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.)
You can read all of the back issues of the magazine HERE, or subscribe HERE to get the full print copy every quarter!
How will 2020 go down in history? In the Hindsight 20/20 project from The Colorado Magazine, twenty of today's most insightful historians and thought leaders share their visions of how this year will stand the test of time.
In March of 2020, History Colorado and the University Press of Colorado published a new kind of book about Colorado’s past: Colorado Day by Day. In it, author Derek R. Everett, who teaches history at both Metropolitan State University of Denver and Colorado State University, looks at a key piece of Colorado’s past for every day of the year—366 days in all.
When temperatures soared in cramped, noisy cities, Colorado’s higher elevations promised chilly nights and mild days spent fishing, camping, and hiking under shady pine trees. Unlike their white counterparts, however, African Americans could not head just anywhere in the mountains. Not far outside of Denver, Lincoln Hills, a vacation community developed for Black people, represented both an escape from the city and an escape from segregation.
One cold blue August morning, I opened the door of my tiny cabin at the Continental Divide Research Learning Center’s McGraw Ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park. I listened to the burbling of Cow Creek and gazed to the mountains, drenched in gold from the rising sun. The value of McGraw Ranch, however, is more than scenic. Its enduring physical presence tells histories that interweave the environment, race, and leisure in Colorado.
So many people have joined in the statewide commemorations of the centennial of the 19th Amendment in the past 20 months. Innumerable individuals and groups across Colorado have added to our collective knowledge of the various stories of the struggle for suffrage and we have been lucky to help collect this knowledge.
One question we are often asked is what resources can someone use to learn more about the fight for the 19th Amendment. We have compiled this list to get you started.
As a result of the innovative and forward thinking by former Lieutenant Governor Donna Lynne, on January 3, 2019, former Governor John W. Hickenlooper issued an Executive Order creating the Colorado Women’s Vote Centennial Commission. Along with support from staff at History Colorado and grassroots groups across the state, the Commission embarked on a mission to engage residents of all 64 Colorado counties on the history of women’s suffrage, commemorate the centennial of women’s suffrage, and to elevate the struggle for women’s suffrage as a learning opportunity. For many people involved in this mission, including myself, it evolved from examining the past to getting a glimpse into the future.
In the fall of 2018, I started working on plans to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. As we mark this occasion on August 26, what I thought would feel like an ending to this work feels like just the beginning.
For the last year, History Colorado, along with the Governor’s Women’s Vote Centennial Commission and great collaborators across the state, has organized discussions and events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and deepen our understanding of voting rights and women’s history.
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.
