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Baron Walter von Richthofen

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…

Colorado: An Overview

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…

Elizabeth Iliff Warren

Elizabeth Fraser Iliff Warren (1844–1920) was one of Denver’s most influential early citizens and was instrumental in founding the Iliff School of Theology. After arriving in Denver in 1869 as a twenty-four-year-old sewing-machine saleswoman, she married…

John Wesley Iliff

If there is a name in Colorado history that is synonymous with cattle and ranching, it is John Wesley Iliff (1831–78). At the time of his death, Iliff owned approximately 35,000 head of cattle and thousands of acres stretching from northeast Colorado to…

Katherine Slaughterback (Rattlesnake Kate)

Katherine Slaughterback (1893–1969) was a dryland prairie homesteader on the Colorado plains. In 1925 she became known as Rattlesnake Kate after she  killed 140 rattlesnakes, allegedly in self-defense, in Weld County. Her story, which is likely an…

Richard Wetherill

Richard Wetherill (1858–1910) was a nineteenth-century rancher and explorer who lived in southwest Colorado. Although he is often credited with "discovering" some of the most significant Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites…