Tag
history
84 Porch Notes tagged “history,” from counties across Colorado.
History and culture - Kiowa County
Near Eads, the Sand Creek Massacre site is sacred ground the National Park Service cares for
The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Kiowa County is a place of mourning for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and the National Park Service is the agency that protects and explains it.
Read note ->History and culture - Prowers County
Amache, near Granada, is a place to visit with care
Near Granada in Prowers County, Amache is the site of a World War II incarceration camp for Japanese Americans, now part of the National Park System.
Read note ->History and culture - Lake County
Why Leadville sits where it does: silver, then much more
Leadville grew up around mining in California Gulch, and much of its historic core is recognized as a National Historic Landmark District.
Read note ->History and culture - Costilla County
Costilla County's map still follows a Mexican-era land grant
The shape of land, water, and settlement around San Luis traces back to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant and the families who settled it in the 1850s.
Read note ->History and culture - Baca County
You can still find Santa Fe Trail wagon ruts in southern Baca County
The Cimarron Route of the Santa Fe Trail crossed about 14 miles of southern Baca County, and on the Carrizo Unit grassland you can still walk out to faint wagon ruts and old markers.
Read note ->History and culture - Otero County
Bent's Old Fort tells the Santa Fe Trail story near La Junta
Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta is a reconstructed 1800s trading post on the Santa Fe Trail and a careful place to learn the valley's layered history.
Read note ->History and culture - Arapahoe County
From Fitzsimons Army Hospital to the Anschutz Medical Campus
Aurora's busy medical campus grew out of an Army tuberculosis hospital that once held the largest building in Colorado.
Read note ->Outdoors and wildfire - Garfield County
Glenwood's Grand Pool: a soak the length of a city block and a half
Glenwood Hot Springs Resort's Grand Pool has been Garfield County's signature soak since 1888 — about 405 feet of mineral water kept near 90 degrees.
Read note ->History and culture - Park County
Much of Park County sits inside the South Park National Heritage Area
Congress designated the South Park National Heritage Area to recognize and help interpret the mining, ranching, and railroad history spread across much of Park County.
Read note ->History and culture - Baca County
The Dust Bowl shaped Baca County's land and its people
Baca County was at the heart of the 1930s Dust Bowl, and that history still explains its grasslands, its small towns, and how the land is used today.
Read note ->History and culture - Lake County
The Tabor Opera House tells Leadville's silver-boom story in one building
The 1879 Tabor Opera House in Leadville was built by silver magnate Horace Tabor and is a contributing landmark within the Leadville National Historic Landmark District.
Read note ->History and culture - Fremont County
A 1929 suspension bridge that hung over the Arkansas before there were power tools to help
The Royal Gorge Bridge near Cañon City went up in about seven months in 1929 and held the world record for highest suspension bridge for roughly 74 years.
Read note ->History and culture - Arapahoe County
Arapahoe County carries the name of the Arapaho people
Arapahoe County is named for the Arapaho people, who lived across the eastern Colorado plains long before the county was drawn.
Read note ->History and culture - Lincoln County
Hugo grew up around the railroad, and a roundhouse still tells that story
Hugo began as a railroad town on the Kansas Pacific line, and its surviving Union Pacific roundhouse is a window into why the town is here.
Read note ->History and culture - Lake County
Tennessee Pass and Ski Cooper carry the 10th Mountain Division story
Tennessee Pass north of Leadville and the Ski Cooper area trace back to World War II, when the Army trained the 10th Mountain Division ski troops in this high country.
Read note ->History and culture - Douglas County
The 1933 Castlewood Dam break still shapes Cherry Creek
An old irrigation dam in Douglas County failed in 1933 and sent a flood down Cherry Creek toward Denver, a story that later shaped flood control on the creek.
Read note ->Outdoors and wildfire - Lake County
The Leadville National Fish Hatchery is a working piece of 1800s history
The Leadville National Fish Hatchery, established in 1889, is one of the country's oldest federal fish hatcheries and is open to visitors near Leadville.
Read note ->History and culture - Prowers County
The name Prowers, and the Cheyenne woman behind Amache
Prowers County is named for rancher John Prowers, and the name Amache traces to his wife, the Cheyenne woman Amache Ochinee Prowers.
Read note ->History and culture - Huerfano County
Coal and the railroad drove Walsenburg's growth
Walsenburg is older than the coal boom, but coal mining and the rail lines that hauled the coal out drove the town's growth and still shape the towns and land you see in Huerfano County today.
Read note ->History and culture - El Paso County
Pikes Peak carried older names long before it was on a map
The mountain that anchors El Paso County was known to the Ute and other tribes by its own names for generations before Zebulon Pike's 1806 sighting.
Read note ->History and culture - Fremont County
The Royal Gorge is narrow enough that two railroads once fought over it
The deep, tight Royal Gorge canyon on the Arkansas River had room for only one rail line, and the fight over that route is a real part of Fremont County's history.
Read note ->Outdoors and wildfire - Lincoln County
A 1990 tornado reshaped downtown Limon, and the rebuild still shows
In 1990 a powerful tornado struck Limon and heavily damaged its business district, and the town's rebuilt downtown reflects that recovery.
Read note ->History and culture - Boulder County
Lyons: a red-sandstone quarry town turned bluegrass home
Lyons quarried the red sandstone you see across CU Boulder, and today its St. Vrain festival grounds draw bluegrass fans from around the country.
Read note ->History and culture - Moffat County
Moffat County is named for David Moffat, the railroad financier
The county takes its name from David Moffat, a Denver financier whose railroad pushed into northwest Colorado, and that railroad shaped where towns grew.
Read note ->History and culture - Lake County
Twin Lakes village is a preserved 1800s mountain town
The Twin Lakes Historic District and the nearby Interlaken resort preserve a late-1800s mountain village and lake-side hotel that grew up on the road between Leadville and Aspen.
Read note ->History and culture - Arapahoe County
Aurora's culture system grew from the public library
Aurora's whole Library and Cultural Services department traces back to one 1929 act: founding the Aurora Public Library.
Read note ->Cars and driving - Otero County
A Santa Fe Trail Drive Through Otero County's Plains Towns
Trace the Santa Fe Trail National Scenic Byway through Otero County, linking Bent's Old Fort, the Sierra Vista overlook, the Otero Museum, and La Junta's old downtown in one easy day by car.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
A whole city's stages gathered under one downtown roof
The Denver Performing Arts Complex packs more than a dozen venues and four resident companies onto twelve downtown acres under an 80-foot glass canopy.
Read note ->History and culture - Custer County
Beckwith Ranch: the red-roofed Victorian on Highway 69
A white-clapboard Victorian ranch house with bright red roofs sits just northwest of Westcliffe, a National Register landmark that volunteers open for tours each summer.
Read note ->History and culture - Bent County
Boggsville sits where the Santa Fe Trail met the river bottom
Boggsville, near Las Animas, is a preserved 1860s settlement on the Santa Fe Trail that helps explain why people first put down roots along the rivers in Bent County.
Read note ->History and culture - Kit Carson County
Burlington keeps a working antique carousel that is a National Historic Landmark
The Kit Carson County Carousel in Burlington is an early-1900s wooden carousel the county bought in the 1920s, later named a National Historic Landmark.
Read note ->History and culture - Rio Blanco County
Canyon Pintado: a thousand years of rock art on the road to Rangely
A 16,000-acre stretch of public land along Highway 139 south of Rangely holds Fremont and Ute rock art panels, some close to a thousand years old, reachable from marked pull-offs.
Read note ->History and culture - Routt County
Coal and the railroad shaped the towns of the Yampa Valley
Routt County's towns grew up around ranching, coal, and the arrival of the railroad, which helped shift the county's center to the Yampa Valley and Steamboat Springs.
Read note ->History and culture - Arapahoe County
Deer Trail and the rodeo that may be the world's first
On July 4, 1869, ranch hands near Deer Trail held a bronc-riding contest widely recognized as the world's first rodeo, and the eastern-plains town still rides every summer.
Read note ->Water and land - Washington County
The Akron Station That Taught the Plains to Hold Its Rain
Just outside Akron, a USDA research station has spent more than a century figuring out how to farm on 14 to 18 inches of rain a year.
Read note ->Water and land - Montrose County
The Gunnison Tunnel: why the Montrose valley is farmland
A 5.8-mile tunnel bored under Vernal Mesa from 1905 to 1909 still carries Gunnison River water that turns the dry Uncompahgre Valley into Montrose's farm country.
Read note ->History and culture - Sedgwick County
The South Platte River Trail byway loops through Sedgwick County's frontier past
A short state-designated scenic and historic byway near Julesburg follows the old westward route past Fort Sedgwick and a Pony Express station site.
Read note ->History and culture - Pueblo County
Why Pueblo Is Called the Home of Heroes
Four Medal of Honor recipients came from one Colorado steel town, and Pueblo built two downtown spots to honor them.
Read note ->History and culture - Kit Carson County
Burlington's Old Town Museum is a walkable village of restored plains buildings
The Old Town Museum in Burlington gathers restored turn-of-the-century buildings on one historic site, giving a close look at early life on Colorado's plains.
Read note ->History and culture - Summit County
Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument honors the 10th Mountain Division
Camp Hale, just over the divide from Summit County, was the World War II training ground for the Army's mountain troops and is now a national monument managed by the Forest Service.
Read note ->History and culture - Fremont County
Florence sits on one of Colorado's earliest oil stories
The area around Florence in Fremont County was an early Colorado oil field, and that history is one part of how the town took shape.
Read note ->History and culture - Bent County
Fort Lyon, near Las Animas, is where Kit Carson died
Fort Lyon, east of Las Animas near the mouth of the Purgatoire River, was a frontier army post where Kit Carson died in 1868, and it later became a veterans hospital and a national cemetery.
Read note ->History and culture - Garfield County
Glenwood Springs grew up around its hot springs
The mineral hot springs at Glenwood Springs were known to the Ute people long before the town, and that water is a central part of why the place grew where it did.
Read note ->History and culture - Huerfano County
How Huerfano County got its name from a lonely butte
Huerfano County, the Huerfano River, and the area's Spanish name all trace back to a solitary volcanic butte north of Walsenburg that early Spanish travelers called El Huerfano, 'the orphan.'
Read note ->History and culture - Routt County
How Steamboat Springs got its name
Steamboat Springs is named for a mineral spring whose chugging sound reminded early travelers of a steamboat engine, a sound later quieted by the railroad.
Read note ->History and culture - Gunnison County
How the Gunnison name landed on the river, county, and town
The river, county, and town of Gunnison all carry the name of Captain John W. Gunnison, a U.S. Army surveyor who passed through during an 1853 railroad survey.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Red Rocks was a Denver park before it was a famous stage
Denver bought the Red Rocks land in the late 1920s and built its amphitheatre with Depression-era work crews, opening it in 1941.
Read note ->History and culture - Saguache County
Saguache wears its 1874 main street and two museums on one slow walk
The county seat carries a Ute name, a 4th Street commercial core that grew from the town's 1874 founding, and two museums you can walk between in an afternoon.
Read note ->History and culture - Pueblo County
The Egyptian Mummy on Rosemount's Third Floor
Climb to the top floor of Pueblo's 1893 Thatcher mansion and you reach the McClelland Collection of world curiosities, an Egyptian mummy among them.
Read note ->History and culture - Adams County
Why Brighton sits where it does: railroads, the river, and sugar beets
Brighton, the Adams County seat, grew up where a railroad met South Platte farmland, and sugar-beet and truck farming shaped the county for generations.
Read note ->History and culture - Saguache County
Bonanza was a silver boomtown that became a tiny mountain village
North of Villa Grove, the silver camp of Bonanza grew after ore was found around 1880 and later shrank to a handful of residents, and a cleanup project still manages old mine waste there.
Read note ->History and culture - Fremont County
Cañon City has been a prison town since territorial days
Colorado chose Cañon City for its territorial penitentiary in the late 1860s, and that long corrections history is told at the Museum of Colorado Prisons in town.
Read note ->Cars and driving - Saguache County
Cochetopa Pass: the old 'Pass of the Buffalo' over the Divide
Northwest of Saguache, a quiet gravel backway carries the old Ute 'Pass of the Buffalo' over the Continental Divide, while paved Highway 114 takes the easy modern route alongside it.
Read note ->History and culture - Garfield County
Garfield County is named for a U.S. president
Garfield County was created in 1883 and named for President James A. Garfield, with Glenwood Springs as its county seat.
Read note ->History and culture - Saguache County
The Baca Land Grant No. 4 is older than the county around it
Much of the land around Crestone traces back to a 19th-century land grant to the Baca family, a history now listed on the National Register as a Rural Historic Landscape.
Read note ->History and culture - Rio Grande County
The county museum in Del Norte keeps the local story in one place
The Rio Grande County Museum and Cultural Center in Del Norte collects the county's history, from early rock art and Hispanic settlement to mining, ranching, and railroad days.
Read note ->History and culture - Bent County
The county's name comes from a trading fort on the Arkansas
Bent County is named for the Bent family, whose adobe trading post on the Santa Fe Trail along the Arkansas River was a meeting place for traders and Plains tribes.
Read note ->History and culture - Bent County
The railroad helped move Bent County's seat from Boggsville to Las Animas
Bent County's seat sat at Boggsville for a time in the early 1870s, moved more than once, and ended up at the railroad town that grew into today's Las Animas — an example of how a rail line could pick the winners among early plains towns.
Read note ->History and culture - Bent County
The Rawlings Heritage Center is where Bent County keeps its story indoors
The John W. Rawlings Heritage Center in Las Animas gathers Bent County's history under one roof, from an early telephone exchange to the first bank, making it the indoor companion to the county's outdoor history sites.
Read note ->History and culture - Jackson County
Walden's pioneer museum lives inside an 1882 log cabin
The North Park Pioneer Museum fills an 1880s log cabin with three floors of artifacts that explain how this high basin became ranch country.
Read note ->History and culture - Cheyenne County
Walk Through the 1894 Jail a Famous Denver Architect Designed
Cheyenne Wells keeps a brick Romanesque jail from 1894, designed by Colorado's first licensed architect and now open as a small museum.
Read note ->History and culture - Fremont County
Cañon City's 1913 Santa Fe Depot is now the start of a scenic train
The Mediterranean Revival Santa Fe Depot in Cañon City, built in 1913, survives as a historic landmark and serves as the boarding point for the Royal Gorge Route tourist railroad along the Arkansas River.
Read note ->History and culture - Saguache County
Penitente Canyon carries a name from valley religious history
The BLM-managed Penitente Canyon near La Garita is named for a Hispano Catholic brotherhood, and the surrounding area holds Indigenous rock art best treated with care.
Read note ->History and culture - Elbert County
The Elbert County Fair grew from an 1891 'Vegetable Day'
The Elbert County Fair traces back to an 1891 'Vegetable Day' in Elizabeth and moved through Elbert and Matheson before settling at the fairgrounds in Kiowa.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Denver Union Station was built to gather the railroads
Union Station opened in the 1880s to bring many railroads into one Denver depot, and after a long restoration it reopened in 2014 as a rail, bus, and train hub.
Read note ->History and culture - Delta County
Fort Uncompahgre near Delta marks an early trading post on the Old Spanish Trail
A reconstructed fur-trade fort on the edge of Delta interprets the Robidoux trading post and the Old Spanish Trail that crossed this part of the Western Slope.
Read note ->History and culture - Huerfano County
Huerfano County's vanished coal camps, treated with care
Names like Pictou, Rouse, Walsen, and Cameron mark places that were once busy coal camps in Huerfano County, and most are now quiet sites best understood through archival and official sources.
Read note ->History and culture - Otero County
La Junta is the Otero County seat and grew up as a railroad town
La Junta is the seat of Otero County and built much of its early growth around the Santa Fe Railway, which still shapes the town's layout and economy.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Why Denver built mountain parks a century ago
Denver's mountain parks were a deliberate early-1900s project, planned by noted landscape architects and built over decades to give city people access to the foothills.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Why Denver grew up where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte
Denver started at the meeting of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek during an 1850s gold rush, which is why the old city center sits where it does.
Read note ->History and culture - Garfield County
Doc Holliday is tied to Glenwood Springs, but his exact grave is uncertain
Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs and is associated with Linwood Cemetery, though the precise location of his grave is not documented with certainty.
Read note ->History and culture - Saguache County
Why Crestone became a center for retreat and spiritual communities
Starting in the 1980s, a foundation gave land near Crestone to many religious groups, and the area now holds a wide range of retreat centers, monasteries, and temples.
Read note ->History and culture - Elbert County
The Elbert County Historical Society & Museum preserves local history in Kiowa
The Elbert County Historical Society and Museum in Kiowa collects photographs, artifacts, and local histories — a good first stop for research, while official land records stay with the county.
Read note ->History and culture - Garfield County
The Garfield County Courthouse is a historic landmark in Glenwood Springs
Garfield County's seat of government is the historic courthouse in downtown Glenwood Springs, a building recognized by History Colorado for its history.
Read note ->History and culture - Mesa County
Why Fruita is dinosaur country
The hills around Fruita produced important early dinosaur finds, a legacy you can trace at a named public site and a local museum.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
City Park is old, big, and holds two major institutions
City Park is one of Denver's oldest large parks, laid out in the 1880s, and it surrounds both the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Civic Center was Denver's City Beautiful centerpiece
Civic Center Park between the Capitol and the City and County Building was built in the early 1900s as Denver's grand public space and is now a National Historic Landmark.
Read note ->History and culture - Mesa County
Why so many things near Grand Junction say 'Grand'
Grand Junction, the Grand Valley, and Grand Mesa carry a name from the river that was once called the Grand before it became part of the Colorado River.
Read note ->History and culture - Delta County
Why the county seat is named Delta
The City of Delta takes its name from the delta-shaped land where the Uncompahgre River meets the Gunnison, and it became the county seat when Delta County was carved from Gunnison County in 1883.
Read note ->History and culture - Mesa County
Three museums, one regional history
The Museums of Western Colorado run several heritage sites around Grand Junction and Fruita that together tell the valley's human and natural story.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Denver's tree-lined parkways are a designed historic system
Denver's grand boulevards and parks were planned together as one system in the early 1900s, and the whole network carries historic recognition.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
Lookout Mountain holds Buffalo Bill's grave and a wide view
Lookout Mountain, a Denver Mountain Park above Golden, is the site of Buffalo Bill Cody's grave and museum and a sweeping view back over the plains.
Read note ->History and culture - Denver County
The Capitol steps have more than one 'mile high' marker
Denver's nickname comes from sitting about a mile above sea level, and the State Capitol's west steps carry several 'One Mile Above Sea Level' markers from surveys done over the years.
Read note ->History and culture - Mesa County
The Old Spanish Trail passed through the Grand Valley
A branch of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, a 19th-century trade route between New Mexico and California, reached the Grand Junction area on its way west.
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