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
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History and culture
Haxtun's Corn Festival: a September tradition more than a century old
Each September the small Phillips County town of Haxtun throws a Corn Festival that has run for more than a hundred years, with a downtown parade and a full day of harvest celebration.
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Highlands Ranch grew on a real ranch, and the mansion is still there
Before it was a suburb, Highlands Ranch was a working cattle ranch, and its historic mansion is now owned by the metro district and open to the public.
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Holyoke's courthouse is a New Deal landmark you can walk right up to
The 1935 Phillips County Courthouse in Holyoke is a Moderne-style Public Works Administration building on the National Register, and the only surviving PWA project in the county.
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How Adams County got its name and its start
Adams County was created in the early 1900s from Arapahoe County and named for Governor Alva Adams, with Brighton rancher Emmet Bromley behind the bill.
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Howelsen Hill and the Winter Carnival, Steamboat's ski roots
Steamboat Springs' deep ski heritage traces to Carl Howelsen, who helped start the Winter Carnival and the ski hill that still carries his name.
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Hugo's WPA Pool: A 1930s Public Work You Can Still Swim In
Hugo's municipal pool and its adobe Art Moderne bathhouse were built by Depression-era WPA crews and still open as the town pool in summer.
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Julesburg's old Union Pacific depot tells the county's railroad story
The historic Union Pacific depot in Julesburg, saved by the county and a local historical society, is a regional museum and a State Register property that explains why the railroad shaped this corner of Colorado.
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Lake City and the Alfred Packer story, told plainly
Hinsdale County is tied to the Alfred Packer case from the 1870s, a grim chapter best understood from official and archival sources rather than legend.
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Lamar's gas station built from petrified wood
On Main Street in Lamar, a 1932 service station built from local petrified wood makes a free, two-minute stop where the walls themselves are a geology lesson.
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Lowry Pueblo is a national landmark you can walk up to
Northwest of Cortez, Lowry Pueblo is a designated National Historic Landmark in Canyons of the Ancients, with standing masonry rooms and a Great Kiva you can visit on a developed trail.
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Lulu City is a ghost town at the top of the Colorado River
Lulu City was a short-lived silver-mining town near the Colorado River headwaters, and its ruins now sit inside Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Mount Antero is where Colorado's state gemstone comes out of the rock
Aquamarine, Colorado's state gemstone, is found high on Mount Antero in Chaffee County, but the gem-bearing ground is largely staked with mining claims, so collecting there is not a free-for-all.
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Nevadaville: the quiet ghost town just above Central City
A couple of miles above Central City sits Nevadaville, an early gold camp that emptied out and now makes a free, easy, photogenic side trip.
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Rico Today: A Mining Town That Never Went to Ghost
Rico's refurbished 1880s main street still holds galleries, B&Bs, and a few restaurants, with the upper Dolores River and old mining roads right out the door.
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Ridgway is True Grit country, and you can still walk to the film's traces
Much of the 1969 western True Grit, the film that won John Wayne his only Oscar, was shot in and around Ridgway, and several of its locations are still recognizable in town.
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Salida's Tenderfoot 'S' and the Christmas Mountain tree
Tenderfoot Mountain over downtown Salida wears a lighted 'S' that alternates with a red heart, and each year after Thanksgiving volunteers light it as a 750-foot Christmas tree.
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Six WWII veterans started a museum that records Colorado's war stories
The free, volunteer-run Broomfield Veterans Memorial Museum keeps nine exhibit rooms, a 3,000-book military library, and hundreds of recorded veteran interviews inside the old Mamie Doud Eisenhower Library.
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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.
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The Beaumont Hotel is one of Ouray's landmark 1880s buildings
The Beaumont Hotel, built in the 1880s during Ouray's mining boom and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the town's most recognizable historic buildings.
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The Brunner Farmhouse is Broomfield's restored 1908 farm home
The yellow Brunner Farmhouse on Midway Boulevard is a restored early-1900s farm home the city keeps as a community gathering place and gardens.
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The Buena Vista depot is the last intact railroad depot in the county
The 1890s depot in Buena Vista, built for a line in the Denver, South Park & Pacific family, is described as the last remaining intact railroad depot in Chaffee County and a survivor of a town once served by three railroads.
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The Central City Opera House and a summer festival with deep roots
The stone Central City Opera House opened in 1878 in Gilpin County's mining boom and was revived in the 1930s into a summer opera festival that still runs.
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The Colorado River Headwaters Byway follows the river out of Grand County
A scenic byway traces the young Colorado River through Grand County, linking the towns to the river that shaped them.
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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.
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