Avalanches are quite common in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. They can occur anywhere there is a sizeable amount of snow and steep slopes, meaning most of Colorado’s High Country (from 10,000 to 13,000 feet) is prone to avalanches. The massive snow slides…

Bill Tremblay is a poet and novelist. His work has appeared in nine full-length volumes including Crying in the Cheap Seats (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971), The Anarchist Heart (New York: New Rivers Press, 1977). Home Front (Spokane,…

The Cameron Peak Fire is the largest wildfire in Colorado history. It began on August 13, 2020, and burned 208,913 acres of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in western Larimer County. Thought to be human-caused, the fire ignited on the flanks…

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, “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…

One of the most ecologically and culturally significant trees in Colorado, the plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides monilifera) thrives near rivers and riparian areas throughout the state. It is one of the only tree species to grow on Colorado’s Great…

Fort Collins, the fourth-most populous city in Colorado, lies along the Cache la Poudre River near the foothills of the northern Front Range. The seat of Larimer County, Fort Collins was founded as an Army camp in 1864 and has since developed into a…

Greeley is a growing community of 100,000 people along the Front Range in northeastern Colorado. Founded as an agricultural colony in 1870, the city has an economic, political, and cultural reach that extends far beyond its municipal borders. Greeley is…

Ignited by lightning in early June 2012, the High Park Fire became one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in Colorado history, burning 87,415 acres along the Cache la Poudre River in the mountains west of Fort Collins. By the time it was fully…

Horsetooth Reservoir is located in the foothills just west of Fort Collins. The Bureau of Reclamation began construction of the reservoir in 1946 as part of the larger Colorado–Big Thompson Project, which provided additional irrigation water for the…

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…

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…

In September 2013, Colorado’s Front Range, from Fort Collins south to Colorado Springs, experienced some of the most dramatic and devastating floods in state history. In the hardest-hit areas, the rainfall beginning September 9 and ending September 16…

On July 28, 1997, the city of Fort Collins was inundated with the heaviest rains ever recorded in a Colorado urban area. During the peak of the storm, about six inches fell in an hour and a half. This caused Spring Creek, a tributary of the Cache la…

Teenokuhu (ca. 1822–81), known to English speakers as “Friday” or “Friday Fitzpatrick,” was a nineteenth-century Northern Arapaho leader. As a boy, Teenokuhu (Arapaho for “sits meekly”) was separated from his band and adopted by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a…