Colorado may have always been destined to attain statehood, but it owes its identity as the Centennial State to the partisan political interests of the Reconstruction-era Republican Party. The timing of Colorado’s admission into the union in 1876, weeks after the celebration of the nation’s centenary and just ahead of that year’s pivotal presidential election, […]
On Halloween night in 1880, a white mob targeted Chinese residents in Denver after a drunken saloon fight, ransacked their homes and businesses, and killed a Chinese man. The killers were never punished and the city failed to compensate people for the tens of thousands of dollars in damage done during the anti-Chinese riot. The […]
When Colorado attained statehood in 1876, roughly half of the portion of the new Centennial State that lay west of the Continental Divide was still reserved for the Ute people. Grand Junction, Durango, Aspen, Gunnison and Glenwood Springs were among the many Colorado communities that didn’t yet exist. An 1868 treaty between the U.S. government and […]
John Harlow, one of the early white settlers in Mesa County, first planted fruit trees in 1882 at his farm at Rapid Creek, a few miles from what is now Palisade. Those are widely considered the first fruit trees in Grand Valley, and they spearheaded the agricultural tradition of peach-growing in the area. Those trees, […]
The Southern Colorado Agricultural and Industrial Association, after holding multiple fairs in Pueblo County since the 1870s, incorporated as the State Fair Association on Nov. 17, 1886. That established Pueblo as the host of Colorado’s annual state fair, now entering its 140th year of the tradition. Previous official state agricultural and industrial fairs took place […]
Poet Katharine Lee Bates spent the summer of 1893 teaching English at the Colorado Summer School at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, on a leave of absence from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. By that time, she was already a published poet and author of works including the novel “Rose and Thorn” and contributions in newspapers […]
A popular vote on a referendum granted women the right to vote in Colorado on Nov. 7, 1893. Just under 55% of male voters supported the measure — 35,798 votes for, and 29,551 votes against. While it’s debated which state was actually the first to grant women the right to vote, Colorado was the first […]
After gold was discovered in a high mountain valley southwest of Pikes Peak in 1890, thousands of fortune-seekers flocked to the overnight boomtown of Cripple Creek, along with satellite settlements like Victor and Goldfield. It was the last major gold rush in Colorado history, and within a few short years it was minting newly made […]
One of the first Black state legislators in Colorado passed a civil rights law in 1895 that said public accommodations could not ban people of color. Joseph Stuart, the second Black lawyer to practice in Colorado and the second Black member of the Colorado Legislature, led a bill the same year voters first elected him […]
