European Americans

Albina Washburn (1837–1921) was an important early resident of what is now Loveland and later an influential proponent of women’s suffrage and temperance across Colorado. In 1876 she advocated for women’s suffrage at the state constitutional convention, and in 1880 she cofounded the Colorado branch...

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...

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...

August Robert Meyer (1851–1905) was a mining engineer who played a central role in starting Leadville ’s silver boom in the late 1870s. Meyer recognized the value of the area’s lead carbonate ores, built a smelter , developed local infrastructure, and helped organize the new city. After leaving...

Baron von Richthofen (1859–98) was a flamboyant, versatile booster and developer who came to Colorado in 1878; he was one of many Germans who constituted the state’s largest foreign-born contingent between 1880 and 1910. Richthofen invested in Denver real estate, helped establish the suburban town...

Bulkeley Wells (1872–1931) was an influential mining investor and hydroelectric engineer best known for building the Smuggler-Union Hydroelectric Power Plant near Telluride and for his hostility toward unions. A controversial figure in Colorado history, Wells carried on an affair with Louise Sneed...

Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice, serving from 1962 to 1993, as well as a nationally known college athlete for the University of Colorado and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his belief in judicial restraint, writing brief...

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 Colorado Plateau. Colorado has an average...

David Owen Tryba (1955–) is a prominent and prolific Denver architect known for designing the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, the Union Station renovation, and the History Colorado Center as well as the Google campus in Boulder . He has handled the preservation and updating of many...

Edward “Eddie” Patrick Francis Eagan (1897–1967) is the only person to have won gold medals in two different sports at the summer and winter Olympics. Born in Denver , Eagan attended Longmont High School and the University of Denver before going on to Yale, Harvard, and Oxford, where he earned his...

Elizabeth “Libby” Minerva Sumner Byers (1834–1920) was a Colorado social reformer who arrived in Denver in the summer of 1859 and spent the next six decades establishing and supporting the city’s early charitable organizations, schools, and churches. Her focus on the poor led her to found...

Elizabeth Paepcke (1902–94) is best known for working with her husband, Walter , to transform the former mining town of Aspen into a cultural hub after World War II . Trained in art and design, she was perhaps most influential in getting Walter interested in the modernist styles that shaped much of...

Emma Florence Langdon (1875–1937) was a linotype operator, historian, and labor leader celebrated for her courageous defense of the freedom of the press during the Colorado Labor Wars . When National Guardsmen arrested five prounion employees of the Victor Record , Langdon outraced the military to...

Frances S. Klock (1844–1908) was one of the first three women—along with Clara Cressingham and Carrie Clyde Holly —to serve as a state legislator in the United States. The three ran for office in 1894, one year after women in Colorado achieved the right to vote . In addition to serving as a member...

George Bent (1843–1918) was a half-white, half-Native American soldier who fought in multiple battles for the Confederacy during the Civil War and for the Cheyenne people in various wars of the late nineteenth century. His life reflects the shifts in alliances and the balance of power in Colorado...

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 Godfrey’s Ranch was an example of a common...

Helen Gilmer Bonfils (1889–1972) was a well-known Colorado actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is best known as manager of The Denver Post and for her contributions to the theater in Colorado through her time as an actress, producer, and later benefactress of the Helen G. Bonfils...

Henry Blackwell (1825–1909) worked with his wife, Lucy Stone , to pave the way for women’s suffrage . Blackwell advocated for equal rights at the local, state, and national levels throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. He worked to create nationwide change, but his contributions to...

Horace “Silver King” Tabor (1830–99) rose from a smalltime prospector to one of the wealthiest men in Colorado because of his luck in Leadville ’s silver mines . He became tabloid fodder through his romantic liaisons with Baby Doe Tabor and his fall from power when the United States changed to the...

Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin (1914–2004) moved Colorado toward a more rights-based society for individuals with mental illness. As an assistant city attorney for Denver , first president of the Colorado Association for Mental Health, and a Democratic state representative, McLaughlin helped reform...

John Charles Frémont (1813–90) was an American explorer and cartographer for the US Topographical Engineers who crossed Colorado on various expeditions. Between 1842 and 1853, Frémont led five western expeditions with numerous objectives. He was also involved in the Mexican-American War (1846–48)...

Josephine Meeker (1857–82) was the daughter of Nathan Meeker , the Indian agent who oversaw the White River Indian Agency during the Meeker Incident , a Ute uprising in 1879. After the revolt, Utes took Josephine, her mother, another woman, and her two children captive for nearly a month. Following...

Jacques Benedict (1879–1948), one of Colorado’s best-known and most-flamboyant architects, designed some of Colorado’s grandest Beaux Arts city homes and rustic mountain residences, as well as notable churches, libraries, schools, a town hall, shelters in Denver’s Mountain Parks , and a few...

Katharine Grafton Patterson (1839–1902) came to Colorado in 1872 with her husband, Thomas Patterson , and soon established herself as an influential clubwoman, suffragist, and philanthropist. Devoutly religious, Patterson dedicated the majority of her life to the service of others. She was a...

Kent Haruf (1943–2014) was a novelist best known for Plainsong (1999). Set in the fictional town of Holt in northeast Colorado, Plainsong and Haruf’s other novels examine the lives of ordinary people on the high plains . Often praised for his unadorned style and humane outlook, Haruf is generally...

After the Treaty of 1868 , the Los Piños Indian Agency became the center of governmental authority for the Uncompahgre Utes on the Ute Indian Reservation in western Colorado. While largely forgotten after its abandonment in 1881, the site of the second iteration of the agency is now under...

Mary Hauck Elitch Long (1856–1936) was the first woman in the world to own and operate a zoo, located at Elitch Gardens in Denver . She and her husband, John Elitch, Jr. , opened the attraction in 1890, and after his death in 1891, Mary continued on as a pioneering businesswoman and entrepreneur...

Mary Mullarkey (1943–2021) was a Colorado lawyer and public servant whose career was marked by firsts. She was the first woman to serve as Colorado solicitor general, the first to serve as chief legal counsel to a Colorado governor, and the first to become chief justice of the Colorado Supreme...

Maurice Rose (1899–1945) served in the US Army during World War I and II . Raised and educated in Denver , Rose attained the rank of major general, making him the highest-ranking person of Jewish heritage in the US Army. He was known for his aggressive leadership style, directing his units from the...

Patricia (Pat) Scott Schroeder (1940–) represented Colorado’s First Congressional District —the city of Denver —in the US House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. The first female US Representative elected in Colorado, she championed liberal issues, including opposing the Vietnam War and...

Richard “Rick” Trujillo (1948–) is a Colorado mountain runner best known for starting the Imogene Pass Run in 1974 and winning the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon { six times in the 1970s, long before trail and mountain running became popular activities. Later in his career, Trujillo helped scout...

Spencer Penrose (1865–1939) was a businessman, miner , entrepreneur, philanthropist, and investor who worked primarily in the Pikes Peak region. Penrose had assets in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Kansas, including mines and real estate properties. He is most notable for owning the C.O.D. mine in...

The Swedish National Sanatorium in Denver was a tuberculosis treatment center active throughout the 1900s. As tuberculosis swept the nation, thousands of consumptives turned to the dry mountain air of Colorado to alleviate their symptoms, and sanatoriums sprang up across the state. The Swedish...

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) formed in 1890 to fight for better pay and working conditions for the nation’s coal miners. In Colorado the union was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the southern coalfields of Fremont , Huerfano ,...

The White River Ute Agency at Meeker , Colorado was established at the same time as the first Los Piños Agency under provisions of the Treaty of 1868 . The agency was intended to serve the White River Ute band as well as some of the other bands from northwestern Colorado. As the site of the Meeker...

William A. Lang (1846–97), one of Colorado’s premier residential architects, practiced in Denver between 1887 and 1895, both individually and in the firm of Lang and Pugh. During that period, Lang designed some 250 buildings and made a name for himself as Denver’s top residential designer, notable...

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846–1917) was neither born in Colorado nor lived in the state. In death, however, he became one of its most famous residents. Cody’s first experience in Colorado came in 1859, when he was a thirteen-year-old participant in the Colorado Gold Rush . Like many other...

William Gray Evans (1855–1924) was a Denver businessman best known as the Denver Tramway Company president. The son of Territorial Governor John Evans , he was involved in many of Denver’s early foundational enterprises and played an integral role in constructing the Moffat Tunnel . During the...

William Newton Byers (1831–1903) founded the first newspaper in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News (1859–2009) and was Denver ’s biggest booster during the city’s early days. Byers used his newspaper as a platform for his advocacy, as his knowledge of the territory allowed him to broker land deals...