Insight Guides Colorado (Travel Guide eBook)

By Insight Guides

Insight Guides Colorado

Travel made easy. Ask local experts.
Comprehensive travel guide packed with inspirational photography and fascinating cultural insights.

From deciding when to go, to choosing what to see when you arrive, this guide to Colorado is all you need to plan your perfect trip, with insider information on must-see, top attractions like Denver Art Museum, Pikes Peak and the Old Fort National Historic Site, and cultural gems like the serrated alpine peaks of the Rocky Mountains, winery tours through Grand Junction and steep drives along the San Juan Skyway with its million-dollar views

Features of this travel guide to Colorado:
- Inspirational colour photography: discover the best destinations, sights and excursions, and be inspired by stunning imagery
- Historical and cultural insights: immerse yourself in Colorado's rich history and culture, and learn all about its people, art and traditions
- Practical full-colour maps: with every major sight and listing highlighted, the full-colour maps make on-the-ground navigation easy
- Editor's Choice: uncover the best of Colorado with our pick of the region's top destinations
- Key tips and essential information: packed full of important travel information, from transport and tipping to etiquette and hours of operation
- Covers: The Northwest Corner, Steamboat Springs, Rocky Mountain National Park, Boulder and Environs, Denver, The Eastern Plains, I-70 & the High Rockies, Colorado Springs and Environs, San Luis Valley, San Juan Mountains, Aspen and the Central Rockies, Mesa Verde and the Southwest Corner.

Looking for a specific guide to the USA? Check out Insight Guides Alaska for a detailed and entertaining look at all the area has to offer.

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides is a pioneer of full-colour guide books, with almost 50 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides with user-friendly, modern design. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps, as well as phrase books, picture-packed eBooks and apps to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Insight Guides
• Release date: Nov 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839052705

Insight Guides

Pictorial travel guide to Arizona & the Grand Canyon with a free eBook provides all you need for every step of your journey. With in-depth features on culture and history, stunning colour photography and handy maps, it’s perfect for inspiration and finding out when to go to Arizona & the Grand Canyon and what to see in Arizona & the Grand Canyon. 

Book preview

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight Guide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Alaska, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editor’s Choice categories of activities and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Alaska. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, activities from culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in Alaska are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

You’ll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Alaska. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years’ experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors, whose expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. Each destination is carefully researched by regional experts to ensure our guides provide the very latest information. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide you to the best places to eat, go out and shop, so you can be confident that when we say a place is special, we really mean it.

© 2021 Apa Digital AG

License edition © Apa Publications Ltd UK

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Table of Contents

Colorado’s Top 10 Attractions

Editor’s Choice

Plan & Book Your Tailor Made Trip

Introduction: Rocky Mountain State

The Cultural Landscape

Decisive Dates

Native Heritage

Breaking Ground

Striking It Rich

Changing Fortunes

The Backbone of the Continent

Mountain and Prairie Life

Insight: Four Seasons

Outdoor Adventure

Powder to the People

Ghost Towns

Riding the Rails

Home on the Range

Rocky Mountain Cuisine

Introduction: Places

Introduction: The Front Range and Eastern Plains

The Eastern Plains

Denver

Insight: Festivals

Boulder and Environs

Colorado Springs and Environs

San Luis valley

Introduction: Rocky Mountains

Rocky Mountain National Park

Insight: Peak Baggers

Steamboat Springs

I-70 and the High Rockies

Aspen and the Central Rockies

Introduction: Western Colorado

San Juan Mountains

Mesa Verde and the Southwest Corner

Insight: Colorado Wine Country

The Northwest Corner

Transportation

A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information

Further Reading

Colorado’s Top 10 Attractions

Top Attraction 1

Rocky Mountain National Park. Trail Ridge Road offers soaring high country views of serrated alpine peaks, sparkling lakes, glaciers, fragile tundra meadows, charismatic mega-fauna, wildflowers, and pioneer cabins. For more information, click here.

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Top Attraction 2

Mesa Verde. Cliff Palace is one of the most magical Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings at the nation’s favorite archeological park, near Durango in the Four Corners region of southwestern Colorado. For more information, click here.

Dreamstime

Top Attraction 3

Denver. A vibrant and fast-growing city, with the largest municipal park system in the US and cultural institutions that include the pioneering Denver Zoo and the Denver Art Museum. For more information, click here.

Colorado Tourism/Denise Chambers

Top Attraction 4

Grand Junction. A mini-Napa Valley amid the carved redrock canyons of the Colorado River, this is famed for its wineries, fruit orchards, and proximity to Dinosaur and Colorado National Monuments. For more information, click here.

Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau

Top Attraction 5

Pikes Peak. Drive, hike, or ride the Pikes Peak Cog Railroad to the top of this 14,110ft (4,301-meter) mountain which, among other things, inspired the writing of the anthem America the Beautiful. For more information, click here.

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Top Attraction 6

Leadville. Not only the best-preserved mining town in Colorado, with its own mining history museum, but also the highest town in the country, and possibly the most storied. For more information, click here.

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Top Attraction 7

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Ride to Silverton and enjoy views of Mount Sneffels and the glorious Animas Valley, preferably during the fall when the aspens turn golden. For more information, click here.

Colorado Tourism/Matt Inden

Top Attraction 8

San Luis Valley. Combining traditional Hispanic culture, New Age retreats, hot springs, high peaks, America’s tallest sand dunes, and overwintering sandhill cranes, the San Luis Valley surrounding Alamosa is a unique destination. For more information, click here.

Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 9

San Juan Skyway. There are million-dollar views all along the narrow, winding San Juan Skyway between Durango and Montrose, but keep your eyes on the road – the dropoffs are very steep. For more information, click here.

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Top Attraction 10

Telluride. The quintessential Colorado ski destination – an attractive Victorian mining town in a glorious box-canyon setting far from anywhere, offering skiing, eclectic festivals, friendly locals, and an unpretentious atmosphere. For more information, click here.

Colorado Tourism/Matt Inden

Editor’s Choice

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Comanche National Grassland.

Colorado Tourism/Matt Inden

Best Small Towns

Ouray. The town has a well-regarded hometown museum, an ice climbing festival, and Jeep drives in the nearby mountains. For more information, click here.

Salida. This small, sporty town has a large historic district, galleries, and local food and wine. They also host fibARK, a major whitewater celebration. For more information, click here.

Creede. A remote former mining town, with an award-winning theater company and a majestic setting deep in the San Juan Mountains. For more information, click here.

Glenwood Springs. The popular hot springs and spa and the historic Denver and Colorado hotels are an easy drive or train ride from Denver. For more information, click here.

Boulder. Home to the University of Colorado, alternative healers and scientists, and the top farmers’ market in Colorado, all within view of Denver. For more information, click here.

Crested Butte. Birthplace of fat tire biking and some of the state’s quirkiest festivals, this mining town turned ski resort exudes Central Rockies charm. For more information, click here.

Paonia. Creatives, outdoorsmen and farmers dwell in this little town in the scenic North Fork Valley near Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. For more information, click here.

Best Nature Viewing

Rocky Mountain National Park. Visit during the fall rutting season to view elk bugling and bighorn sheep butting heads in a competition for mates. For more information, click here.

San Luis Valley. Two national wildlife refuges on the Rio Grande attract migratory elk, bison herds, and thousands of sandhill cranes in winter. For more information, click here.

Comanche National Grasslands. A nationally significant birding area, southeastern Colorado’s prairies host unique prairie chicken mating dances at the birds’ leks in May. For more information, click here.

San Juan Mountains. The remote San Juans still support grizzly bears and have been the site of a successful reintroduction of lynx. For more information, click here.

Yampa Valley Birding. The Yampa River near Steamboat Springs is an important birding area, home to catbirds, orioles among others, and river otters and mink. For more information, click here.

Best Cultural Attractions

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site. Relive the days of the Santa Fe Trail at this former rendezvous for mountain men, traders, and travelers in southeastern Colorado. For more information, click here.

The Matchless Mine, Leadville. The ghost of Baby Doe Tabor, penniless widow of Matchless Mine millionaire Horace Tabor, supposedly haunts this old cabin in Leadville. For more information, click here.

Denver Art Museum, Hamilton Expansion. One of Denver’s most photographed new buildings, this shiny geometric DAM expansion was designed by Polish-born architect Daniel Libeskind. For more information, click here.

Anasazi Heritage Center, Dolores. This state-of-the-art research center and museum holds millions of Ancestral Pueblo artifacts excavated from the Dolores River area prior to damming. For more information, click here.

Hovenweep National Monument, Cajone Mesa. An outlier of Mesa Verde, Hovenweep protects unusual towers and structures on Cajone Mesa, the most arche­ologically rich area in the country. For more information, click here.

Best Scenic Drives

Tabegauche-Unaweep Scenic Byway. This little-traveled highway along Colorado’s western edge, where mountains meet red rocks, has mining ghosts, nature preserves, and rocky canyons. For more information, click here.

Silver Thread Scenic Byway, Wolf Pass to Lake City. A lonesome highway connects the artsy mining town of Creede, the head­waters of the Rio Grande, and a Victorian belle, Lake City. For more information, click here.

San Juan Skyway, between Silverton and Ouray. Linking two popular small towns, this segment of the highway crosses Red Mountain Pass and has views that will make you feel like a million dollars. For more information, click here.

Lookout Mountain Park, Lariat Loop Scenic Byway. Visit Buffalo Bill’s Grave­site and Museum at this popular scenic drive near Golden. For more information, click here.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Scenic Drive. Enjoy light on schist from overlooks above this 2,000ft (610-meter) deep, dark, narrow canyon carved by the Gunnison River. For more information, click here.

Alpine Loop Jeep Trail. This classic four-wheel drive leaves Ouray and heads over Engineer Pass to the ghost town Capitol City and Lake City. For more information, click here.

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Steamboat Springs skiiers.

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Best Outdoor Activities

Mountain biking in Colorado National Monument. A mountain biking mecca set amid spectacularly carved red rock canyons along the Colorado River, west of Grand Junction. For more information, click here.

Rafting the Yampa River through Dinosaur National Monument. The Yampa and Green rivers attract river runners through Echo Canyon, scene of an anti-damming environmental victory in the 1960s. For more information, click here.

Climbing the Flatirons. The distinctive reddish upended blades of this formation are a major Boulder landmark and a popular destination for climbers. For more information, click here.

Skiing at Steamboat Springs. This cowboy-oriented ski resort’s light, frothy Champagne powder and a renovated ski village attract winter sports enthusiasts to its runs each year. For more information, click here.

Hiking Maroon Bells−Snowmass Wilderness. Twin peaks reflected in a mirror lake attract photographers and hikers escaping the hip scene in nearby Aspen. For more information, click here.

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Mountain climbing safely.

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PLAN & BOOK YOUR TAILOR-MADE TRIP

While Colorado is the ideal winter destination, its majestic mountain ranges offering skiing to sleigh rides, the state’s diverse and dramatic landscape can be appreciated year-round. From the buzzy feel of downtown Denver to the wilderness of the Rockies, Colorado caters for everyone, whether urban adventurer or nature lover.

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Days 1 & 2, Denver. Colorado’s cosmopolitan capital has it all. Start at the Colorado State Capitol, where a plaque on the 18th step informs visitors they are standing exactly one mile above sea level (hence why Denver is referred to as the ‘Mile High City’). On your list should also be Denver Zoo, the world-class Art Museum and 16th Street Mall, a pedestrian promenade lined with restaurants and shops. For more information, click here.

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Day 3, Boulder. Though only 30 miles from Denver, Boulder is nestled in the foothills of the Rockies and feels a world away. Expect an easygoing vibe, where the emphasis is on ‘fresh air, fresh food and fresh thinking’. The city is home to the University of Colorado and there’s a museum dedicated to its history. Alternatively, grab a coffee and browse one of the excellent farmers’ markets. For more information, click here.

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Day 4, Rocky Mountain National Park. This spectacular National Park offers 415 square miles of mountains, alpine lakes, tundra and wildlife. Drive the Trail Ridge Road (the highest continuous paved road in the United States), which winds across the park from east to west and is replete with scenic overlooks. Or stride out along one of the hiking trails, looking out for golden eagles and elks as you go. For more information, click here.

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Days 5 & 6 Glenwood Springs. Take the drive to Glenwood Springs at a leisurely pace and, on arrival, head straight for the soothing mineral waters of the city’s hot springs, the world’s largest geothermal pool. Rejuvenated, next day walk the Glenwood Canyon Recreation Trail, which provides easy access to the red rock canyon and the Colorado River with all their natural wonders. For more information, click here.

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Day 7, Ouray. En route to the former mining town of Ouray, in the San Juan Mountains, make a detour to the 23-mile Rim Rock Drive across Colorado National Monument. Rising more than 2,000 feet above the Grand Valley of the Colorado River, it is breathtaking - if two wheels is more your style, this is a mountain-biking mecca. Spend a cosy night in Ouray, often dubbed the ‘Switzerland of America’. For more information, click here.

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Day 8, Four-wheel drive tour into the Rockies. Jeeping is big news in Ouray and seasonal four-wheel adventure tours venture into the mountains, taking in ghost towns, waterfalls and wildlife. Several companies offer excursions along the historic Alpine Loop backcountry byway; other popular trails include the wonderfully-named Yankee Boy Basin and Corkscrew Gulch. For more information, click here.

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Days 9 & 10, Durango and Silverton. End your Colorado adventures by heading south to the city of Durango. Step back in time at the Diamond Belle Saloon, an original Wild West ragtime piano bar serving burgers and cocktails. Next day, rise early and take the picturesque return trip on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad though Animas Canyon. For more information, click here.

You can plan and book this trip with Insight Guides, or we can help you create your own. Whether you’re after adventure or a family-friendly holiday, we have a trip for you, with all the activities you enjoy doing and the sights you want to see. All our trips are devised by local experts who get the most out of the destination. Visit www.insightguides.com/holidays to chat with one of our local travel experts.

Winter in the Flatirons of Boulder, Colorado.

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A snowboader in the Loveland Ski Area.

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Tourists climbing a ladder at Mesa Verde.

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Introduction: Rocky Mountain State

Soaring peaks, world-class skiing, and thriving cities lure travelers to the alpine heartland of America.

The scenery bankrupts the English language, said Theodore Roosevelt, a man rarely at a loss for words. TR was musing about the Rocky Mountains during a visit to Colorado in 1901. Indeed, no words can capture the skyward sweep of this landscape, the heady mix of humility and exaltation one feels standing atop its legendary peaks, 54 of which soar beyond 14,000ft (4,270 meters). The Rockies transcend them all.

Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park.

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Man has made his mark, of course. Roads blasted from bedrock curve skywards. Railroads corkscrew up impossibly steep terrain. Bridges span seemingly insurmountable distances. And is any feat of modern engineering equivalent in daring to the ancient cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, laid up stone by stone in canyon alcoves without pulleys, or levels?

In the 1800s, huge yields of gold and silver deep within the earth brought thousands of prospectors to Colorado. The mining boomtowns that sprang up are mostly atmospheric ghost towns now, their tumbledown saloons, cabins and headframes haunted by wind and tumbleweeds.

Elsewhere in Colorado, rock erosion gradually reveals the bones of Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus and other dinosaurs. Colorado has produced more dinosaur fossils than any other state.

And then there are the Rockies, backbone of the continent. At 80–50 million years old, their peaks, carved within the last 20,000 years during the Quaternary period by glacial ice into cirques, hanging valleys and knife-edged arêtes, retain the assertive thrust of youth.

Even on the eastern plains, where grasslands roll to the horizon, the landscape dwarfs humans, as if you are no more than a cork bobbing on the waves of a vast ocean of grasses.

Colorado has many vibrant cities, attractive towns, art and culture, fine restaurants, rafting, hiking, some of the world’s best skiing and much more. But it is for its epic landscape that it is best known. That is the essence of Colorado – the magic it shares with every visitor.

A NOTE TO READERS

At Insight Guides, we always strive to bring you the most up-to-date information. This book was produced during a period of continuing uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, so please note that content is more subject to change than usual. We recommend checking the latest restrictions and official guidance.

Introduction: The Cultural Landscape

Hippies and yuppies, natives and newcomers – Colorado is a mixed bag of cultures, classes, and political viewpoints, and this is what makes it so interesting.

The early 1970s, an era when Colorado’s population was exploding, saw the birth of a bumper sticker fad so unusual that it was written up in Time and Life magazines. Created by Denverite Sandy Glade, the stickers bore the same distinctive green-and-white mountain silhouette as the state’s license plates. The first ones were emblazoned with the single word NATIVE, which spoke volumes. Everyone knew what they meant: I’m not one of those newcomers who come here to jack up prices, pollute our pure Rocky Mountain springwater, take all the parking spaces, and generally Californicate our state – so don’t blame me. Within weeks, new bumper stickers started popping up: SEMI-NATIVE, LOCAL, SURVIVOR, and, yes, TOURIST.

Denver’s prominent 19th-century black residents included Barney Ford, a businessman who won the vote for black males in the West, and Aunt Clara Brown, a freed Kentucky slave and laundress who took in needy African Americans.

Since then, the native-versus-newcomer issue has become almost moot, as the state’s population has more than doubled, largely due to the migration of an estimated one million Californians.

Colorado folks are such a diverse lot that it’s hard to generalize about the characteristics that make them Coloradans. Or are they Coloradoans? They can’t even agree which term is correct – just ask the news editors at the Adams State College Coloradan and the Fort Collins Coloradoan. (Merriam-Webster has it both ways.)

Farmer, Central Rockies.

Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications

Coloradans are urban and rural, liberal and ultraconservative, wealthy and poor. Perhaps the best way to define how Coloradans traditionally see themselves is to look at them in the context of the state’s cultural landscape – that is, how they relate to the land and face the challenges of getting along with their neighbors.

Rags to riches to rags

Much about Colorado’s collective self-image is reflected in its legends. Unlike other Western states, you don’t find many cowboys, lawmen, gunslingers, or pioneers in Colorado’s version of its own history. Although cattle ranching has been a vital part of the state’s economy since the 1860s, few residents can name a single rancher, past or present. Colorado heritage is defined by tales of gold and silver prospectors, whose good and ill fortunes are a potent metaphor for many other enterprises, including tourism, land development, and the ski industry.

Some are ironic stories like that of Bob Womack, the man who first discovered gold in the Cripple Creek District in 1891. Unable to convince others that his find was anything more than a drunken fantasy, he sold his mining claim for $300. The claim became the El Paso Mine, which produced more than $10 million worth of ore. Womack died broke.

Cheyenne woman in ceremonial clothing.

Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications

At the other end of the spectrum was Womack’s old drinking buddy Winfield Scott Stratton, a Colorado Springs carpenter who spent his summers prospecting around Cripple Creek. He returned to a claim he had twice previously explored and abandoned, after finding nothing. The third time proved to be a charm. He struck a rich gold vein that became the Independence Mine. He sold his claim for $10 million and spent the remainder of his life as a philanthropist, gifting Colorado Springs with magnificent public buildings, parks, and the finest streetcar system in the state. Upon his death, 11 years after his first gold strike, his will endowed the Myron Stratton Home in Colorado Springs. Named after his father, it was an orphanage and old folks’ home, but one unrivaled in the world for its lavish comforts. The establishment, set on a large, walled estate with lawns and bowers, tennis courts, and a swimming pool, still operates today.

Some Colorado legends are just plain bizarre. Consider the case of Alferd Packer, the Lake City guide who spent a winter snowed in with six greenhorn gold prospectors high in the San Juan mountains – and survived by eating them. He was convicted twice, not of cannibalizing his companions (which wasn’t a crime) but of killing them first. He spent the rest of his life in the old Cañon City Penitentiary, where his separate cabin is now a tourist attraction. To this day, Colorado historians write papers purporting to prove his innocence. Coloradans just love Packer. At the University of Colorado, the student council voted to name a campus cafeteria after him. Trey Parker, co-creator of the raunchy television series South Park, wrote a stage play about Packer that was a hit in Boulder and later became a cult movie. He called it Cannibal: The Musical.

Young Denverite.

Nowitz Photography/Apa Publications

For love or money

The legend that best symbolizes Colorado is that of Horace Tabor and his two wives. Horace, a Leadville grocer, postmaster, and mayor, grubstaked two German prospectors $17 worth of food in exchange for a one-third interest in whatever they found. They struck silver and, five months later, declared a $10,000 dividend for each partner. Horace used his share to invest in other mines around the district, including the played-out Matchless Mine. As the story goes, the seller had salted it with a shotgun shell loaded with gold dust, a common fraud at the time. Digging down a few feet revealed one of the richest silver veins in Colorado history, making Horace a millionaire several times over.

The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, by George Caitlin.

Public domain

Money spelled trouble for Tabor. His wife, Augusta, an austere New Englander uncomfortable with sudden wealth, continued to live frugally and rent rooms in their modest home. Horace liked the seemingly endless supply of money just fine and, at age 50, may have been experiencing a midlife crisis. He promptly fell in love with Elizabeth Baby Doe McCourt, a divorcee half his age. Horace and Baby Doe soon moved to Central City, where he lavished her with gifts and flowers to the tune of $1,000 a day. He persuaded a Durango judge to grant him a quick, secret – and illegal – divorce and later married Baby Doe.

Horace Tabor’s bigamy became a problem when he was appointed to the seat of a deceased US Senator from Colorado. What had been viewed in Central City as everyday recklessness – perfectly understandable to anyone who saw the homely Augusta and the beautiful Baby Doe – in Washington DC society was a scandal of monumental proportions. To gain respectability, Horace gave Augusta the lion’s share of his estimated $9 million fortune in exchange for a legitimate divorce.

Ten years passed. Horace built opera houses. Baby Doe lived lavishly. Then came the silver crash of 1893, and virtually overnight they found themselves penniless. The bank foreclosed on the Matchless Mine, cutting off their only source of income. At age 66, Horace took a job shoveling slag at a Cripple Creek mine for $3 a day. To the surprise of everybody who had regarded her as a notorious gold digger, Baby Doe stood by her man. In 1898, Horace was appointed postmaster in Denver, then died the following year.

Baby Doe Tabor spent the last half of her life in Leadville, living in a converted storage shed beside the Matchless Mine and unsuccessfully looking for a way to regain ownership. She died there at age 80, destitute. Four gunny sacks she had left at the local hospital for safekeeping were found to be filled with silks, jewelry, and other treasures from her glory days. As for Augusta, she lived out her remaining years as a wealthy dowager in Pasadena, California.

The moral of the Tabors’ story depends on who’s telling it. What goes round comes round? Spend it while you’ve got it? Never give up? Take the money and run? Whatever meaning one reads into it, the tale seems strangely relevant whenever you visit one of Colorado’s gold rush–era towns, whether it’s now a prosperous city, a posh ski resort, or a ghostly cluster of decrepit log cabins and crumbled stone chimneys still waiting for good times that may never come again.

Immigrant heritage

As gold and silver mining developed from small one- or two-man diggings into large-scale industrial operations, immigrant laborers were hired to do the dirty work. At first, the majority were Chinese workers, who brought experience from the earlier gold rush in California (Asian Americans living in Colorado today make up just 3.1 percent of the population). Most left because of widespread persecution that culminated in the Anti-Chinese Riot of 1880. Starting as a bar brawl, the incident escalated into a mob of more than 2,000 rampaging through Denver’s Chinatown, burning businesses and lynching at least one Chinese man. After that, mine and railroad jobs were filled mainly by Welsh, Cornish, and Italian workers.

Nearly a third of the cowboys in the American West were African American.

History Collection

A more lasting impact on Colorado’s cultural landscape came with the trainloads of German-speaking immigrants from the Volga River region of Russia, who began arriving in 1880 and homesteading farms in the northeastern part of the state, growing root vegetables and winter wheat. Within two generations, many of Colorado’s prominent politicians and industrialists were Russian Germans. Their greatest contribution was the introduction of sugar beet farming, one of Colorado’s most important industries from 1900 to the 1960s. Most small farmers moved to the cities and towns of the Front Range during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but few left the region. Today, white residents reporting German ancestry make up 22 percent of the state’s population.

The largest group by far are Latinos or Hispanics, commonly referred to as Mexicans even though their ancestors may have lived in Colorado for generations, and only three-quarters of Latinos in Colorado are actually from Mexico. As small sugar beet farms gave way to big, labor-intensive agribusiness operations, migrant labor crews were brought from Mexico. These contract families were encouraged to stay in the region year-round and soon developed large barrios in Denver and elsewhere. Today, one in five Coloradans (and more than one in three Denver residents) is Latino. Cinco de Mayo (May 5), the annual celebration commemorating the end of French rule in Mexico, is one of Denver’s biggest festivals.

The dark side of diversity

Minorities in Colorado have often been met with intolerance, bigotry and even violence. One obvious example is American Indians – the Ute, Navajo, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes that inhabited the region for countless centuries. Today, the percentage of American Indians in Colorado is a shade higher than the percentage for the United States overall (1.6 percent) but less than in any other Rocky Mountain state. Why?

On the eastern plains, the prevailing attitude toward Indians in the mid-19th century was expressed by John Chivington, the Methodist minister, political hopeful, and Colorado Militia leader who led the Sand Creek Massacre, in which some 150 unarmed Cheyenne Indians – most of them women and children – were slaughtered in 1862. It simply is not possible for Indians to obey or even understand any treaty, Chivington said a few months before the massacre. I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet in Colorado. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them.

Chinese miners in the Edgar Experimental Mine near Idaho Springs, about 1920.

History Collection

Because of the massacre, Chivington was court-martialed by the Army but honored with a parade through the streets of Denver and awarded a medal of honor by the territorial governor. Within less than 10 years, all Indians had been removed from Colorado Territory except for the Southern and Ute Mountain people, whose reservations lie along the southwestern state line. Yet in 1992 Coloradans elected the first American Indian to serve in the US Congress in 60 years. Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell was not a native Coloradan; like many of his constituents, he moved from California. He represented Colorado from 1993 to 2005.

By the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had become a powerful force in Colorado. The Denver Post reported that the KKK is the largest and most cohesive, most efficiently organized political force in the state. In 1924, riding a wave of anti-immigrant (particularly anti-Mexican) sentiment, Klan leader Clarence Morley was elected governor of Colorado by a landslide. That same year, Klansmen became secretary of state and mayor of Denver, were appointed to the state Supreme Court and seven benches of the Denver District Court, and won a majority of seats in both houses of the state legislature. In the next legislative session, 1,080 Klan-sponsored bills were introduced, but almost all of them were killed in committee by Billy Adams, a Democrat who would later take Morley’s place as governor. Coloradans, it seemed, quickly got fed up with the Klan’s overzealous enforcement of Prohibition laws.

Molly’s crusade

As with most things Coloradan, intolerance was met with a counter-movement to encourage progressive attitudes, as illustrated by another of the state’s mining camp legends. Thanks to a hit Broadway musical and motion picture, most people in the US know the rags-to-riches story of Margaret Unsinkable Molly Brown’s rise from a one-room shack in Leadville to a Denver mansion where she reigned as a leading philanthropist, and how she survived the Titanic disaster. What fewer people realize is that she also campaigned for an Equal Rights Amendment and ran for the US Senate three times – all before women had voting rights in most states. (In 1893, Colorado had become the second state to give women the right