Topic
History and culture
Mining towns and railroads, landmarks and museums, festivals, food, and the local-color stories that make each corner of Colorado make sense.
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Local notes
More history and culture notes
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History and culture
Ridgway grew up around a railroad, and a museum keeps that story
The town of Ridgway began as the northern terminus of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad, and the Ridgway Railroad Museum tells that story, including the line's famous Galloping Goose railcars.
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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.
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Snowmass Village began as a ranching valley, then a ski resort
The Town of Snowmass Village grew from ranchland in the Brush Creek valley after a ski area opened in the 1960s, and it later incorporated as its own home rule town.
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South Park City in Fairplay is a town rebuilt from Park County's lost mining camps
South Park City Museum at the west end of Fairplay's Front Street is an open-air museum of historic buildings moved in from the county's vanished mining camps.
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The Alpine Tunnel was a narrow-gauge railroad bore under the Continental Divide
Above St. Elmo, the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad drove the Alpine Tunnel through the Continental Divide in the early 1880s, and the abandoned railbed and tunnel are now a protected historic district reaching into Chaffee County.
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The Bachelor Loop is a self-guided drive through Creede's ghost towns
The Bachelor Loop is a marked Forest Service driving tour above Creede that visits old mines and the ghost town of Bachelor, with numbered pullouts that explain the silver district.
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The Cattlewoman Who Saved a Castle Above Sedalia
Tweet Kimball turned a 1920s Scottish-and-English-styled castle near Sedalia into a working cattle ranch and then protected its land, and you can tour the result by reservation.
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The county seat moved twice, ending up in Salida
Chaffee County's seat of government started at Granite, moved to Buena Vista, and in 1928 moved again to Salida, and the old Buena Vista courthouse and jail now house a heritage museum.
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The county seat that moved three times
Custer County's seat of government started at Ula, then moved to Rosita, then Silver Cliff, and finally Westcliffe, tracing the rise and fall of each mining town.
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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.
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The Farm at Lee Martinez keeps farm chores in the city story
A city-run farm in Lee Martinez Park lets Fort Collins families meet animals and stay close to the county's farming roots.
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The first Fort Lewis stood at Pagosa Springs
A frontier Army post once guarded the Pagosa Springs area in the late 1870s, an early Fort Lewis that later moved west, shaping the town's beginnings.
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The Galloping Goose in Dolores is a leftover from a vanished railroad
Dolores keeps a restored 'Galloping Goose,' a homemade motor car the Rio Grande Southern Railroad used to survive in its final decades before the line was scrapped.
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The Hinsdale County Museum keeps Lake City's mining-era story
The Hinsdale County Museum in Lake City, run by the county historical society, gathers the area's mining-era history in an 1877 downtown building.
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The Littleton Museum keeps two working pioneer farms
The Littleton Museum runs an 1860s and an 1890s living history farm where staff in period dress work the land, showing how settlement changed once the railroad arrived.
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The Madonna of the Trail stands in Lamar
In Lamar, the Madonna of the Trail statue marks the Santa Fe Trail's story and sits near a welcome center where you can learn the area's history.
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The Million Dollar Highway is history you can drive
The stretch of US 550 between Silverton and Ouray, the 'Million Dollar Highway,' dates to the 1920s and is part of the San Juan Skyway, a route built on old mining roads.
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The Murdock Building in Eads is a county-owned landmark with a Sand Creek story
The historic Murdock Building in downtown Eads is owned by Kiowa County and has served as a senior center and has housed National Park Service space connected to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.
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The old Castle Rock train depot is now the town's history museum
Castle Rock's historic Denver & Rio Grande stone depot now houses the Castle Rock Historical Museum, a free place to learn the town's railroad and quarry story.
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The powerhouse above Bridal Veil Falls is a piece of electrical history
The Smuggler-Union (Bridal Veil) hydroelectric powerhouse perched above Telluride's Bridal Veil Falls is tied to the early use of alternating-current power for mining.
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The Spanish Peaks and their stone dikes are the county's landmark
The twin Spanish Peaks and the long stone walls radiating from them are a well-known geologic feature in Huerfano County, and the Highway of Legends byway runs through the country around them.
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The town of Ignacio and the Southern Ute heritage around it
Ignacio, in southern La Plata County, is named for the Ute leader Chief Ignacio and sits at the heart of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe's homeland — history best learned from the Tribes themselves.
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Those gravel ridges along the rivers are old gold-dredge tailings
Long piles of rounded gravel along the Swan River, French Gulch, and the Blue are leftovers from early-1900s gold dredging, and the county is restoring some of these lands.
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Walk Inside an 1891 Silver Mine on Creede's Amethyst Vein
The Last Chance Mine near Creede lets you walk inside a real 1891 silver mine and see purple amethyst still in the rock wall.
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