Places

Fort Morgan is a city of about 12,000 people along the South Platte River , about seventy miles northeast of Denver . It is part of the high plains region that an early explorer, Major Stephen Long , called the “Great American Desert.” As the center of a robust agricultural area, Fort Morgan was...

Sixteenth Street has been Denver ’s main street for shopping, commerce, and celebrations since the late nineteenth century. Starting from Broadway just north of Civic Center , it stretches about 1.75 miles northwest to Tejon Street in Highland. To help revive downtown commerce and relieve...

Located about nine miles west of Empire , the Henderson Molybdenum Mine was developed by American Metal Climax (AMAX) and opened in 1976 to work one of the world’s largest known molybdenum deposits. A conveyor belt for transporting ore connects the mine to a separate mill on the western side of the...

Located northwest of Craig in Moffat County , the Sand Wash Basin is an area of Bridger Formation rock outcrops that prehistoric peoples mined extensively as a source for stones to make tools with. Bridger Formation chert is typically light to dark brown, though some of the chert in the basin is...

A large white-clapboard residence in Leadville , Healy House was built for the family of mining engineer August Meyer in 1878. The house signaled the arrival of some domestic comforts to the rough-hewn mining camp. After the Meyers moved away in 1881, the house served briefly as a Methodist...

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 1930s. The grassland is broken into two...

There are few places in western North America richer in Paleo-Indian archaeology than Middle Park , the valley that forms the headwaters of the Colorado River in Grand County . Within Middle Park, the Barger Gulch area preserves an impressive amount of evidence from early humans, with sites dating...

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 that runs from Alaska through South America...

Shield Cave is a large limestone cavern in Eagle County that contains painted rock art dating to the Historic period and deposits of the iron mineral pigment material used to make ochre-color paint. This site is one of hundreds of caverns that have developed in the Mississippian Period Leadville...