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
A hand-built stone castle rises from the woods on Highway 165
On Highway 165 in the wooded southeastern corner of Custer County, Jim Bishop spent decades hand-building a towering stone-and-iron castle that anyone can visit on a donation basis.
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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.
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Arvada's flour mill keeps the farm-town layer visible
The Arvada Flour Mill gives Olde Town Arvada a durable link to wheat, rail access, and the farm economy that shaped the early town.
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Boulder started as a supply town for gold miners in 1859
The city of Boulder began in 1859 as a base where miners outfitted before heading into the mountains, and it took its name from Boulder Creek.
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Colorado Springs once sold sunshine as part of its medicine
Colorado Springs once marketed its sunshine and dry air as tuberculosis treatment, and that health-seeker era still shapes the city today.
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Crested Butte's old town is a coal-era historic district
The core of Crested Butte is a recognized historic district whose false-front wooden buildings date from its days as a coal-mining town with a large immigrant workforce.
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Crystal Mill: the wooden powerhouse on the Crystal River
An 1892 wooden powerhouse perched on a rock outcrop above the Crystal River, in the old mining town of Crystal east of Marble, and one of Colorado's most photographed historic structures.
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Five Points keeps Welton Street's cultural heartbeat on the map
In Denver's Five Points Historic Cultural District, Welton Street is treated as a cultural main street, not a frozen museum block.
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Garden of the Gods is a free city park, by deed
Garden of the Gods is a city-owned park in Colorado Springs that the Perkins family deeded to the city in 1909 on the condition it stay free to the public forever.
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Heritage Lakewood tells the suburb's twentieth-century story
At Belmar Park, Heritage Lakewood preserves historic buildings and local collections that tell Lakewood's twentieth-century story.
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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.
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La Alma Lincoln Park carries a working-class Chicano neighborhood story
La Alma Lincoln Park grew railroad-side in the 1870s and 1880s and anchors Denver's Latino and Chicano history as a cultural district.
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Mother Cabrini's foothills camp became a Golden shrine
The Mother Cabrini Shrine above Golden grew from the Queen of Heaven Orphanage Summer Camp, a National Register site of Italian American history.
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Pueblo began as a trading post on the old border
The city's name and origin trace to El Pueblo, an adobe trading post built in 1842 on the Arkansas River when it was the U.S.-Mexico border, now told at the El Pueblo History Museum.
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Rock Ledge Ranch adds a lived-in layer to Garden of the Gods
Beside Garden of the Gods, Rock Ledge Ranch tells the lived-in story of the land — Native presence, homesteading, ranching, and resort-era estates.
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Salida grew up as a railroad town where the Arkansas leaves the valley
Salida was founded by the Denver and Rio Grande railroad around 1880 near where the Arkansas River exits the upper valley, and its downtown carries that railroad-era history.
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San Luis is widely called Colorado's oldest town, settled in 1851
San Luis, the seat of Costilla County, dates to 1851 and is often described as the oldest continuously settled town in Colorado, founded by Hispano families moving north from New Mexico.
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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.
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The 1877 Hinsdale County Courthouse is still doing its original job
Lake City's 1877 courthouse is described as Colorado's oldest courthouse still used for its original purpose, and it is the seat of county government today.
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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.
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The Fine Arts Center was built as a whole arts house
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center grew from the Broadmoor Art Academy into one roof for a museum, a theater, and an art school.
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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.
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The railroad spur that ran on Pagosa Springs timber
A narrow-gauge line tied to the Denver and Rio Grande once reached Pagosa Springs, and the lumber it hauled out shaped the town's early economy.
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Why Coors has brewed in Golden since the 1870s
The Coors brewery sits in Golden because German immigrant Adolph Coors wanted clean mountain water from Clear Creek, and the plant has stayed on that original site ever since.
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