Colorado

Cliff dwellers in the Mesa Verde area were forced by drought and other factors to abandon their Mesa Verde homes in the late 1200s.⁠[1]

The area’s original inhabitants included Plains and Great Basin Indians; at the time of European exploration and settlement, its population was made up of Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute peoples.⁠[2][1]

In 1803 the United States acquired the eastern part of present-day Colorado through the Louisiana Purchase and then sent expeditions to map and explore the area: Zebulon Pike in 1806, Stephen Long in 1820 and John C. Frémont in 1842.⁠[1][3]

In the 1840s, huge land grants created to strengthen the frontier reached as far north as the Arkansas River. The first permanent settlements of non-Native American people in Colorado were established on these grants, where the first recorded irrigation took place in 1851.⁠[3]

In 1848 the United States acquired the western portion of present-day Colorado through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.⁠[1]

In 1858 gold was discovered along the South Platte River, and discoveries in other locations followed. When word reached the eastern United States the following year, a gold rush ensued, with as many as 5,000 miners a week pouring into the area.⁠[3][1]

Gold rush settlers began arriving at Denver City in 1858. Denver City and Auraria were then small settlements in Kansas Territory, roughly 500 miles from the territorial capital.⁠[4][5]

In April 1859, settlers seeking a new Jefferson Territory met in Denver City. The proposed territory, bounded by the 37th and 43rd parallels, would have been about 70 percent larger than present-day Colorado, with its northern edge reaching about 138 miles into present-day WyomingWyomingWyoming is a U.S. state, the ninth largest by area, with its capital at Cheyenne. Wyoming was admitted to the Union on July 10, 1890, as the 44th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 576,851 residents.Open the full entry.⁠[5]

In November 1859 the first Jefferson Territorial legislative session met in Denver City, appointed lawyer Robert Williamson Steele as governor and created 12 counties, of which Jefferson County is the only one still in existence. Never recognized by the federal government, the territory operated with functioning courts for roughly a year and a half before it ended as the gold boom faded and Congress recognized Colorado Territory.⁠[5][4]

KansasKansasKansas is a state of the United States bordered by Nebraska to the north, Missouri to the east, Oklahoma to the south, and Colorado to the west; its capital is Topeka and its largest city is Wichita. It was admitted to the Union on January 29, 1861, as the 34th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 2,937,880.Open the full entry’s admission as a state in January 1861 encouraged the creation of Colorado Territory. On February 28, 1861, days before his term ended, President James Buchanan signed the act establishing the territory, which combined the lands acquired in 1803 and 1848.⁠[4][1]

Under congressional legislation of 1861, the territory’s administrative officials were appointed by the president; seven governors were appointed in 15 years, and none served a full four-year term.⁠[3]

The first Colorado Territorial Assembly met in Denver in September 1861, and in November 1861 Colorado City was chosen as the territorial capital.⁠[4]

In 1862 the territorial legislature met in a log cabin in Old Colorado City, and that summer Golden was designated the next capital. The capital moved to Denver in December 1867, the same year Henry Brown donated land for a future capitol.⁠[4]

In 1864 Congress passed an enabling act, signed by President Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry, but voters rejected a constitution drafted in Denver. A second constitution narrowly passed in 1865, but President Andrew Johnson refused to issue a statehood proclamation.⁠[6]

On November 20, 1864, the Third Colorado Cavalry, a force of 100-day volunteers, left Denver. On November 29, roughly 700 federal troops under Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a village of about 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho people on Sand Creek. The villagers, led by Chief Black Kettle, had registered with the military that they were not hostile to the government. Roughly 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho, including men, women and children, died in the massacre.⁠[7][8]

Three federal investigations found that Chivington and his men had fabricated a reason for the attack, but by then they were no longer in the military, and Chivington received no judicial punishment; some of his own men had refused to take part. Territorial Governor John Evans resigned after the massacre was widely condemned.⁠[7][9]

In the 1865 Treaty of the Little Arkansas, the U.S. government admitted guilt for the massacre and promised reparations to 112 Cheyenne heads of families; the reparations were never paid.⁠[8]

In the 1870s most tribes, including the Arapaho, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne and the Crow, were relocated to reservations outside the state.⁠[3]

In 1879, tensions over Indian Agent Nathan Meeker’s handling of the White River Utes led to the Battle of Milk Creek, the destruction of the White River Agency and the deaths of Meeker and ten male workers. In 1881 most Ute bands were removed from Colorado to the Uintah reservation in UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry; some, including the band led by Colorow, stayed or returned and moved between Utah and Colorado for seasonal hunts.⁠[10]

In 1904 the government sold Ute land without consent; the White River Utes lost more than 100,000 acres, and the Uintah/Ouray and Southern Ute reservations each shrank by ninety percent.⁠[10]

An act of Congress approved on March 3, 1875, set the fundamental conditions for Colorado’s admission to the Union.⁠[11]

The constitutional convention had 39 delegates and completed the constitution on March 14, 1876. Three of the delegates were Hispano; one of them, Casemiro Barela, helped secure a requirement that state laws be published in Spanish, serving the large Hispano population of southern Colorado.⁠[12][13]

On July 1, 1876, voters approved the constitution by 15,443 votes to 4,062, and on July 25 Territorial Governor John L. Routt sent a copy to Washington, D.C.⁠[6][12]

President Ulysses S. Grant issued the statehood proclamation, and a telegram sent from Washington, D.C., that day stated that “the admission of said state into the Union is now complete”; newspapers printed it the next day. Colorado was the first state admitted in nine years, since NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state of the United States bordered by South Dakota to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the east, Kansas to the south, and Colorado to the southwest, with its panhandle bordering Wyoming to the west; its capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha. It was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1867, as the 37th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,961,504.Open the full entry in 1867, and its first state elections were set for the first Tuesday in October.⁠[11]

John L. Routt served as the first state governor from 1876 to 1879 and again from 1891 to 1893.⁠[14]

By 1881 the buffalo herds on the plains had been replaced by cattle and sheep, and in the 1880s steel was first produced in Pueblo from local iron ore and coal.⁠[15]

By the 1890s the early mining boom was over, and the mountains were largely vacated except for a few permanent mining towns. By 1900 gold production at Cripple Creek, one of the world’s richest gold camps, exceeded $20,000,000 a year.⁠[3][1]

In 1891 President Benjamin Harrison set aside the White River Plateau Timber Land Reserve, the first national forest reserve in Colorado.⁠[1]

In 1881 voters chose Denver as the permanent state capital. Plans for the capitol began in 1883, construction started in 1886, the cornerstone was laid in 1890, the building was occupied in late 1894, and the legislature first met there in 1895. In 1908 the original copper dome was gilded with gold.⁠[4]

In 1893 Colorado became the second state to adopt women’s suffrage.⁠[6]

In the 1930s drought and the Great Depression prompted emigration from rural areas and led to a large-scale transmountain water-diversion project.⁠[15]

In 1942 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were interned at Camp Amache, near Granada.⁠[15]

By the late 1940s Colorado was second only to Washington, D.C., in the number of federal government offices. From the 1950s it grew into a center of electronics and later high-technology manufacturing.⁠[15]

The U.S. Air Force Academy was founded in 1954 as the service’s chief officer-training school and moved from Denver to Colorado Springs in 1958.⁠[15]

By the 1980s about three-fifths of the state’s population had been born outside Colorado, and in the late 1990s Front Range communities were among the fastest-growing in the country. The economy slowed in the following decade, but population growth remained above the national rate.⁠[15]

In the 1990s relocated tribes sought restitution for lost lands; apologies were issued, but no monetary compensation was provided.⁠[15]

The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site Study Act of 1998 directed the National Park Service to study the massacre site, and locating the site contributed to the establishment of Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in 2007. It is a unit of the National Park System near Eads.⁠[16][7]

In the 2020 census apportionment results released in late April 2021, Colorado, whose population had grown about 15 percent over the decade, gained one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for a total of eight, with an average of 722,771 people per seat.⁠[17][18]

Colorado has 10 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections. Under Amendments Y and Z, approved in 2018, redistricting authority moved from the legislature to two independent commissions.⁠[19][18]

In 2022 the legislature established the America 250-Colorado 150 commission to coordinate the twin anniversaries of the nation’s 250th and Colorado’s 150th years.⁠[13]

August 1, 2026, marked 150 years of Colorado statehood. History Colorado presented the exhibition “38th Star: Colorado Becomes the Centennial State” at the History Colorado Center in Denver.⁠[13][20]

As of November 2026 the governor is Jared Polis. He was sworn in on January 8, 2019, on the west steps of the State Capitol as Colorado’s 43rd governor; he previously served on the State Board of Education and represented Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House.⁠[21][22]

The state legislature is the Colorado General Assembly, which designated most of the state’s symbols, such as the flag and the flower, by bill or joint resolution.⁠[23]

The General Assembly has 65 representatives and 35 senators. Representatives serve two-year terms and may serve at most four consecutive terms; senators serve four-year terms and may serve at most two consecutive terms.⁠[24]

The Colorado Supreme Court is the state’s court of last resort. It has seven justices who serve ten-year terms; the chief justice is chosen from among the justices and serves at the pleasure of a majority of them.⁠[25]

Colorado is bordered by Wyoming and Nebraska to the north, Nebraska and Kansas to the east, OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a U.S. state whose capital is Oklahoma City. It was admitted to the Union on November 16, 1907, as the 46th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,959,353.Open the full entry and New Mexico to the south and Utah to the west; only about half of its area lies in the Rocky Mountains.⁠[26]

The state has three physiographic regions: the semiarid plains of eastern Colorado, the central Colorado Piedmont, where most residents live, and the southern Rocky Mountains and western mesas.⁠[2]

Based on boundaries as of January 1, 2010, the state’s total area is 104,094 square miles (269,601 km²), of which 103,642 square miles (268,431 km²) is land and 452 square miles (1,170 km²) is water, all of it inland.⁠[27]

U.S. Geological Survey data list Mount Elbert, at 14,433 feet, as the state’s highest point and the Arikaree River, at 3,315 feet, as its lowest point.⁠[28]

The U.S. Census Bureau’s July 1, 2025, estimate (V2025) puts the state’s population at 6,012,561; in 2020 the population density was 55.7 people per square mile over a land area of 103,637.06 square miles.⁠[29]

Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, the population grew 0.4 percent (0.5 percent nationally); there were 65,380 births, the most since 2017, net domestic migration of minus 12,100 and net international migration of 15,356.⁠[30]

Persons under 18 make up 20.3 percent of the population and persons 65 and over 17.1 percent; in 2020–2024, 9.8 percent were foreign-born, 45.7 percent of people aged 25 and over held a bachelor’s degree or higher, and median household income was $95,470 (in 2024 dollars).⁠[29]

Colorado’s nominal GDP in 2024 was $553,323 million (preliminary estimate, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, March 2025), with real growth of 1.9 percent.⁠[31]

Agriculture, cattle production, mining and manufacturing are important to the economy, government military installations and service industries have become prominent, and tourism is a major source of income. Military facilities in the state include the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Peterson Air Force Base and the Pueblo Chemical Depot.⁠[2][15]

The name comes from Spanish, meaning “colored red,” and Congress chose it for the territory in 1861. Because statehood came 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Colorado is called the Centennial State; the phrase “Colorful Colorado,” used on maps, license plates and souvenirs, refers to its scenery. It is also known as the Columbine State. Colorado Day, each August 1, marks the anniversary of statehood.⁠[23][26]

The state motto is “Nil Sine Numine,” which the state translates as “Nothing without Providence or Deity”; it appears on the ribbon of the state seal. The Great Seal is an adaptation of the Territorial Seal, adopted by joint resolution of the First Territorial Assembly on November 6, 1861; an act of the First General Assembly approved March 15, 1877, made statutory provision for it, and a 1976 executive order fixed its official colors.⁠[23]

The state flag, designed by Andrew Carlisle Johnson, was adopted by an act of the General Assembly (Senate Bill 118) on June 5, 1911; Senate Bill 152 of February 28, 1929, set its red and blue to match the U.S. flag, and a 1964 revision changed the distance of the letter “C” from the staff and its diameter.⁠[23]

The state flower is the white and lavender Columbine (April 4, 1899); since 1925 state law has barred digging it up on public lands and limited gathering of buds, blossoms and stems to 25 a day. The state bird is the Lark Bunting (April 29, 1931), the state tree the Colorado Blue Spruce (March 7, 1939; schoolchildren had voted for it on Arbor Day in 1892), and the state animal the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (May 1, 1961).⁠[23]

The state songs are A.J. Fynn’s “Where the Columbines Grow” (May 8, 1915) and “Rocky Mountain High” (1973; lyrics by John Denver, music by Mike Taylor), adopted March 12, 2007. On March 31, 2025, the Emperor Mushroom became the state mushroom under HB25-1091.⁠[23]

State of Colorado: Official website: https://www.colorado.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

Colorado Governor Jared Polis: Official website: https://governorsoffice.colorado.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

Colorado General Assembly: Official website: https://leg.colorado.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24][32]

Colorado State Archives: Official website: https://archives.colorado.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

Colorado Department of Local Affairs: Official website: https://cdola.colorado.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]