Co mag hero

Publications

The Colorado Magazine

The Colorado Magazine is a publication for all Coloradans. In these pages, we’ll document, explore, and share the experiences that join us together as Coloradans, bringing you compelling original scholarship, insights, and perspectives on how we got to now. We welcome you along on the journey.

The Colorado Magazine gives voice to writers who share our passion for the past. This is the place to find perspectives you won’t find anywhere else. Get the inside scoop on our collections and learn more about the topics you’re reading about in the news and in our other publications.

The Colorado Magazine is also a quarterly magazine. Every issue showcases photography from our wide-ranging collections and feature articles on the history and culture of our state and region. History Colorado membership at any level includes a subscription to The Colorado Magazine.

History Colorado—the former Colorado Historical Society—has a long tradition of publishing award-winning books. Look here to find titles about unforgettable events, noteworthy people, and the art, culture, and communities of our state. (For a list in PDF format of our available books and other publications, click here.)

Want to get all the latest updates in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter here!

  • Art by David Ocelotl García

    Moments That the Words Don’t Reach

    History is full of moments that are unspeakable and impossible to articulate. Art, in its many forms, enables us to get at these moments where words, facts, and intellectualizing cannot reach.

  • A snippet of the digital scan of the first issue of The Colorado Magazine, published by the State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado in November, 1923.

    (Re)Introducing The Colorado Magazine

     Why we’re going back to calling ourselves The Colorado Magazine, and where we’re going from here. 

  • Silver Queen

    The Search for the Silver Queen

    The Silver Queen of Aspen was once the crown jewel of the Colorado Mineral Palace in Pueblo. Along with her consort, King Coal of Trinidad, she reigned over a glittering kingdom of gems and precious metals, at the center of a vast display of our state’s mineral wealth.

    But in 1939, the Mineral Palace closed its doors for the last time. And the Silver Queen was never seen by the public again. To this day, nobody knows exactly what happened to her.

  • Photo from Amache internment camp in 1943 - a wooden framed, one-story building named Block 10-H

    Amache: Visualizing the Past Through Restoration and Reconstruction

    When you first visit the Granada Relocation Center, known to many as Amache, it’s hard not to be struck by the landscape. The vast arid plains run for as far as the eye can see, dominated by native grass and shrubbery with the occasional cottonwood. Hot and parched, the land bears witness to a dark chapter of the American story. No buildings remain at the large, 328-acre relocation center that interned more than 7,000 Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1945 during World War II.

  • St Mary's Academy classroom in 1937

    Colorado Is My Classroom

    More than a century ago, open-air classrooms had a moment in response to another pandemic. Then it was tuberculosis, another era-defining airborne pathogen that attacked the respiratory system. And the results were encouraging. Could fresh air be part of the solution to school in the time of coronavirus?

  • Beloved Primary

    The Black Canyon, My Favorite Place in Colorado

    We asked each member of the State Historian’s Council to reflect on what “our beloved Colorado” means to them. For Colorado Day, our new State Historian Duane Vandenbusche explains why the Black Canyon is his favorite place in Colorado.

  • Beloved Primary

    Race, Privilege, and Landscape in Colorado History

    As we look forward to Colorado Day on August 1, we asked each member of the State Historian’s Council to reflect on what “our beloved Colorado” means to them. Here, Jared Orsi reflects on who we mean - and who we exclude - when we say “our.”

  • Beloved Primary

    Etched Into My Heart

    In preparation for Colorado Day on August 1, we asked each member of the State Historian’s Council to reflect on what “our beloved Colorado” means to them. Here, Nicki Gonzales reflects on her family’s place in creating her beloved—and in some cases bygone—Colorado.

  • Beloved Primary

    Why I Love Colorado

    In preparation for Colorado Day on August 1, we asked each member of the State Historian’s Council to reflect on what “our beloved Colorado” means to them. There are so many reasons to love Colorado that it’s hard to keep count, but “Dr. Colorado” Tom Noel shares his top ten.