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
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.
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The faint lights of Silver Cliff Cemetery
For decades visitors have reported faint bluish-white lights drifting among the headstones at Silver Cliff Cemetery, a piece of Wet Mountain Valley folklore with a likely down-to-earth cause.
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The Galloping Goose: how a struggling railroad kept Telluride connected
The narrow-gauge Rio Grande Southern once served Telluride, and during hard times it ran odd rail cars called Galloping Geese to keep going.
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The long red ridge along the foothills is the Dakota Hogback
The steep, tilted ridge that runs north-south at the edge of the foothills is the Dakota Hogback, and creeks cut narrow gaps through it where roads now pass.
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The Plains Conservation Center preserves shortgrass prairie in Aurora
The Plains Conservation Center in southeast Aurora protects shortgrass prairie and keeps replica homestead and tipi sites that show late-1800s life on the plains.
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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.
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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.
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The Ute people and their trails across Mesa County
Long before the Grand Valley's towns, the Ute people lived in and traveled across what is now Mesa County, and some of their trails are documented at official heritage sites.
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The Wheeler Opera House is a silver-era landmark the city now owns
Built by Jerome B. Wheeler during Aspen's silver boom, the Wheeler Opera House survived the bust and is now a venue owned and run by the City of Aspen.
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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.
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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.
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Why Alamosa sits where it does: the railroad put it there
Alamosa began as a railroad town built by the Denver & Rio Grande along the Rio Grande, which is why it grew into the hub of the San Luis Valley.
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Why Sterling sits where it does: the South Platte and the Overland Trail
Sterling and Logan County sit where the South Platte River and the old Overland Trail crossed the plains, and Sterling's Overland Trail Museum tells that story.
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Why the county is called Custer
Custer County was carved out of Fremont County in 1877 and named for George Armstrong Custer, who had died the year before at the Little Bighorn.
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A 1949 gathering helped reinvent Aspen as a place of ideas
After the silver bust, a 1949 cultural convocation in Aspen led to the Aspen Institute and helped turn the quiet old mining town toward arts, learning, and recreation.
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A summer theater helped Creede survive after the mines slowed
The Creede Repertory Theatre began in 1966 when college students answered the town's call for a new draw, and it grew into a professional company that anchors the local summer economy.
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Hovenweep's stone towers sit on the Colorado-Utah line
Part of Hovenweep National Monument lies in western Montezuma County, where Ancestral Puebloans built unusual stone towers along canyon rims around AD 1200 to 1300.
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Rosita and Querida: vanished silver camps
Rosita and Querida were busy silver camps east of Silver Cliff in the 1870s and 1880s, where thousands once lived among hills that have mostly returned to grass and timber.
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Walden's moose came from a 1970s reintroduction in North Park
The moose now common around Walden trace to a state wildlife project that released moose into North Park in the late 1970s, and nearby State Forest State Park is known as the moose viewing capital of Colorado.
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Winter Park Resort began as Denver's city-owned ski hill
Winter Park Resort opened around 1940 as a ski area owned by the City and County of Denver, and much of its ski terrain sits on Arapaho National Forest land in Grand County under a Forest Service permit.
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Broomfield Days is the city's big September festival on Midway Boulevard
Broomfield Days is a long-running one-day community festival each September at Midway Park, with a parade, 5K, vendor booths, and food along Midway Boulevard.
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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.
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Colorado's narrow-gauge railroad history lives in Golden
The Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden preserves locomotives and cars from the state's narrow-gauge lines, on a site near Clear Creek between the Table Mountains.
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Downtown Florence is a listed historic district built on coal, oil, and smelting
The Downtown Florence Historic District preserves the commercial main street of a town that boomed on coal, oil, and smelting, and the Florence Pioneer Museum sits in one of its sandstone buildings.
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