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…

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…

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…

On January 14–15, 1865, immigrant Holon Godfrey found his family homestead in Colorado Territory under attack by about 100 Indigenous warriors engaged in a campaign of reprisal attacks after the Sand Creek Massacre of November 1864. The fierce battle at…

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…

Morgan County’s 1921 jail and 1936 courthouse in Fort Morgan replaced the county’s original facilities after the county had outgrown them. The courthouse was funded by the Public Works Administration (PWA) and designed by the modernist Colorado architect…