Happy Birthday Colorado! Today is August 1st and our state is 143 years old today.
As a 50 year old Colorado company, we wanted to remind you what Colorado Day is and why we might want to celebrate it.
Here’s a short quiz, that appeared in the Denver Post a few years ago, about Colorado Day and some other points of Colorado history.
Colorado Day quiz By Ed Quillen
1) When is Colorado Day?
2) What is the oldest continuously operating business in Colorado?
3) Where is the most senior water right in Colorado?
4) When did the Colorado River start originating in Colorado?
5) Why is there a big “A” on a hillside west of Fort Collins?
6) Colorado is known as “the mother of rivers.” What’s the longest of her offspring?
7) In 1995, Ben Campbell switched from Democrat to Republican. But he was not the first U.S. senator from Colorado to change parties. Who was?
8) For whom did Coloradans vote in the 1876 presidential election?
9) What Continental Divide pass in Colorado was crossed by two railroad lines?
10) When did Colorado women get the right to vote?
Answers:
It opened in 1857 as a general store owned by Don Dario Gallegos.
4) Until 1921, the Colorado River began at the junction of the Grand and Green rivers in Utah. That year, our legislature changed the name of the Grand to the Colorado. But the Grand lives on in place names like Grand County and Grand Junction. It would be simpler to discuss Western Slope water issues if we’d go back to calling it the Grand.
8) Coloradans did not vote in the 1876 election; that year the General Assembly chose the state’s three presidential electors, who were Republicans and gave Rutherford B. Hayes his one-vote margin in the Electoral College. It was the only time, until 2000, that Colorado’s electoral votes made any difference in a presidential election.
And now you can celebrate Colorado Day, whenever it is.
Ed Quillen was a freelance writer, history buff, publisher of Colorado Central Magazine in Salida and frequent contributor to The Denver Post.
And we also wanted to remind you that as part of a Colorado Day tradition, all 41 of our Colorado State Parks have free entrance fees on the “official” Colorado Day next Monday, August 5, 2019).
Our regular business hours are M-F, 8am -5pm.