Colorado Facts and Trivia

Colorado Facts & Trivia

ColoradoCapitalBldg-1930-DPL.jpg (211x157 -- 4525 bytes)

Denver Capital Building in 1930, courtesy Denver

Public Library

The dome atop the Colorado State Capital in Denver is covered with 200 ounces of gold, which was donated by miners in the late 1800’s.

The San Luis Alligator Farm is the highest-altitude alligator colony in the world.

The world's largest elk rack hangs at Tony's Conoco in Crested Butte.

The Leadville 100 (held in late August) is the world's highest 100-mile footrace.

Troublesome, Colorado, had the first woman postmaster in U.S. history.

Elias Willard Smith received from his father the opportunity to accompany fur trappers and traders to the Rocky Mountains for 11 months. He left the East Coast on Aug. 6, 1839. On Jan. 24, 1840, Smith and his companions were leaving Fort Davy Crockett in northwestern Colorado to return to Fort Vasquez, just south of today’s Platteville. Winter caught them in the mountains, and they had to eat their horses or starve. The group sighted Fort Vasquez on April 24.

On May 14, 1888, a Santa Fe freight train from Pueblo arrived at Colorado Springs in the wee hours of the morning, and the crew began unloading the first three cars. Unfortunately, the last five cars - including one carrying 18 tons of explosives and another carrying 3,000 gallons of naptha, a flammable liquid - became unhitched and headed back toward Pueblo on the down-sloping track. The runaway cars crashed into a northbound passenger train at Fountain, Colorado. The crew of the passenger train saw the cars coming and most people escaped, but the resulting explosion blew a hole 15 feet deep and 35 feet wide, and damaged nearly every building in Fountain. Three people were killed, and 28 injured.

The first rodeo on record occurred at Deer Trail on July 4, 1869.

A Metallic object was sighted flying from northeast, then hovering above Manitou Springs for several minutes on May 19th, 1947. The object then began a display of aerial acrobatics, diving, spinning and climbing before speeding off into the afternoon sky. This is the earliest documented report of a UFO over Colorado.

Glenwood Springs boasts the world's largest natural hot springs pool.

Georgetown and Silver Plume are just 2.1 miles apart, but the elevation difference is 638 feet. That's a 6% grade -- too steep for railroad trains to climb. Southern Union Pacific engineer Robert Blickensderfer designed a route that made it possible. The track covers nearly 4 1/2 miles (at a 3.5% grade) crossing over itself.. The route (now famous) became known as the Georgetown Loop.

Among the ghostly inhabitants of Denver's Oxford Hotel: a buckskin clad man who comes and goes from the men's room in the basement; a woman in Victorian dress who glides down the main staircase; and a child who can be heard crying on one of the floors when maids clean the rooms.

Christopher O'Brian, author of Enter the Valley, says the San Luis Valley, which stretches from Saguache to Taos, New Mexico, has America's highest concentration of UFO sightings, crop circles and Bigfoot sightings, as well as cattle mutilations and appearances of mysterious aircraft.

Mary Florence Lathrop, the first practicing female lawyer in Denver, opened her law office in 1897. Called "That Damn Woman!" by her male peers, she became the American Bar Association's first female member in 1917. She practiced law in a lace apron until she died in 1951 at age 85.

John Stetson made his first Stetson hat in Central City in 1860.

Burlington's Kit Carson Carousel (circa 1905) is the world's oldest wooden merry-go-round.

San Luis Valley barn, June, 2006, Kathy Weiser.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Denver madam Mattie Silks was a participant in history's first duel between women. At a party on the night of Aug.25, 1877, a woman by the name of Katie Fulton was making obvious advances toward Silks' longtime love, Cortez Thomson. Incensed, Silks challenged Fulton to a pistol duel. The women paced, turned and fired, whereby Silks missed Fulton entirely. Thomson screamed and fell, having taken a shot, probably from Fulton, in the neck. Thompson's injury was just a flesh wound, and a brawl ensued. Fulton left by train for Kansas the next day, nursing a broken nose.

The problem of stray dogs roaming Denver streets was so out of control by 1878 that police rented a wagon and went around shooting every stray within shotgun range -- 103 the first week. Resident outrage over seeing wounded dogs dragging themselves down major thoroughfares halted the plan temporarily by 1883. After a number of children were attacked by dogs running in packs, police took up the shotgun patrol again.

It wasn't the Gold Rush or the silver boom of the last century that brought the most population to Denver and Colorado. It was tuberculosis. Thousands came here for the dry climate. "They were a much better class of people than the gold rush attracted," historian Tom Noel said. "But the situation was hushed up by the city's leaders. They didn't want to be known as the place where thousands of people were walking around with a highly infectious disease." Doc Holliday was one of those who came to Colorado for the climate.

The line separating Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma wasn't made official until 1990. Colorado's southern border was disputed ever since Congress commissioned a survey in 1867 to determine what would become the line between Colorado and New Mexico. The line, named the Darling Line for the surveyor, was intended to be the 37th parallel north of the equator. However, it veered as much as a half-mile off course and was disputed by later surveys intended to draw the true line. A marker dedicated in September 1990, became the official point of reference for all future surveys.

Doc Holliday was one of the most deadly shootists

in the American West

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Red snow was discovered atop Arapahoe Peak in August 1914. A writer discovered it while taking a class of university students to the top. At first, he thought someone was bleeding. The Red Snow comes from a one-celled plant organism called Chlaydomas nivalis. Red Snow is found only at high altitudes - seldom below 10,000 feet - in Colorado.

The dandelion was introduced into Denver's gardens in 1920 upon the recommendation of Dr. Fredrick Bancroft, who argued that the flower would beautify the city and provide medicinal benefits, as well as wine. By 1926, however, the flower proved to be a propagating pest. Residents of Denver campaigned to "exterminate the dandelion!" by offering unemployed people $3 a day to pick them.

Colorado ranks first among the 50 states in university degrees per capita.

Bat Masterson

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

In the late 1800's, Denver was a huge gambling mecca. Bat Masterson was one of Colorado's colorful gamblers. After serving as town marshal in La Junta and Trinidad, he returned to gambling at Ed Chase's Palace Theater and gambling house in Denver. He married one of the dancers, but when gambling was outlawed in 1902, the two moved to New York City.

As many as 1,000 white spectators attended a Ute scalp dance, the last known in Denver, which took place over several nights in July 1874 near Sloans Lake. News editors called the scene "barbarous." They wrote: "It was disgusting to notice, among the spectators, lots of ladies, prominent in church and social circles, straining for a sight of the reeking scalps, which they scanned as eagerly as if they had been new bonnets."

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