Promises of gold brought the first waves of European-Americans to Colorado in the 1859s. They found riches and built cities that never should have lasted. Readers will discover the golden beginnings of towns like Leadville and Boulder and meet the early settlers and miners who brought them to life. The next promise was always right around the corner, and the optimistic pioneers who came west simply never gave up. Silver flooded the state with more riches and more people, until the bubble burst and Colorado faded from the forefront of the American dream. The stories of parties headed west and the vibrant characters that populate them are the stuff of legend. The state is booming again today, with a vibrant beer, marijuana and energy economy epitomizing the 21st century American dream. This is the history of Colorado through the lens of its uniquely mythic economy, from boom to boom and into the future.

This is a thoroughly revised edition of the Historical Atlas of Colorado, which was coauthored by Tom Noel and published in 1994. Chock-full of the best and latest information on Colorado, this new edition features thirty new chapters, updated text, more than 100 color maps and 100 color photos, and a best-of listing of Colorado authors and books, as well as a guide to hundreds of tourist attractions. Colorado received its name (Spanish for ""red"") after much debate and many possibilities, including Idaho (an ""Indian"" name meaning ""gem of the mountains"" later discovered to be a fabrication) and Yampa (Ute for ""bear""). Noel includes other little-known but significant facts about the state, from its status as first state in the Union to elect women to its legislature, to its controversial ""highest state"" designation, elevated by the 2013 legalization of recreational cannabis. Noel and cartographer Carol Zuber-Mallison map and describe Colorado's spectacular geography and its fascinating past. The book's eight parts survey natural Colorado, from rivers and mountains to dinosaurs and mammals; history, from prehistoric peoples to twenty-first-century Color-oddities; mining and manufacturing, from the gold rush to alternative energy sources; agriculture, including wineries and brewpubs; transportation, from stagecoach lines to light rail; modern Colorado, from the New Deal to the present (including politics, history, and information on lynchings, executions, and prisons); recreation, covering not only hiking and skiing but also literary locales and Colorado in the movies; and tourism, encompassing historic landmarks, museums, and even cemeteries. In short, this book has information - and surprises - that anyone interested in Colorado will relish.

Since 1976, newcomers and natives alike have learned about the rich history of the magnificent place they call home from "Colorado: A History of the Centennial State". In the fifth edition, co-authors Carl Abbott, Stephen J Leonard, and Thomas J Noel incorporate recent events, scholarship, and insights about the state in an accessible volume that general readers and students will enjoy. The new edition tells of conflicts, shifting alliances, and changing ways of life as Hispanic, European, and African American settlers flooded into a region that was already home to Native Americans. Providing a balanced treatment of the entire states history -- from Grand Junction to Lamar and from Trinidad to Craig -- the authors also reveal how Denver and its surrounding communities developed and gained influence. While continuing to elucidate the significant impact of mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism on Colorado, the fifth edition broadens and focuses its coverage by consolidating material on Native Americans into one chapter and adding a new chapter on sports history. The authors also expand their discussion of the twentieth century with updated sections on the environment, economy, politics, and recent cultural conflicts. New illustrations, updated statistics, and an extensive bibliography including Internet resources also enhance this edition.

This unique historical atlas will help you to comprehend quickly Colorado's geography and its fascinating past - from the prehistoric Indian cultures to the modern metropolises, from the Spanish and French explorers to the modern ski resorts. The full-page, clearly drawn maps and the lively text provide easy access to the essential information about the Highest State.Colorado's history has been played out on a spectacular landscape. The highest mountains of the continental divide cut the state in half with a two-mile-high barrier. This rocky obstacle long served as a tribal and international boundary and as an impediment to exploration and settlement. All that changed in 1858 when gold was discovered on the South Platte River. Within two years, 100,000 people rushed to Colorado, the home of instant cities and instant millionaires. Quickly, the state evolved from a most rugged and remote frontier into a booming mining and agricultural center. Compiled by three leading authorities on Colorado history and geography, this atlas is designed for both students and tourists. Scholars will profit from the maps of little-known phenomena such as the earliest county lines and the explorers' routes. Weekend tourists will learned to follow old trails, stagecoach lines, and narrow-gauge railroads to ghost towns, historic districts, literary landmarks, quaint bed-and-breakfasts, and other attractions. For easy use, the atlas is well organized into sections on geography, political boundaries, mining, transportation, settlement and urbanization, and recreational and historic areas. The extensive references for each of the sixty maps are a gold mine of detailed and esoteric literature. No Colorado traveler, whether in an armchair or hiking back country, should be without the Historical Atlas of Colorado.

A Short History of Denver covers more than 150 years of Denver’s rich history. The book recounts the takeover of Native American lands, the founding of small towns on the South Platte River at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and the creation of a city, which by 1890 was among the nation’s major western urban centers. Leonard and Noel tell the stories of powerful economic and political leaders such as John Evans, Horace Tabor, and David Moffat, and delve into the contributions of women, including Elizabeth Byers and Margaret (Molly) Brown. The book also recognizes the importance of the city’s ethnic communities, including African Americans, Asians, Latinos, and many others. A Short History of Denver portrays the city’s twentieth-century ups and downs, including the City Beautiful movement, political corruption, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here readers will find the meat and potatoes of economic and political history and much more, including sports history, social history, and the history of metropolitan-wide efforts to preserve the past.

Prostitution thrived in pioneer Colorado. Mining was the principal occupation and men outnumbered women more than twenty to one. Jan MacKell provides a detailed overview of the business between 1860 and 1930, focusing her research on the mining towns of Cripple Creek, Salida, Colorado City, and similar boomtown communities. She used census data, Sanborn maps, city directories, property records, marriage records, and court records to document and trace the movements of the women over the course of their careers, uncovering work histories, medical problems, and numerous relocations from town to town. She traces many to their graves, through years filled with abuse, disease, narcotics, and violence.

MacKell has unearthed numerous colorful and often touching stories, like that of the boy raised in a brothel who was invited to play with a neighbor's children and replied, "No, my mother is a whore and says I am to stay at home."

"Delicacy, humor, respect, and compassion are among the merits of this book. Although other authors have flirted with Colorado's commercial sex, Jan MacKell provides a detailed overview. She has been researching these elusive women for the last fifteen years. Such persistence allows her to offer rich detail on shady ladies who rarely used their real names or even stuck with the same professional name for long."--Thomas J. Noel, from the Introduction

During Denver's wild ride from frontier mining town to twentieth-century metropolis, the city's saloons, like those of many other western frontier towns, played a vital role in the development of the city. Now with a new preface, Tom Noel's classic study, The City and the Saloon, is a liquid history of how Denver's bars both shaped and reflected the Mile High city's birth and adolescence.