Colorado Facts and Trivia

Colorado Facts & Trivia

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Before the Army built Fort Garland in Costilla County, there was a Fort Massachusetts, Its absurd location allowed Indians to stand on the bluffs and shower the soldier with arrows.

Gus's Place in Pueblo was listed three years running in Ripley's Believe It or Not for serving more beer per barstool than any tavern in the world.

Colorado is nicknamed "the Centennial State" and was the 38th state admitted to the Union, entering on August 1, 1876.

Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write "America the Beautiful" from atop Pikes Peak.

Fort Garland barracks today, June, 2006, Kathy Weiser.

The ghost of Madge Reynolds is said to hang around the Reynolds Cottage, 1209 Logan St in Denver. Years back, Madge and Fred Bonfils, then publisher of the Denver Post, were quite and item. They went horseback riding one day, and Bonfils is alleged to have spoken his true feelings for Madge but she was married. She came home and was so overwhelmed by his proposal and his pursuit, she collapsed and died. Today, people report a ghost dressed in white inhabits the north side of the house, where she was happiest.

When the Littleton Creamery at 1801 Wynkoop St. added space in 1917, it was said to be the largest cold-storage warehouse in the Rockies, with 1.2 million cubic feet of storage space. By 1929, it was said to be the third largest in the nation. It remained a cold-storage business until 1981. Even after two years without cold-storage activity, it took seven (summer) weeks to defrost the walls; and ice was still 2 to 3 feet thick on the ceiling.

Denver families are the most likely of families in any city in the U.S. to own three or more cars! Studies show that 11 out of 50 Denver families have need of three-car garages. That's slightly ahead of the 1-in-5 rate in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Diego and Seattle.

Interstate 70's Eisenhower Tunnel is the world's highest auto tunnel (11,158 feet).

When Coronado sought the Seven Golden Cities in the West, he sent a group of 15 men into southern Colorado. Upon reaching the area around Trinidad, they died from sheer exhaustion. A Spanish priest who discovered their remains named the area "Las Animas," meaning "Souls in Purgatory," because they died without receiving last rites.

Colorado leads all states in silver production.

In 1893, Colorado became the second state to grant women the right to vote. Perhaps one reasons Colorado was the first state to popularly vote and approve women's suffrage was because of sarcastic remarks made in local newspapers, such as: "Women would be content with smaller bribes than men, saving the candidates a great deal of expense." and "Men have had a franchise so long and have made such a mess of it that women ought to be allowed a trial.

San Luis, Colorado is the oldest city in the state,

June, 2006, Kathy Weiser.

San Luis (est. 1851) in Costilla County is the oldest town in Colorado.

One of the West's greatest hoaxes was the Solid Muldoon. It was "discovered" near Pueblo in 1877 and was passed off as the petrified body of an ancient man. The statue was of a man in a reclining position. It was 7 1/2 feet tall and weighed around 450 pounds. At the base of the spine, the figure had a short tail, and the Solid Muldoon was touted as Darwin's "missing link." It was actually cast out of Portland cement.

Damifino Park in Jackson County supposedly answers the question, "What's the name of this place?"

A cloudburst struck the South Platte-Arkansas divide on May 21, 1878. It gorged the bed of Kiowa Creek at its head so that when the flood got nearly to Strasburg, it had attained immense volume and power. At that moment, a Kansas Pacific freight train was passing. The bodies of the Fireman and brakeman were found the next day a mile and a half downstream. The body of the engineer was recovered four days later 10 miles downstream. Cars from the train were scattered, half buried in the sandy bottom of the subsided stream for miles. However, searchers failed to find any sign of the locomotive, even after probing the shoals of the creek with long steel rods. In January 1989, novelist Clive Cussler led another party down Kiowa Creek with long steel rods in search of the missing locomotive. Bob Richardson, director of the Colorado Railroad Museum, contends the locomotive was recovered and in 1886 was still in service with the Union Pacific Railroad.

The ghosts of deceased pioneers are said to take to the form of blue lights that hover above graves in a cemetery in Silver Cliff, in South Central Colorado. The lights were first reported in 1882. Some say they are the "dancing blue spirits" spoken of in Indian legends. Edward Linehan of National Geographic investigated in 1969 and observed "dim round spots of blue-white light." The lights are not reflections and no radioactivity has been found. It may be electomagnetic in origin, but the lights persist to this day. For more information see The Ghosts of Silvercliff.

The 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel underneath the Continental Divide is the fourth-longest railroad tunnel in the world.

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Soapy Smith courtesy Denver Public Library

Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith was king of the con men in Denver in the late 1880's. After setting up a stand at 17th and Larimer streets, Smith began promoting "the finest soap in the world." He began inserting dollar bills into some of the soap-cake wrappers but they went to Soapy's confederates. With the soap proceeds, he opened the Tivoli Saloon and gambling hall at 17th and Market streets.

Minor league slugger Joey Meyer launched a 582-foot home at Mile High Stadium, believed to be the longest home run ever recorded.

Denver averages only 15 inches of annual precipitation.

Louis Ballast, owner of the Humpty Dumpty Barrel Drive-In, which was located at 2776 Speer Blvd. Denver, spent early years of the Great Depression trying to improve the taste of his hamburgers. He tried applying peanut butter and that didn't work. Then he tried melting a Hershey bar over a burger and that proved even more awful. Finally, he settled on a slice of American cheese and his customers fell in love with the "Cheeseburger," a name he patented in 1935.

Denver's 26-square-block Lower Downtown District is the largest concentration of turn-of-the-century buildings in the country.

Colorado has the last and only un-named mountain peak in the U.S.A officially called "Unnamed 13,831." The Federal Geological and Survey Agency, said they could give it a name listing, but only after Colorado submitted its choice of name(s), which to date, it has failed to do.

Updated October, 2007

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