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
Wheeler Geologic Area was once Colorado's first national monument
The Wheeler Geologic Area near Creede is a maze of eroded volcanic ash that was protected as Colorado's first national monument before its remoteness led to a different status.
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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.
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Why Central City and Black Hawk are a National Historic Landmark district
Central City, Black Hawk, and Nevadaville form a National Historic Landmark district, a high federal recognition that helps explain the area's strict building rules.
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Why Phillips County's towns line up the way they do
Holyoke, Haxtun, Paoli, and Amherst grew up as evenly spaced railroad towns along a line built across the plains in the late 1800s.
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Why so much of Pueblo points back to one steel mill
Pueblo's south-side neighborhoods, family names, and civic pride grew up around the CF&I steel mill, and the Steelworks Center of the West helps a newcomer read that history.
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How the Dolores Project pumps river water up to the Dove Creek farms
The Dolores Project stores Dolores River water in McPhee Reservoir and pumps it many miles to the Dove Creek area, which is why some land that was once dryland now has irrigation and the town has a municipal supply.
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A free summer-only museum keeps Strasburg's railroad story alive
On the Adams County plains in Strasburg, the seasonal Comanche Crossing Museum gathers a 1917 depot, two relocated one-room schools, and thousands of everyday artifacts on a couple of landscaped acres.
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Adams State University: a teachers' college built for the valley
Adams State in Alamosa began in the 1920s as a teachers' college meant to train teachers for the rural San Luis Valley, and it is named for the local rancher-turned-governor Billy Adams.
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An Easy, Free Afternoon: The Washington County Museum in Akron
Akron's free, year-round county museum keeps Washington County's pioneer and Native American story under one roof.
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Animas Forks is a real ghost town, kept by the BLM
Animas Forks above Silverton is a preserved mining ghost town on the Alpine Loop, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, where the standing buildings are protected and meant to be left as found.
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Aspen's Victorian houses are part of a recognized historic core
Aspen's old downtown and its Victorian homes, including the Wheeler/Stallard Museum, are documented historic resources, and the City of Aspen's own preservation program is what shapes how owners can change designated properties.
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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.
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Boulder's history includes a hard link to the Sand Creek Massacre
The City of Boulder publicly documents that a local company trained at Fort Chambers before taking part in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Arapaho and Cheyenne people.
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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.
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Cedaredge keeps Surface Creek's apple story alive
Cedaredge's Pioneer Town Museum and its first-weekend-of-October Applefest carry forward the orchard heritage of the Surface Creek Valley beneath the Grand Mesa.
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Creede's mining museum was carved straight into the rock
The Creede Underground Mining Museum was blasted out of a solid rock cliff by local miners and doubles as the town's community center, preserving hard-rock mining methods.
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Crowley County keeps its story in a 1914 schoolhouse
The Crowley County Heritage Center fills a 1914 brick schoolhouse with the county's newspapers, farm records, and local artifacts, and it doubles as the town hall and a community gathering place.
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Downtown Delta is a city of murals you can walk for free
Since the mid-1980s Delta has painted more than 20 large murals on downtown walls, turning a few blocks of Main Street into a free, self-guided walking tour of Western Slope history.
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Englewood grew out of Orchard Place and Cherrelyn
Before it was Englewood, this Arapahoe County city was a cluster of communities including Orchard Place and Cherrelyn, joined into one city in 1903.
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Felipe Baca is remembered as a founder of Trinidad
The county seat traces its start to Hispanic pioneer Felipe Baca, who is credited with settling the Purgatoire valley around 1860 and drawing other families there, and the town became the seat when Las Animas County was created in 1866.
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Florence calls itself the Antique Capital of Colorado, and Main Street backs it up
Florence packs a couple dozen antique shops into a few walkable blocks of historic brick storefronts, drawing weekend browsers from across the state.
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Fraser wears 'Icebox of the Nation' like a badge
Fraser keeps recording the coldest overnight low in the lower 48, and the town has turned that reputation into part of its character.
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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.
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Guffey, the Mining Town That Elects a Cat
A former gold camp in Park County's south end keeps a famous, honorary tradition of electing animals as mayor.
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