Places

The Leadville Ice Palace was an enormous, ice-walled building with an exterior in the style of a Norman castle and an interior comprising a large skating rink and two ballrooms. Proposed and constructed in late 1895, the Ice Palace hosted a Crystal Carnival from January 1 to March 28, 1896, before...

Built in 1883, the Byers-Evans House at 1310 Bannock Street in Denver is a Victorian mansion notable for its association with two of the city’s most influential early families. William Byers , who built the house, had established the city’s first newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News , and during his...

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 the Comanche Indians who once ruled the...

Named for the Boulder County town whose historic quarries made it famous, the Lyons Sandstone formation is a Permian age rock layer in the foothills of the Front Range from the Wyoming border to south of Colorado Springs . It is the primary formation in the scenic red rock outcrops at Garden of the...

Trout Creek in east Chaffee County is an extensive archaeological site exhibiting natural outcrops of colorful jaspers that were used for thousands of years as raw material for toolmaking by many different groups of Native Americans. It is one of the best-known toolstone sources not only in central...

From exquisitely flaked Folsom spear points to the spectacular cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park , among the most visible vestiges of Colorado’s Native American history are those crafted from naturally available rock. Archaeologists and others have documented nearly 1,000 places across...

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 the region. Today, those who live in the...

One of Denver ’s earliest firehouses, the Hose Company No. 1 building was built in the 1880s and has since served as a print shop, welding shop, and storage facility. It will soon reopen as a restaurant for a new hotel. The preservation of Hose Company No. 1 is an example of Colorado’s dedication...

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...