People

Elvin R. Caldwell Sr. (1919–2004) was one of the most significant African American policymakers in Colorado history. An accountant and businessman, Caldwell joined many community organizations before beginning his political career in 1950 in the Colorado House of Representatives. He later served on...

The Reynolds Gang, formally members of Company A of Wells’s Battalion, Third Texas Cavalry, was a group of about fifteen Confederate cavalrymen who conducted raids and robberies in the South Park area near the end of the Civil War . Initially considered to be a group of Confederate sympathizers,...

Jesse Nusbaum (1887–1975) was an early National Park Service (NPS) employee, historian, archaeologist, restoration specialist, and author active in Colorado and New Mexico in the early 1900s. As superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park , he imbued the fledgling National Park Service with a new...

Harry Tuft (1935–) is a Denver businessman, music promoter, educator, and proprietor of the long-standing Denver Folklore Center . As one of Denver’s enterprising musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, Tuft brought the genre of folk music and its culture to Denver and was responsible for some of Red...

Adobe buildings in towns such as Trinidad and the remnants of plazas or villages attest to early Hispano settlement along the Purgatoire River in southern Colorado. Today, Hispanos—descendants of Mexicans who lived in what became the US southwest after 1848—still account for a portion of the...

Adolph Coors (1847–1929) immigrated to the United States in 1868 after serving as a brewery apprentice in western Germany and then in the Kingdom of Prussia. After working in Chicago breweries, he moved to Colorado in 1872 and purchased a bottling company. He transformed it into the Coors Brewing...

Ouray (1833–80), whose name means “Arrow” in the Ute language, was a leader of the Tabeguache (Uncompahgre) band of Ute Indians in Colorado during the late nineteenth century. Even though Ouray had no ultimate authority over Colorado’s Utes and spoke little English, the US government assigned him...

James Quigg Newton, Jr. (1911–2003) was a distinguished lawyer, politician, and philanthropist who served as mayor of Denver (1947–55), president of the University of Colorado (CU; 1956–63), and the head of several national charitable foundations. As mayor, Newton modernized Denver’s city...

One of the best-known Ute leaders of the nineteenth century, Colorow (c. 1813–88) was involved in many significant events in Colorado history, from his first contact with white Americans during the Colorado Gold Rush to the Meeker Incident and his namesake “ Colorow’s War ” of 1887. Colorow’s...