HISTORY11 - Central Colorado
Pat and I will be touring central Colorado in September so as usual I wanted to know more about the history of the region beforehand. This post will highlight the history of the places we will visit. Colorado became a U.S. state on August 1, 1876 as the “Centennial State,” because it was admitted to the Union one century after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Rio Colorado for the red silt the river carried from the mountains. Today Colorado is the eighth largest U.S. state by area and the 21 st most populous with almost six million people. Colorado is known for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and deserts. The Rocky Mountains slice north-south through the state, along the Continental Divide, with more than 1,100 mountain peaks higher than 10,000 feet - 53 of them rising higher than 14,000 feet. Denver is t