On February 19, 2015, President Obama designated 21,586 acres of scenic canyons, rivers, and backcountry forest in Chaffee County, Colorado, as the Browns Canyon National Monument. Browns Canyon is the eighth national monument designation within the…

Rising in Rocky Mountain National Park and coursing 126 miles to its junction with the South Platte River near Greeley, the Cache la Poudre River is the lifeblood of several northern Colorado communities and contributes significantly to the economy of…

Located near Calhan, about thirty-five miles northeast of Colorado Springs, the Calhan Paint Mines are an area of clay deposits that have seen extensive prehistoric habitation and historic quarrying of the clay for pottery and bricks. In the 1990s,…

Stretching west and northwest from Cortez to the Utah border, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was established in 2000 and boasts the densest collection of archaeological sites in the United States. An estimated 30,000 sites—including cliff…

One of the jewels of Denver’s park and parkway system, Cheesman Park (1601 Race St, Denver, CO 80206) sits on land that originally served as the city’s first cemetery. In 1890 the cemetery was closed, many—but not all—graves were relocated, and a park…

Located in the southwest corner of Colorado just north of the New Mexico border, the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area is home to hundreds of archaeological sites. One of these sites, the Chimney Rock Pueblo, is known for its dramatic setting high atop…

Established in 1882, City Park is Denver’s largest urban park, occupying nearly 320 acres between East Seventeenth and East Twenty-Third Avenues from York Street to Colorado Boulevard. Designed primarily by civil engineers Henry Meryweather and Walter…

Named a National Historic Landmark in 2012, Civic Center is a complex of parks, civic buildings, and cultural institutions stretching between the State Capitol and the City and County Building in the heart of Denver. Plans for the complex, which was…

On May 24, 1911, President William Howard Taft established Colorado National Monument in Mesa County, near Grand Junction. Today the monument, one of eight in Colorado, encompasses more than 20,000 acres of sandstone cliffs and monoliths, scenic canyons,…

Comanche National Grassland encompasses more than 440,000 acres in Baca and Otero Counties in southeast Colorado. The US Forest Service maintains the natural heath and cultural resources of the grassland, which was established in 1960 and is named after…

Daniels Park (8682 N Daniels Park Rd, Sedalia, CO 80135) is a unit of the Denver Mountain Parks system located in an area of grassy buttes and ravines just west of Castle Pines in Douglas County. First established with a thirty-eight-acre donation from…

The Denver Mountain Park system consists of forty-six public parks that are home to some of the most popular mountain destinations near Denver, including Red Rocks, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Grave, Evergreen Lake, Lookout Mountain, and Echo Lake…

The Denver Zoo started in 1896 with a single bear in City Park and has grown to an eighty-acre campus. There are 350 employees overseeing a total of about 3,700 animals from more than 600 species. The zoo draws more than 2 million visitors per year,…

Located southeast of the Uinta Mountains at the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers on the Utah-Colorado border, Dinosaur National Monument is a federally protected area where dinosaur fossils can be found. The monument is one of the few places in…

The controversy over the proposed Echo Park dam in the mid-1950s was a crucial episode in the conservation history of Colorado and the West and proved to be a milestone in American environmental history. Following years of debate, the US Congress decided…

Culling is a wildlife management practice involving the lethal reduction of a species. It has historically been used as a means to control ungulate (hoofed animal) populations in Colorado and throughout the United States. As recently as 2009, it has been…

Established in 2019 as Colorado’s forty-second state park, Fishers Peak State Park covers 19,200 acres south of Trinidad near the New Mexico border. The mountainous area includes a cluster of hills and mesas that give way to the Colorado plains to the…

Genesee Park is a Denver Mountain Park that stretches from Clear Creek Canyon to Genesee Mountain in the Rocky Mountain foothills about five miles southwest of Golden. In addition to the 8,424-foot summit of Genesee Mountain, attractions at the 2,413…

The beautiful and imposing mountain scenery of Colorado’s Great Divide has led to the common belief that the state is home to a singular “Continental Divide.” The divide in Colorado, however, is only a piece of the larger Great Divide, a geologic crest…

The Great Sand Dunes sprawl along the eastern fringes of the vast San Luis Valley of south central Colorado, covering an area of nearly thirty square miles. They are the tallest aeolian (wind-produced) dunes in North America, heaping mounds of sand that…

In 1891 the young Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868–95) arrived in Colorado, seeking both a cure for his tuberculosis and a look at the wonders of the West. His experiences over the next two years set in motion a series of events that would…

Hiwan Heritage Park and Museum in Evergreen comprises a four-acre outdoor space and a twenty-five-room log cabin. Josepha Williams, one of the first female doctors in Colorado, acquired the property in 1893 as a place for friends and family to stay…

Horsetooth Reservoir is located in the foothills just west of Fort Collins. The Bureau of Reclamation began construction of the reservoir in 1946 as part of the larger Colorado–Big Thompson Project, which provided additional irrigation water for the…

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…

Julie Villiers Lewis McMillan Penrose (1870–1956) was one of the primary benefactors of Colorado Springs institutions in the interwar years. Her husband, multimillionaire Spencer (“Speck”) Penrose, profited from Cripple Creek gold and Utah copper in the…

Located just north of Deer Creek in the valley between the hogback ridge and the foothills west of Denver, the Ken-Caryl South Valley Archaeological District contains rock shelters that were used by prehistoric peoples from at least the Late Paleo-Indian…

La Junta City Park is a prime example of a New Deal project on Colorado’s eastern plains. As a result of work carried out between 1933 and 1941, a poorly drained park became the city’s primary outdoor recreation space, complete with stone walls, benches,…

Located about seven miles north of Woodland Park, the Manitou Experimental Forest Station was established in 1936 for the US Forest Service to study resource management in ponderosa pine lands. Along with the Fraser Experimental Forest, it is one of two…

Mesa Verde National Park was established on June 29, 1906. It is the largest of the National Park Service parcels protecting cultural resources in Colorado, with nearly 5,000 documented sites, including about 600 cliff dwellings. A majority of the…

Monument Valley Park is a roughly two-mile linear park along Monument Creek in the heart of Colorado Springs. Developed and donated to the city by William Jackson Palmer, the 165-acre park opened in 1907 and has been one of the city’s most popular…

The town of Mount Vernon was established in 1859 at the base of Mount Vernon Canyon, west of Denver. The town is best known as the home of Robert W. Steele, who made it the de facto capital of the unofficial Territory of Jefferson while he was governor…

Ninth Street Historic Park is the heart of the Auraria neighborhood, Denver’s oldest, founded in October 1858, a month before Denver City. In the late 1960s, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) planned to clear 169 acres of old Auraria bordering…

Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as the country’s ninth national park. The site was visited and considered sacred by multiple Indigenous nations before it began attracting interest from white Americans in the late nineteenth and early…

Pawnee National Grassland encompasses 193,060 acres in Weld County in northeast Colorado. The US Forest Service established the grassland in 1960 to help restore and maintain the short-grass prairie environment that was depleted during the Dust Bowl of…

The Public Lands History Center (PLHC) is a special unit of the History Department at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Since 2007 it has partnered with students, communities, and land management agencies of all types to document the history of…

Located just west of Denver near the town of Morrison, Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre combines awe-inspiring natural scenery with natural acoustic splendor. The 868-acre park stands 6,450 feet above sea level between the Great Plains and the Rocky…

Built primarily by New Deal work programs in the 1930s, Rim Rock Drive is a twenty-three-mile scenic road through Colorado National Monument. Connecting Fruita and Grand Junction, the road increased tourism to the monument by allowing travelers to drive…

Established on January 26, 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) has for more than a century been one of the country’s most visited national parks. Mountain vistas and wilderness solitude draw millions of people every year. The park lies between…

The Roxborough State Park Archaeological District contains one historic homestead and a variety of prehistoric rockshelters and campsites dating back to at least the Early Archaic period (5500–3000 BCE). It is located at the southern end of the valley…

Named for its location seventeen miles from the intersection of Broadway and Colfax Avenue in Denver, Seventeen Mile House operated in the 1860s and 1870s as a tavern and inn along the southern branch of the Smoky Hill Trail. After the arrival of the…

Developed primarily between 1919 and 1924, the Squirrel Creek Recreation District in the San Isabel National Forest near Pueblo was one of the earliest recreational developments in a national forest and served as a model for many others to come. The…

In Georgia, amidst its magnificent landscapes and vibrant culture, there is a regulatory measure that affects the gambling industry: აზარტულ თამაშებზე დამოკიდებულ პირთა რეესტრი. Much like the elusive Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, which roams the rugged…

Located at an elevation of 12,830 feet on Mt. Evans, Summit Lake is a forty-acre alpine lake known for its scenic beauty and unique ecosystem. Acquired by Denver in 1924 as part of the city’s system of mountain parks, it is the highest Denver park as…

The Flat Tops Wilderness covers more than 235,000 acres of remote mountains and forests in Garfield, Rio Blanco, and Eagle Counties on Colorado’s Western Slope. Its most popular natural feature is Trappers Lake, the state’s second-largest natural lake,…

Developed in the 1890s and early 1900s, Washington Park is a scenic recreational area occupying about 160 acres southeast of downtown Denver. Designed around a portion of City Ditch by landscape architects Reinhard Schuetze and Saco DeBoer, the park…

The Wheeler Geologic Area is a sixty-acre volcanic rock formation located within the La Garita Wilderness in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado. A prehistoric time capsule, Wheeler has in more recent years inspired two presidential interventions…

Willow Creek Park in southeast Lamar was built primarily by the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration from 1933 to 1938. Using local labor and materials, the New Deal agencies built a series of dams for flood mitigation and…

Yucca House National Monument was established to protect and preserve a large Ancestral Pueblo village south of Cortez in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Yucca House is an important Ancestral Pueblo village based on its size, unique configurations,…