Colorado Trivia & Tidbits - Page 22

Looking for Colorado trivia? Try our list Colorado little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Steamboat Springs (pop. 6,768), now a popular resort area, was given its unlikely name by 19th-century trappers. The trappers heard the gurgling of a hot springs in the area and believed it made a sound similar to that of a steamboat.

first appeared: 6/3/2001

Leadville (pop. 2,629) is the highest incorporated town in the United States. At about 10,152 feet, the community has been nicknamed “The Cloud City.”

first appeared: 5/27/2001

Colorado is better known for its mountains than its deserts, but in the state’s southwestern mountains near Mosca can be found 700-foot-tall sand dunes, the tallest in North America. The dunes are part of the 39-square-mile Great Sand Dunes National Monument, an area created over the centuries by winds carrying sediment from the banks of the Rio Grand east across the San Luis Valley to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

first appeared: 5/20/2001

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (pop. 3,184), said to be the inspiration for Stephen King’s book The Shining, was opened in 1909 by the inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile. Freelan O. Stanley used a fleet of his own Steamers to bring guests to his hotel.

first appeared: 5/20/2001

Fred Harman, a real-life cowboy, used settings from Colorado to create the fictional town of Rimrock, the home of his popular comic strip character Red Ryder. A museum showcasing Harman’s Western art can be found at his ranch in Pagosa Springs (pop. 1,207).

first appeared: 5/13/2001

Colorado is the only state in the nation that turned down a chance to host the Olympics. It was the leading contender for the 1976 winter Olympics, but residents—concerned about the event’s cost and its impact on the state’s tourism—voted against hosting the games, which were held in Innsbruck, Austria.

first appeared: 5/6/2001

Margaret Tobin Brown, a Denver resident whose husband made a fortune in the gold mines of Leadville (pop. 2,629), earned the title “The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown” after surviving the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and helping to command her lifeboat. Called “Maggie” throughout her life, she never went by the nickname Molly. That name was applied to her first in a 1960 play about her life.

first appeared: 4/29/2001

Dinosaur National Monument near the aptly named town of Dinosaur (pop. 324) is home to the largest quarry of Jurassic Period dinosaur bones every discovered.

first appeared: 4/29/2001

The world’s first commercial alternating current hydroelectric power generating plant was built on the San Miguel River in 1891 to provide power for the Gold King Mine, about three miles away near Telluride (pop. 1,309). Earlier hydroelectric plants produced direct current.

first appeared: 4/22/2001

Howelson Hill, a ski area in Steamboat Springs (pop. 6,695), has been the training area for 47 Olympic skiers since the Winter Olympics began in 1924.

first appeared: 4/15/2001

More than 1,000 butterflies of at least 50 different species can be found in the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver. The pavilion’s temperature is maintained at a constant 80 degrees with 70 percent humidity.

first appeared: 4/15/2001

A major tourist attraction near Rye (pop. 215) is “Bishop’s Castle,” one man’s continuing effort to build a castle in Colorado. For more than 30 years, Jim Bishop has been working alone, hand-setting tons of rock to build the three-story castle. It features towers climbing to more than 100 feet, a glass-encased third floor, and a spiral stone staircase.

first appeared: 4/8/2001

The name Colorado comes from a Spanish word meaning “colored red.” It was first given to the Colorado River because of its reddish water.

first appeared: 4/8/2001

The quarry in Marble (pop. 64) was once the largest marble source in the world. It produced the stone used in the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C.

first appeared: 4/1/2001

Colorado’s mountains are among its most distinctive features. Fifty-four are more than 14,000 feet high—including Mt. Elbert at 14,431 feet, 2.72 miles above sea level. And 1,140 mountains are 10,000 feet or higher.

first appeared: 3/25/2001

Katharine Lee Bates wrote America the Beautiful in 1893 after she was inspired by the view from the “purple mountain majesties” of the 14,000-foot Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs.

first appeared: 3/18/2001

Deer Trail (pop. 476) claims to be the site of the first “truly American rodeo,” which occurred July 4, 1869. Cowboys camping on the cattle trail running from Texas to Cheyenne, Wyo., met that day to match their skills at various ranch duties, competing—for the first time—within an elaborate set of rules.

first appeared: 3/18/2001

The red marble in the Colorado State Capitol building can never be replaced. The distinctive marble, called “Beulah Red,” was found in the foothills of the Greenhorn Mountains. It was cut, polished, and installed in the capitol between 1894 and 1900. Except for small pieces around the fireplace in the Pueblo County Courthouse, all the marble in the only known deposit of red marble in the world went into the Colorado State Capitol.

first appeared: 3/11/2001

Actor and director Robert Redford attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship. Redford later portrayed a baseball player in The Natural, a 1984 movie that co-starred Glenn Close.

first appeared: 3/11/2001

When silver prices plummeted in 1896, businessmen in the mining town of Leadville (pop. 2,629) sought to bolster the local economy by financing a spectacular ice castle. The Leadville Ice Palace encompassed five acres and featured 90-foot Norman-style towers in the front and 60-foot towers in the rear. An ice-skating rink, a grand ballroom, a dining room, and enormous ice and snow sculptures were inside, all illuminated by incandescent electric lights.

first appeared: 3/4/2001

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