People

Nathaniel Peter Hill (1832–1900) was a mining entrepreneur and US senator from Colorado. In the 1860s, Hill, an accomplished chemist and metallurgist, bought mining interests in Black Hawk and developed the first successful smelter in Colorado, revolutionizing the mining industry in the fledgling...

William Austin Hamilton Loveland (1826–94) was a leading businessman, railroad executive, and politician in early Colorado. A well-traveled man by early adulthood, Loveland arrived in Colorado during the Colorado Gold Rush . He played a critical role in the development of Golden , putting up the...

Nathan Cook Meeker (1817–1879) was an agriculturalist, newspaper editor, and Indian agent. He founded the Union Colony at present-day Greeley as well as the city’s oldest newspaper, the Greeley Tribune . In 1878 he was appointed Indian agent of the White River Agency in northwest Colorado. He was...

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was a well-known civil rights activist and prominent leader of the women’s suffrage movement . She made her first visit to Colorado in 1877 to advocate for women’s suffrage before an upcoming referendum. Although she spent little time in Colorado, Susan B. Anthony...

John Elway (1960–) is a former National Football League quarterback and general manager of the Denver Broncos . Elway won two Super Bowls as a Broncos player (1997 and 1998) and a third (2015) as the team’s general manager. As perhaps the most popular and most accomplished player in Broncos history...

Amy Van Dyken (1973–) is a six-time Olympic gold medalist and former competitive swimmer for the United States. In 1996 she became the first American woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Despite an ATV crash in 2014 that left her paralyzed from the waist down, the Colorado...

Kevin Duggan is a senior reporter and columnist for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. He is a Colorado native and grew up in the Denver area. He graduated from Regis High School in 1974. He attended the University of Colorado in Boulder and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English with emphasis in...

Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909), also “Alfred,” was a prospector who became famous after confessing to eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. With the group starving and disoriented, it appears likely that Packer killed another prospector in self-defense and...

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is an American white supremacist and terrorist organization whose history includes two distinct waves of activity. The first KKK was created in Tennessee in 1866 and was not active in Colorado. A chapter was not established in the Centennial State until 1915, after the group’...