ICYMI: This year, The Sun has been celebrating 150 years of statehood with our favorite Colorado things. Follow along with our Colorado 150 series.
The thing about celebrating 150 years of an entire state is that you can’t. We’ve tried. Most businesses, departments and organizations in Colorado have, too. When we set out in April to create a limited-run email newsletter this summer with 150 people, places and things that make Colorado so great, we were never under the impression that we could cover everything.
Nor would we want to, for that matter! Part of the fun of this project has been asking for your help, and hearing all of your suggestions along the way. You are the experts of your streets, your hometowns, your businesses. When we asked for suggestions, you all delivered. We read about your most memorable adventures, your childhood favorites, your first 14ers and that particular feeling of turning onto your street after a long trip away and seeing the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains.
There were, once again, so many great options to choose from. But in keeping with the theme of our Colorado 150 series, we chose to narrow it down to 10 items for our final list. Here are your bonus, reader-submitted roadside attractions, destinations, celebrations and a really good burger.
Haxtun Corn Festival
Before we ever started the Colorado 150 project here, Sun reader Barbara Rehm Gorman tipped us off to the annual Haxtun Corn Festival in the small Eastern Plains town between Sterling and Holyoke. The festival is billed as the longest running fall festival in the state, and will be back in September for festival No. 105. Haxtun might have the deepest harvest fest history in the region, but this recommendation is really about breadth, with harvest festivals happening in nearly every town east of Interstate 25 now through October.
Kiowa County Museum
We know Gorman already got a spot on this list, but we couldn’t decide between her two picks and realized we don’t have to. Like the above entry, her recommendation for town history museums is both hyperlocal and statewide. Her favorite is the Kiowa County Museum in Eads because of personal ties her family has to the region, but you can find these often one-room museums all over Colorado. They’re usually heavy on industry — mining, agriculture, railroads — and rich in old photos, newspaper clippings and colorful characters. And she’s right about the American bicentennial connection, according to the American Association for State and Local History, of the more than 21,000 history organizations surveyed in 2022, about a third were formed in the years leading up to or just after the bicentennial in 1976.
The Battle of Beecher Island
No true history of this state could be written without the bloody battles of westward expansion. In the southeast, the site of the Sand Creek Massacre made our state history list, but the often overlooked Battle of Beecher Island was brought to us by Doug Beezley, formerly of Burlington. This clash between the United States Army and a group of Plains Indians went on for nine days in 1868, along the Arikaree River just south of what is now Wray. In 1899 a monument was erected to commemorate the battle and every year since a gathering of locals and regional history buffs remember the anniversary with speeches, reenactments, meals and music.
Mining Heritage Museum, Mayflower Mill, The Old Hundred Mine
Even though Silverton’s namesake mines closed in the 1990s, the town’s hardrock history still has a hold on the place, especially during the picturesque summer months, when visitors come to poke around the mines and mills and dig through the industry archive. The trifecta of sites, according to Sun reader George Chapman, former editor and publisher of The Silverton Standard, consists of the Mining Heritage Center — housed in the disassembled and relocated Caledonia Boardinghouse — the 101-year-old Mayflower Mill, and the Old Hundred Gold Mine, first staked in 1872, four years before Colorado became a state.
Museum of Friends
On an unassuming corner of Main Street in Walsenburg is a two story brick building that, over the past 20 years, shifted from a Duckwalls five-and-dime with a couple of New York artists upstairs, into a community anchor of art and inspiration. Those New York artists, Brendt Berger and Maria Cocchiarelli-Berger, founded the Museum of Friends on a collection of about 600 pieces exchanged among — you guessed it — friends! The collection is now up to about 4,000 pieces including “a gorgeous collection of Hawaiian art and artifacts stemming from Brendt’s Hawaiian ancestry,” according to Suzanne McNamara Pollard, the Sun reader who recommended the museum. “Definitely one-of-kind in Colorado!”
Sleeping Ute Mountain
Viewed from certain angles, the Sleeping Ute Mountain range just west of Cortez appears as a resting warrior, his back to the Earth and his arms crossed over his chest. The high point, Ute Mountain, is sometimes referred to as “the elbow.” This sacred range rises 4,000 feet from the floor of the Montezuma Valley, and is sandwiched between Mesa Verde National Park to the southeast and Hovenweep National Monument to the northwest. Access is restricted, as the entire range rests in the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, but curious and respectful visitors can book guided tours of the area through the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, headquartered at the junction of Colorado highways 160 and 491.
10th Mountain Division Huts
In Europe and the eastern U.S., huts have hung from the mountainsides since at least the early 1900s, impermanent little refuges for winter adventurers. The first huts to serve Coloradans probably started popping up in the 1940s according to the 10th Mountain Division Hut Association, the nonprofit that manages all 38 of Colorado’s bookable backcountry huts. In the 50s the first proper hut system was erected around the Elk Range — seven huts known as the Alfred A. Braun Hut System — that can be skied in succession or as out and backs from Aspen trailheads. The 10th Mountain system was dreamed up in the 1980s by a group of Aspen skiers including 10th Mountain Division veteran Fritz Benedict. These days, reservations are required and the huts fill up quickly year round. There is also now a wide array of comfort levels to pick from — from no frills accommodations that backcountry explorers have relied on for decades, to plush, off-grid luxury lodges.
Halloween in Estes Park
It’s probably no surprise that Estes Park is into Halloween. That the place that inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining,” proudly houses a frozen dead guy and is the future home of the Blumhouse Museum of horror films has a thing for the creepiest day of the year. But we loved getting this note from an insider about the way the whole community rallies like Halloween Town in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” And if you have young ones or just need to balance the tricks with some treats, it sounds like Elkhorn Avenue is the place to be.
Hungry Moose Caboose
Come down from Kenosha Pass too hot and you’ll fly right past the Hungry Moose Caboose in Jefferson. The train-themed burger joint is known for friendly service and fresh patties straight from Eagle Rock Ranch. The entry was suggested by a public relations professional who works with Eagle Rock Ranch. Normally that’d raise an eyebrow and might even disqualify the entry, but Eagle Rock Ranch was already on our agriculture list for the owners’ conservationist ethos, and the burger at the Hungry Moose Caboose was indeed voted The Colorado Sun’s best burger in 2025. So you don’t have to take her word, or even our word, for it. Head in for a classic hamburger with an epic view, or go big with their “Train Wreck,” loaded with bacon, barbecue sauce, mushrooms, jalapeños and garlic on an onion bun.
Indian Peaks Wilderness
It’s no wonder that the Indian Peaks Wilderness is one of the most heavily traveled wilderness areas in the state. This roughly 70,000 acre strip of the Rockies, sandwiched between Rocky Mountain National Park and the James Peak Wilderness, has more than 50 alpine lakes, a couple dozen peaks hovering between 12,000 and 13,000 feet, and six passes over the Continental Divide. It’s also the backdrop to most of Boulder County and can be accessed without even thinking about Interstate 70. Sun reader Bob Jaeger’s memory of Jasper Lake — a reservoir built above Nederland in 1896 — brings to mind a more solitary experience with nature. The area is still absolutely worth a day trip or an overnight. One easy way to lessen your impact on the area is to take advantage of the hourly bus service between Boulder and Nederland, and then hop on the free trailhead shuttle from Nederland High School.