People

The Painter was a prosperous ranching family in Colorado during the early 1900s. Even though ranching went into universal decline following a brutal winter in 1886, the Painter family remained successful due to equal parts luck, persistence, and scientific management of their cattle herds. They...

Anna (1887–1963) and Eugenia Kennicott (1883–1934) grew up on a Colorado farm around the turn of the twentieth century and recorded their day-to-day lives in diaries and in rare photographic plates. Today, their chronicles of women’s experiences on a turn-of-the-century farm in the American west...

Private First Class Dale H. Maple (1920–2001) was stationed at Camp Hale near Leadville during World War II when he assisted in the escape of three German prisoners-of-war prisoners of war in February 1944. Following Maple’s arrest along with the escapees in Mexico, he underwent one of the most...

Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (1928–2005) was a prominent figure in the Chicano Movement in Denver in the 1960s and 1970s. He also had ties to the greater Civil Rights Movement. In addition to his activist work, Gonzales had multifaceted careers in boxing, politics, and poetry, and left a lasting legacy...

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 Settlement in the western region of Imperial...

As a boy and as a man, Enos Mills (1870–1922) lived a remarkable life. His bond with nature and wildlife inspired him to overcome personal hardship and become a successful speaker, author, naturalist, businessman, and driving force behind the creation of Rocky Mountain Natio n al Park . Today,...

Three of the Shitara sisters, known in the contemporary press as “the Nisei Sisters,” were prisoners at the Amache concentration camp who helped two Germans escape from a nearby prisoner-of-war camp. During their trial, the third treason trial of World War II, the sisters’ race, class, and sex all...

Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum was a famous outlaw in the late 1800s who, along with his brother Sam and their gang, was responsible for a number of high-profile robberies and murders. While his criminal career achieved great notoriety, it was Ketchum’s eventual hanging, which was badly botched by New...

The Reverend Thornton R. Sampson (1852–1915) was an important religious figure and educator in Texas who disappeared on a hike in the Rocky Mountains in 1915. Sampson’s disappearance received national coverage. The massive search effort launched by his wife was one of the largest ever, though it...