Open Internet Collections
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History ColoradoEstablished in 1879, History Colorado is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and an agency of the State of Colorado under the Department of Higher Education. We are committed to serving all Coloradans and offer access to our state’s history through enriching experiences at eleven museums and historic sites, with dynamic and relevant exhibits and activities. We steward about 15 million objects, photographs, and archival resources that make up the State’s collection, and serve tens of thousands of learners of all ages through dynamic programs.
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Colorado State ArchivesColorado State Archives exists to ensure the preservation of the State’s permanent legal records and information and to promote their use by the citizens of Colorado. They are the legal repository for selected historical and contemporary records and information generated by state and local governments in Colorado.
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Denver Public Library Special CollectionsMaps, photos, neighborhood history and more from the Denver Public Library.
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Chicano, Hispanic, and Latino Research GuideFrom Denver Public Library, The Special Collections and Archives Department has a rich collection that highlights the lives of activists, politicians, artists, and civic leaders. The library has over 70 manuscript and photograph collections containing original correspondence, scrapbooks, founding documents, meeting minutes, every type of historical photographic format, and much more.
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African American Research GuidesDenver Public Library list of collections that highlight important African Americans in Colorado.
Books and e-books
Lakota Texts : Narratives of Lakota Life and Culture in the Twentieth Century
Lakota Texts is a treasure trove of stories told in the original language by modern Lakota women who make their home in Denver, Colorado. Sometimes witty, often moving, and invariably engaging and fascinating, these stories are both autobiographical and cultural. The stories present personal experiences along with lessons the women have learned or were taught about Lakota history, culture, and legends. The women share aspects of their own lives, including such rituals as powwows, the sweatlodge, and rites of puberty.
Colorado Women : a history
Colorado Women is the first full-length chronicle of the lives, roles, and contributions of women in Colorado from prehistory through the modern day. A national leader in women's rights, Colorado was one of the first states to approve suffrage and the first to elect a woman to its legislature.
Asians in Colorado : A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State
Providing the most comprehensive examination to date of Asians in the Centennial State, William Wei addresses a wide range of experiences, from anti-Chinese riots in late nineteenth-century Denver to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans at the Amache concentration camp to the more recent influx of Southeast Asian refugees and South Asian tech professionals. Drawing on a wealth of historical sources, Wei reconstructs what life was like for the early Chinese and Japanese pioneers, and he pays special attention to the different challenges faced by those in urban versus rural areas.
Denver’s Chinatown 1875-1900 : Gone But Not Forgotten
Denver's Chinatown 1875-1900: Gone But Not Forgotten explores the coming of the Chinese to the Western frontier and their experiences in Denver during its early development from a supply station for the mining camps to a flourishing urban center.
Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West : First in Line for the Rio Grande
Water has always been one of the American West's most precious and limited resources. The earliest inhabitants--Native Americans and later Hispanics--learned to share the region's scant rainfall and snowmelt. When Euro-Americans arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they brought with them not only an interest in large-scale commercial agriculture but also new practices and laws about access to, and control of, the water essential for their survival and success. This included the concept of private rights to water, a critical resource that had previously been regarded as a communal asset.
Denver beer : a history of Mile High brewing
Brewed in 1859 near what is now the heart of downtown, Denver's first beer quenched the thirst of fortune hunters following the gold rush. It lubricated the city's transformation from Wild West town to the Queen City of the Plains until Prohibition brought a sudden end to the brewing culture. By 1979, only the famed Coors brewery remained. But then something frothy happened. Brian Dunn, John Hickenlooper and many others began satiating locals with liquid gold. The craft beer movement blossomed. Now well over seventy breweries strong, it is filled with the same pioneering spirit and irrepressible optimism that the miners embodied.
The death of an heir : Adolph Coors III and the murder that rocked an American brewing dynasty
The Death of an Heir is Philip Jett's chilling true account of the Coors family's gilded American dream that turned into a nightmare when a meticulously plotted kidnapping went horribly wrong.
Library Databases
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Denver Post Collection This link opens in a new windowExplore Denver history through local news, events, and people with Denver Post Collection. Search current and archived issues with full-color newspaper pages, full-text articles and content only published online. Coverage from 1989-current.
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Colorado Historical Newspaper Collection This link opens in a new windowHere are articles from 160+ Colorado newspapers in digital form, dating 1859-1923 from 23 cities and 18 counties, courtesy of the Colorado Historical Society. Selected titles, including the camp newspapers of the 10th Mountain Division, have coverage after 1923.
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Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880 This link opens in a new windowA digital collection of 71,133 documents from Lost Cause Press.
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CEDIS This link opens in a new windowColorado business, economic and demographic data at the state, county and municipal levels.
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Colorado Revised Statutes This link opens in a new windowThe current edition of the Colorado Statutes and Constitution in a searchable version.
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Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life This link opens in a new windowOne of the darker chapters in American history and one of the lesser discussed events of World War II was the forced internment, during the war, of an important segment of the American population-persons of Japanese descent. This collection, consisting of 25 individual titles, documents life in the internment camps.
Regis Archives
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Chicano Activism Newspaper CollectionThe Chicano Activism Newspaper Collection is organized into two series which correlate to each newspaper. The collection is composed of 14 issues of La Cucaracha and 8 issues of El Diario de la Gente which document and report on the Chicano Movement within Colorado during the 1970's and 1980's.