Colorado Trivia & Tidbits
Looking for Colorado trivia? Try our list Colorado little know facts, tidbits and trivia.
—In 1986, Boulder County pioneered a program that allows residents over 60 to work for the county part time so they can pay their property taxes. The tax “work-off” program has been copied by other local governments.
At the SAME Café in Denver, customers pay what they think their meal is worth, or not at all. Brad and Libby Birky started the pay-what-you-can restaurant in 2006 with no prices on the menu and no cash register—just a donation box. Those down on their luck can eat for free, while those more fortunate are encouraged to make up the difference. SAME stands for So All May Eat.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
—Starting in the mid-1960s, author Louis L’Amour spent summers in Durango (pop. 13,922), where he stayed at the historic Strater Hotel. L’Amour, who wrote 113 books, always requested Room 222 directly above the Diamond Belle Saloon because the honky-tonk music helped set the mood for his Western novels. He is the only American-born author to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of his life’s literary works.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
The Strater Hotel was built in 1887 by Henry Strater, a 20-year-old pharmacist. Strater didn’t have the money or the experience to build a hotel and he was too young to enter into contracts, but he managed to get loans from his family and fibbed about his age to realize his ambition for a grand hotel.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
Lane Frost, the champion bull rider on whose life the 1994 movie 8 Seconds is based, was born in 1963 in La Junta (pop. 7,568). Frost became the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion Bull Rider in 1987. He died in 1989 at the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days Rodeo after getting struck by a bull. Frost was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs in 1990.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
—Lake City (pop. 375) began as a silver mining camp in 1874 and boasts more than 75 late 19th-century buildings in its downtown. Lake City is the only incorporated town in Hinsdale County (pop. 790), one of the least populated counties in the state.
With 558 residents, San Juan County is Colorado’s least-populated county.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
––A small memorial and cemetery are all that remain of Camp Amache in Granada (pop. 640). The World War II Japanese internment camp, one of 10 in the nation and the only one in Colorado, housed about 7,500 Japanese-Americans who were forced to move out of their homes in 1942. In 2006, Congress established a $38 million program to restore the 10 internment camps, including Camp Amache, also called the Granada Relocation Center.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has designated its Supercenters in Aurora and McKinney, Texas (pop. 54,369), as “experimental stores.” Both were built in 2005 using energy-conservation technologies, such as solar- and wind-generated power, radiant floor heating, and recovered cooking and motor oil for a portion of the heating fuel.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
—The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant in Ames, near Ophir (pop. 113), was one of the world’s first commercial high-voltage alternating-current generation and transmission systems. Finished in 1891, the plant produced electricity for area mines.
Eric Jacobson, operator of the hydroelectric power plant at Bridal Veil Falls near Telluride (pop. 2,221), restored and lives in a house atop the working power plant. The hydroelectric generator originally supplied power to a silver mine, which closed in the 1970s.
first appeared: 1/27/2008
—The site of one of the worst massacres in the history of the American West was dedicated in April as the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site, in Kiowa County (pop. 1,622). On Nov. 29, 1864, the Third Regiment of Colorado Volunteers, under the command of Col. John Chivington, ambushed and killed about 200 members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian tribes. The historic site encompasses 12,500 acres, of which 2,400 are managed by the National Park Service.
“Rambo” in Crested Butte (pop. 1,529) is said to be the steepest-cut ski run in North America, with some sections approaching a 60-degree angle.
first appeared: 1/13/2008
—Encompassing nearly 500,000 acres, the Weminuche Wilderness is the state’s largest wilderness area and includes three of Colorado’s “fourteeners,” peaks surpassing 14,000 feet. Located in the San Juan and Rio Grande national forests, the wilderness forms a quadrangle between Durango (pop. 13,922), Pagosa Springs (pop. 1,591), Creede (pop. 377) and Silverton (pop. 531).
first appeared: 12/30/2007
—Gay Balfour of Cortez (pop. 7,977) has found a solution to a doggone problem for many landowners in the West: prairie dogs. He built a vacuum with a 4-inch plastic hose that sucks the burrowing rodents from their underground homes and into a foam-rubber-lined tank. Balfour relocates the unwanted animals to lands where they are welcome.
In 1997, Julie Aigner-Clark of Denver wanted to share her love of classical music and poetry with her newborn daughter, but she couldn’t find videos geared toward infants. With borrowed equipment, she made her own video. That baby step led to founding the Baby Einstein Co., which sells DVDs, videos, music CDs, books and toys. She sold the multimillion-dollar business to The Walt Disney Co. in 2001.
first appeared: 12/2/2007
—Since 1909, people have posed at the “1-mile high” marker on the steps of the state Capitol in Denver—but on different steps. Improved surveying techniques have staked the 1-mile—or 5,280-foot—elevation on three different steps. The original marker was the 15th step; the marker moved to the 18th step in 1969, then to the 13th step in 2003.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—The state ranks first in the nation in the production of proso millet, a grain that is a key ingredient in most birdseed. Much of the crop is grown in Washington County (pop. 4,926) in the northeastern part of the state.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
Every October, residents of Manitou Springs (pop. 4,980) hold the Emma Crawford Coffin Race and Festival in memory of a young woman who settled in the health resort town in the late 1800s seeking a cure for her tuberculosis. Crawford died just before she was to marry and was buried, as she had requested, atop nearby Red Mountain. After years of stormy weather, the mountain’s granite gave way and Crawford’s coffin remains washed down; she was reburied in the Manitou Springs Cemetery. Her unfortunate circumstances are recalled during the wacky fall festival by runners who push decorated coffins with “Emmas” inside.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
—Don Walker of Florence (pop. 3,653) landed a state-record lake trout in May at Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison (pop. 5,409). The whopper measured 44.25 inches long and weighed 50 pounds, 5 ounces, which is nearly 4 pounds larger than the previous record lake trout—caught by his brother-in-law Larry Cornell of Pueblo in 2003.
first appeared: 10/21/2007
Astronomer Kenneth L. Franklin of Loveland (pop. 50,608), who helped pinpoint the first sound to come from another planet and who invented a watch to be used on the moon, died in June at age 84. He was born in Alameda, Calif., in 1923.
first appeared: 10/21/2007
—The Wyman Living History Museum near Craig (pop. 9,189) depicts Colorado’s past through the collections of Lou Wyman, who founded the museum last year. Exhibits include Colorado license plates dating to 1912, a chain saw collection, a steam tractor and other implements of the state’s pioneer history that Wyman has been collecting since 1949.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
When Frank Crail moved his family to Durango (pop. 13,922), he considered opening either a car wash or a chocolate shop to support his dream of raising his seven children in a small, quiet town. In 1981, he opened the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, which today boasts more than 300 franchises. The candy in each shop is made in full view of customers using traditional cooking utensils, such as copper kettles on gas-fired stoves, and marble slab cooling tables.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
—Local lore has it that the mysterious lights dancing among the headstones of the Silver Cliff Cemetery in Silver Cliff (pop. 512) are the ghosts of pioneer miners. Scientific explanations for the town’s dazzling attraction include reflections of street and house lights bouncing off the marble gravestones and phosphorescence from decaying wood.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
—A pioneer in science and public health, Florence Sabin was the first woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins Medical School (1900), the first woman to become a full professor at the same medical college (1917), and the first woman elected president of the American Association of Anatomists (1924). Born in Central City (pop. 515) in 1871, Sabin played a key role in developing Colorado’s public health program.
first appeared: 9/9/2007
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