active from 1860 to 1881, the seep produced at…

Royal Gorge

The Royal Gorge is a spectacular canyon along the Arkansas River near Cañon City in south-central Colorado. With a narrowest width of just 30 feet at the bottom of the canyon and a depth exceeding 1,200 feet in some places, the nearly ten-mile-long…