There is nothing dry and uninteresting about Colorado’s history. It comes to life when you explore areas where dinosaurs roamed 150 million years ago, early Native Americans lived for centuries in cliff dwelling, pioneers arrived in covered wagons and miners scrabbled for silver and gold


Dancers at Denver’s American Indian Pow Wow


History & Heritage Come to Life


Archaeological treasures – Adults and


children alike will be fascinated by the 70ft (21m) dinosaur skeleton and other fossils in Fruita’s Dinosaur Journey, at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science as well as along Denver’s 1.5-mile


(2.4km) Dinosaur Ridge walk. Native Americans past & present –


T e ancestral Puebloans or Anasazi, who made their homes from 600AD to 1300AD in the rugged south-western sandstone area near Cortez, left behind some 600 cliff dwellings in what is now the vast Mesa Verde National Park. Nearby, Dolores’s Anasazi Heritage


A tour group hikes past pictographs in the Ute Mountain Tribal Park


Dinosaur fossils at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science


Center is the gateway to the 164,000-acre (66,838ha) Canyons of the Ancient National Monument, and there’s more to discover in Denver’s History Colorado Center, La Junta’s Koshare Indian Museum, Towaoc’s Ute Mountain Tribal Park, Ignacio’s newly-opened Southern Ute Cultural Center & Museum and Montrose’s Ute Indian Museum, sited on the original eight-acre homestead of


Chief Ouray and his wife, Chipeta. Pioneer & mining heritage – Follow the path of the pioneers’ legendary Santa Fe Trail from the colourful Old West community of Trinidad, site of a Trail museum, to Holly in south-eastern Colorado and you’ll discover such attractions as the last home of famous frontiersman Kit Carson, and Bent’s Old Fort, a re-created 1833 trading post. In the state’s north-eastern corner you


can learn more about pioneer history at several museums and forts, including T e Fort Morgan Museum, which also honours famous native son, band leader Glenn Miller. For mining heritage, visit some of


the state’s picturesque late 19th century mining towns such as Silverton, Leadville, Aspen and Breckenridge and/or take a guided tour down the shafts of one of the state’s 16 mines.


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