November 22, 2022 marks the 164th birthday of our beloved Mile High City. To honor the occasion, Jori Johnson and Cody Robinson, part of History Colorado’s research team in the Stephen H. Hart Research Center, uncovered some marvelous images of the Mile High City that you just may have missed.

In 1903, The Denver Post investigative journalist Polly Pry exposed abuses at the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School that shocked the nation. Her reporting brought to light the mistreatment of Native children that was all too common at boarding schools throughout the nation.

After coming across a newspaper notice of the lynching of a Chinese man in a long-forgotten mining camp, the author undertakes a deeply personal journey into Colorado history as he contemplates who really “belongs” in our narratives about the past—and our present.

During my years in public life I always worked harder than my staff and tried to justify the confidence placed in me by the nine governors whom I served, regardless of politics. I thoroughly enjoyed my work for more than half a century in a Man’s World—or since I worked in Wyoming and Colorado perhaps I should say—in a Women’s World, too!

—Agnes Wright Spring

As Colorado’s experiment in nonpartisan, citizen-led redistricting enters the home stretch, we look back at our long history of attempting to craft a truly representative government. It’s been more complicated than you might think.

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, a member of the Volunteers of America team recognizes an organization that’s provided more than a century of compassionate aid to communities in need in Colorado and throughout the nation.

The spectacular rise—and fall—of Baby Doe Tabor

Volga Germans, also referred to as German-Russians, came from the Russian steppes of the Volga River to Colorado between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to labor in the sugar beet fields. The history of their settlement in Colorado is woven into the larger history of immigration in the United States during this period.

Composed around 1870, the photographic portrait of Amache Ochinee Prowers is a window into her complex world. Amache’s direct gaze at the camera exudes a confident strength. She seems at home in the Victorian studio setting, and her garb is fitting for a woman of that era, complete with heavy jewelry and a ruffled shirtwaist. Yet the careful observer might note that she lacks the foundation upon which proper women’s dress of that time was constructed: a corset. This, and her distinctly Indigenous facial features, let us know that she was no ordinary consumer of Victorian fashions. Amache was a full-blood member of the Cheyenne nation.

Naturalist Edwin James and His 1820 Ascent of Pikes Peak