Editor’s note: Welcome to the second installment of our 15-week series Colorado 150, marking 150 years of statehood with our favorite Colorado things.
Here’s a confession: I’m hardly ever allowed to drive during road trips. This may be because I tend to doze off while behind the wheel. But I’m choosing to believe it has more to do with with the fact that I’ve never met a roadside marker I didn’t want to pull over for or that I’m entranced by what I might learn about the history of this great state if I just take a turn down that lonely dirt road where lark buntings are swooping along the dusty shoulders.
It’s how I was able to peer into Crack Cave in Picture Canyon on the Comanche National Grassland and marvel at art carved and painted by inhabitants dating perhaps to the 1500s and a decade later walked in the swales left by travelers on the Santa Fe Trail southwest of La Junta.
The detours may delay arrival to our final destinations, but there is something immensely satisfying in exploring our diverse collective history and thinking about the experiences of the people who broke trail for all of us in Colorado, whether they were here for the long haul or just passing through.
Dana Coffield | Editor
More: What do you love about Colorado? Tell us here.
African-American Historical and Genealogical Society of Colorado Springs
The center contains a voluminous collection of continent-spanning genealogical materials, part of its mission to “ensure that African-Americans are included as an integral part of the history of the Pikes Peak Region and our nation,” and “to instill a sense of pride in the youth and to expose the broader community to the culture and contributions of Black people.”
The society grew out of the Negro Historical Association of Colorado Springs, founded in 1981. It holds workshops on genealogical research methodology around the region, and houses a museum of Black history in central Colorado.
More Colorado 150: Colorado’s scenic drives and roadside attractions that give way to stunning landscapes and inspiring architecture
El Pueblo History Museum
El Pueblo Trading Post was the first permanent settlement in what is now Pueblo. The town grew up around the abandoned ruins of the El Pueblo Trading Post, which was destroyed during a conflict between local Native Americans and fur traders known as the Christmas Tragedy of 1854. The post’s location was lost beneath the growing city.
The property now includes a re-created adobe trading post and the archaeological excavation site of the original 1842 trading post, which was rediscovered in 1989 by a college anthropology class. The Warren G. Buckles Archaeology Pavilion, named after the professor who led that class, remains open to the public.
Barney Ford House
The Victorian home in Breckenridge preserves the life of a remarkable figure in Colorado’s pioneer history.
Born into slavery in Virginia, Ford escaped a plantation in his teen years. He and his wife, Julia, later established a livery stable in Chicago that served as a station on the Underground Railroad. Ford came to Colorado in 1860 during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush, and made his way to Breckenridge.
Ford found success with a restaurant and barbershop in Denver, grew wealthy and returned to Breckenridge. He was a towering civil rights leader in Colorado.
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The variety of exhibits inside these walls are enough to fill a couple of days for the curious minds, but certainly a terrific way to spend a day.
At the edge of City Park, the museum’s range includes world-class exhibits (permanent and temporary), hands-on displays for kids, life-size wildlife dioramas, dinosaur discoveries from Colorado and the world, a planetarium and plenty more.
Probably its most Colorado section is the gem and mineral hall found inside a Colorado mine shaft where you can see “Tom’s Baby,” a 13-pound piece of gold found in 1887 inside a Breckenridge mine. (Of note, the hall will be closed until late 2027 for a $30 million renovation.)
Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library
Located in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, the Blair-Caldwell library is one of just a handful of Black research libraries in the country. Its name honors Omar Blair, the first Black president of the Denver school board, and Elvin Caldwell, the first Black city council member.
Part of the Denver Public Library system, the second floor of this branch is home to a sprawling archive of research materials featuring thousands of rare books, diaries, manuscripts, photographs and a repository of oral history recordings from a variety of Coloradans. The library’s third floor houses an artifact-filled museum that follows the Black Americans who settled the West.
Camp Amache
The Granada Relocation Center — better known as Camp Amache — was built to house Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. The site was chosen for its remote location, about 15 miles west of the Kansas border.
The first group of people arrived in August 1942 to build barracks and clear fields. By the time it closed in October 1945, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were detained there.
Amache is one of the most intact examples of a World War II incarceration site — including a historic cemetery, concrete building foundations, roads and several rehabilitated structures from the camp era.
Sand Creek
The true accounts of what transpired on that horrible day in November 1864 are finally being recognized in Colorado history. A peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in what is now southeastern Colorado was attacked by the Cavalry, who killed 230 people — mostly women, children, elders and tribal leaders.
While the massacre has been whitewashed through the decades, there is a growing push to bring light to what happened on that dark day in Colorado history. In addition to the upgrades at the Kiowa County site, funds are being raised for a memorial at the Colorado Capitol.
Dearfield
Roughly 35 miles southeast of Greeley, not far from the South Platte River, a few deserted buildings are what’s left of the largest settlement of Black farmers and families in Colorado. Founded by entrepreneur Oliver Toussaint Jackson in 1910, at its peak Dearfield had as many as 300 residents as demand for its agricultural products grew during World War I. But many people left for cities during the Dust Bowl and the town, which by then had a concrete block factory, a thriving cafe, two churches and a school, never recovered.
Jackson attempted to rebrand the town as the Valley Resort for Black visitors from Denver and also tried to sell Dearfield to the government for use as an internment camp for Japanese Americans. The site, marked by a monument off U.S. 34, now holds the remains of Jackson’s home, a gas station and a diner and is managed by the National Park Service.
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Colorado’s first church began as an adobe structure built in 1863 to serve the Hispano settlers of the San Luis Valley. It burned on Ash Wednesday in 1926 and was rebuilt the next year. The distinctive twin bell towers were added in 1948.
There was a second Ash Wednesday fire, in 2016, but the structure at the center of the town of Antonito was mostly spared. The site was added to the National and State Register of Historic Places in 2018. Those designations recognized the church’s history, but also its stained-glass windows, hand-crafted altar, statuary and other artworks. The Our Lady of Guadalupe feast day is Dec. 12, but if you don’t want to wait for a formal celebration, the church has a sacred labyrinth, El Santuario de los Pobladores, out back where people are invited to meditate and pray while walking through the walled maze.
Denver’s Chinatown
Denver’s Chinatown isn’t obvious.
In the late 1800s, Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. to work on the transcontinental railroad ended up in the area now known as Lower Downtown. From 1870 to 1890, the Chinese population in Denver swelled from four to just under 1,000.
But Denver’s first race riot broke out in the heart of Chinatown on Oct. 31, 1880, and those Chinatown businesses never bounced back. What little remained of the once thriving corridor was wiped out in the 1960s by Denver’s Skyline Urban Renewal Project. There are historic markers at 1620 Wazee St. and 1890 Lawrence St.