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Colorado: An Overview

Added by yongli on 06/19/2018 - 12:08, last changed on 03/16/2023 - 20:38

Maroon Bells in Fall

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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...

Ellison Onizuka

Added by yongli on 01/31/2017 - 10:17, last changed on 08/16/2022 - 16:19
Ellison Onizuka (1946–86) was an astronaut for the US Space Shuttle program who earned degrees at the University of Colorado in Boulder before perishing in the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. Onizuka was Colorado’s highest-profile astronaut and is remembered today as an advocate for science...

John C. Frémont

Added by yongli on 08/03/2016 - 15:52, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:47
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)...

John W. Gunnison

Added by yongli on 08/02/2016 - 16:26, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
John Williams Gunnison (1812–53) was a nineteenth-century US Army officer and explorer. In 1853 he was charged with finding a railroad route across the Rocky Mountains , and while carrying out his mission he explored the Western Slope of Colorado. His expedition moved on to Utah, where members of...

Juan Antonio María de Rivera

Added by yongli on 03/01/2016 - 15:44, last changed on 05/15/2020 - 01:07
Juan Antonio María de Rivera (1738–?) was a Spaniard and the first Euro-American to intensively explore the territory that eventually became the state of Colorado. In 1765 he made two trips into western Colorado from New Mexico, traveling as far as the Gunnison River in Delta County . Along the way...

Kit Carson

Added by yongli on 03/14/2016 - 14:16, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:01
The life of Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809–68) represents a broad sweep of Western American history in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Carson was a Rocky Mountain fur trapper , a guide and scout for the US Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, rancher, Indian agent in New Mexico and Colorado...

Louis Vasquez

Added by yongli on 10/06/2016 - 16:37, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 07:41
Louis Vasquez (1798–1868) was a fur trapper and mountain man active in Colorado during the 1820s and 1830s. He reportedly constructed Fort Convenience and a hunter’s cabin that predated the majority of settlement in the region. One of the Colorado fur trade ’s more successful trappers, Vasquez is...

Mary Cronin

Added by yongli on 09/21/2016 - 14:04, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 13:54
Mary Cronin (1893–1982) was an active member of the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) and the first woman to summit each of Colorado’s Fourteeners . Today, Cronin is best known for her accomplishments in the backcountry, and the CMC she helped develop continues its tradition of guiding people into the...

Stephen H. Long

Added by yongli on 03/12/2020 - 14:17, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
Stephen Harriman Long (1784–1864) was an American military explorer best known for leading an expedition into present-day Colorado in 1820. On his expedition map, he famously labeled the arid Great Plains as a “ Great American Desert ” where agriculture could not thrive. His description was...

Zebulon Montgomery Pike

Added by admin on 08/14/2014 - 08:45, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
In 1806–7, Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1779-1813) led a US Army expedition to the southwestern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, including the area that is now Colorado. Along with Lewis and Clark’s famous journey to the Pacific in 1804–6, Pike’s was one of many Jeffersonian-era expeditions...
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