The Battle of Milk Creek was the major military engagement during the Meeker Incident, a revolt by a Nuche (Ute people) community in northwest Colorado in September 1879. The battle began on September 29, when Utes opened fire from the heights above Milk…

The Beaver Creek Massacre occurred on June 19, 1885, when white cattlemen killed six Ute Mountain Utes at a camp on Beaver Creek, about sixteen miles north of Dolores in present Montezuma County. Stemming from conflicts over the federal government’s…

As Europe stumbled into war in late July and early August 1914, Coloradans viewed the conflict with mixed emotions. Some favored the English, French, Italians, Russians, and their allies. Others preferred the Germans and Austrians and their friends. The…

The Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting was perpetrated by two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people and wounded 24 others before taking their own lives. At the time, it…

On November 21, 1927, members of a Colorado militia fired into a crowd of hundreds of striking miners in the Weld County town of Serene, killing six and wounding twenty. The Columbine Massacre showed that little had changed in Colorado in terms of…

On January 14–15, 1865, immigrant Holon Godfrey found his family homestead in Colorado Territory under attack by about 100 Indigenous warriors engaged in a campaign of reprisal attacks after the Sand Creek Massacre of November 1864. The fierce battle at…

The Lake County War of 1874–75 grew out of a personal dispute over land and water rights in an area where increasing settlement was making both resources relatively scarce. The conflict ultimately turned into a test of law, justice, and state legitimacy…

The Ludlow Massacre began on the morning of April 20, 1914, when a battle broke out between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners at their tent colony outside of Ludlow in Las Animas County. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but the…

The Meeker Incident (September 29–October 5, 1879) was a Ute uprising at the White River Indian Agency on the Ute Reservation in present-day Rio Blanco County. Tension had been building on the reservation for months as Indian Agent Nathan Meeker…

During World War II, Denver’s war production industry expanded to include the production of ship parts bound for assembly on the West Coast. Known colloquially as “the Rocky Mountain Fleet,” dozens of ships would eventually see production at the Colorado…

Colorado’s role in the American Civil War (1861–65) was part of a broader geopolitical contest: control of the American Southwest. The war began in 1861, just two years after the Colorado Gold Rush and mere months after Congress established the Colorado…