The Colorado Magazine

A poem written by Tamara Trujillo reflecting on her identity and roots. 

the disCOurse is a place for people to share their lived experiences and their perspectives on the past with an eye toward informing our present. Here, as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, a young Chicana wonders why we only celebrate Hispanic heritage for one month out of the year.

In the early months of 1905, the whole state of Colorado was in an uproar. Miners were on strike, an election clerk had just jumped out of a moving train while fleeing the law, and nobody knew who the governor really was. And it was all caused by one of the most corrupt elections in American history.

Despite the continuing pandemic, celebrations remain significant, even if remotely. They help us feel connected to our community, friends, and extended family. With the arrival of the inaugural Colorado Cabrini Day, we need to celebrate for a variety of reasons.

This is a unique moment in American history, for the nation is grappling simultaneously with a pandemic and an economic catastrophe.

In partnership with the Latino Cultural Arts Center, the History Colorado Center is presenting Hecho en Colorado—or Made in Colorado—an exhibition of some sixty works that highlight the artistic and intellectual contributions of Native, Mexican, and Chicano artists to the state of Colorado.

After we ran an article in August exploring the history of outdoor classrooms in Colorado and around the country, the Steelworks Center of the West brought to our attention another experiment in outdoor education that took place in Colorado. We’re pleased to share their story in The Colorado Magazine. 

the disCOurse is a place for people to share their lived experiences and their perspectives on the past with an eye toward informing our present. Here, as devastating wildfires burn throughout Colorado and across the West, Brian Cooke looks at fire from the vantage of historic fire lookout towers.

Late in the afternoon on July 14, 1820, 22-year-old naturalist Edwin James and two companions surveyed the world from their perch atop the summit of the “Highest Peak” marked on their map. James scribbled in his journal, which remains unpublished, that “the last part of the ascent was less difficult than I expected to find it . . . .” To the west, he could see two valleys that he correctly surmised held the headwaters of the Arkansas and South Platte rivers. The lesser mountains below him were white with snow from a summer storm. Overhead, amazing him, vast clouds of locusts rode the wind. The men saw no sign of the humans who’d preceded them, only the tracks and bones of bighorn sheep.

The trio stayed but half an hour on the summit as daylight waned, the mountain cast a massive shadow, and the temperature dropped. James had another reason to descend. Below, Major Stephen Long waited impatiently. Long had given James only three days to explore the mountain and return to the expedition’s camp on Fountain Creek. Upon James’s return, the major would head south to the Arkansas and turn east for home.