The Colorado Magazine

One can only imagine their sense of both frustration and hope as they toured Colorado, which in 1893 had become the first state to prohibit discrimination against women voters; nearly a quarter-century later, a woman’s right to vote had yet to be recognized as national law.

As Coloradans shelter in place and work to find a new normal in this time of uncertainty, our mission at History Colorado is now more important than ever: to create a better future for Colorado by inspiring wonder in our past. What can we learn from past public health crises to help us cope with our current one?

Like many of you out there, the Curatorial Services and Collections Access team is at home sharing our workspaces with some new “coworkers.” In honor of National Pet Day, we thought we’d feature some of our newest “recruits”!

I have an exciting and pressing effort to share with you, but first:

On the cold morning of January 13, 1925, Mary Cronin—along with thousands of other Denverites—awoke to a grim headline in the Rocky Mountain News: “Agnes Vaille Freezes on Longs Peak.” Newspapers across the state were reporting the same story. The famed mountaineer had died the day before after being trapped on the east face of Longs Peak during a surprise snowstorm.

It had been the first successful winter ascent of that face of the treacherous mountain, but Vaille never made it back down.

Agnes Vaille had been a popular figure in Denver society and a well-known member of the Colorado Mountain Club. But while all of Colorado mourned the loss of this intrepid adventurer, Mary Cronin set out with a new determination to finish what her friend had begun: to become the first woman to climb all of Colorado’s fourteeners.

In recent decades, oral history has become an international movement in research- and it shows no sign of stopping. Museum exhibits and online archives highlight these recorded stories of individuals from around the world, telling their stories as they remember them, with little guidance or interruption from an interviewer or historian.

But why? What makes them different from traditional forms of research? What makes them so potent and powerful?

This essay is the Best Undergraduate Essay winner in the 2019 Emerging Historians Award. Additional awards went to Jacob Swisher from Colorado State University, Best Overall Essay winner for “Were They Mexicans or Coloradans? Constructing Race and Identity at the Colorado–New Mexico Border,” and Don Unger from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Best Graduate Essay winner for “Historical Perspectives of the World’s Greatest Gold Camp.”

The Emerging Historians Award is a program of History Colorado’s State Historian’s Council. Find all three essays and details of the 2020 award round—with a submission deadline of June 1.

Expertise and access are at the center of this month’s news.

This essay is the Best Overall Essay winner in the 2019 Emerging Historians Award. Additional awards went to Don Unger from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Best Graduate Essay winner for “Historical Perspectives of the World’s Greatest Gold Camp,” and Saya “Ted” Richthofen of Metropolitan State University of Denver, Best Undergraduate Essay winner for “Openly and with Gusto: How Women Moonshiners Led to Denver’s First Female Cop.”

The Emerging Historians Award is a program of History Colorado’s State Historian’s Council. Find all three essays and details of the 2020 award round—with a submission deadline of June 1—at HistoryColorado.org/emerging-historians-award.