Welcome to the Colorado entry of Content Bash’s ongoing 50 Nifty States project! From Alabama to Florida to Hawaii, we’re covering them all. The 8th state is 6th in alphabetical order (after California), and we were able to dig up dozens of cool facts about the state that is literally a mile high. Read on for tons of interesting and fun facts about Colorado, and stay tuned for more in our series — like Maine and Maryland and Kansas and Indiana and Idaho and Kentucky.

What is Colorado Known For?

1. Weed! In 2000, Colorado became the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana. It was the first state to legalize industrial marijuana in 2013, and the first state to do so for recreational marijuana in 2014. This makes Colorado the coolest of all 50 states.

2. Colorado is also known for being one of the Rocky Mountain states, part of the 3,000-mile stretch from British Columbia, Canada all the way down to New Mexico.

3. Sports fans are well aware of the Colorado Rockies in MLB, the Denver Broncos of the NFL, and the Denver Nuggets of the NBA. The Colorado Avalanche of the NHL also play in Denver.

4. Colorado is known for the great outdoors, and the outdoors are perhaps the greatest in the country. The state is famous for its breathtaking landscape of mountains and picturesque nature-loving experiences. Mountains, plains, and desert are all gorgeously represented within the state.

5. Denver is known for being the Mile High City. In fact, if you climb up the stairs of the state capital building in Denver, you will be exactly one mile above sea level when you reach the 13th step. Naturally, many of the Colorado facts you’ll read ahead will have something to do with being so high above sea level. Approximately 75% of all land in the United States over 10,000 feet are in Colorado.

Facts About Colorado History

6. As far as we know, humans have been inhabiting Colorado for more than 14,000 years. There is a archaeological site with artifacts dating from around 8710 BC located in Larimer County called the Lindenmeier Site.

7. The area that would eventually become known as Colorado was first explored by Europeans in the late 1500s. They found the muddy earth to be red-colored, and since Colorado is Spanish for “colored red,” that’s how it got its name.

8. Many of the first United States settlers were attracted to Colorado with the discovery of gold in Cherry Creek, which is now Denver.

9. Colorado became the 38th state on August 1, 1876, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation that officially admited the state into the Union.

10. March 17, 1905 was an unusual day in Colorado history. Three governors were in office! Not at the same time, of course. First, Alva Adams was forced to resign due to election improprieties when he somehow got 717 votes even though there were only 100 registered voters. James H. Peabody (who ran against Adams) immediately replaced him, but on the condition that he resign immediately. His Lieutenant Governor Jesse F. McDonald took over.

Official Colorado State Symbols

11. The badass Stegosaurus was named the official Colorado state fossil in 1982. It’s also the official dinosaur of the state because the first Stegosaurus fossil was found near Morrison in 1876.

12. The lark bunting is Colorado’s official bird. Check it out!

13. The western tiger salamander is the official amphibian of Colorado.

14. There are two official state songs: “Where the Columbines Grow,” adopted in 1915, and “Rocky Mountain High,” adopted in 2007.

15. Colorado has an official cactus, and it’s the Claret cut cactus.

16. The Greenback cutthroat trout sounds dangerous, doesn’t it? That’s the official fish of the state.

17. The lovely Rocky Mountain columbine is the state flower, and it’s actually illegal to pick one on public land. Look how pretty it is!

18. The Colorado Hairstreak is a very pretty purple butterfly, and in 1996, a bunch of 4th graders were successful in lobbying for it to be the official insect of Colorado.

19. Colorado has an official mammal, and it’s the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

20. The western painted turtle is the official reptile.

21. The official Colorado motto is the Latin phrase Nil sine numine, which can be interpreted in several ways. The official translation according to the Colorado framers of the resolution for adoption is “Nothing without the Deity.”

22. The Colorado blue spruce — which is the official tree — can grow up the 75 feet hight and spread out 20 feet at full maturity. The scientific Latin name is Picea pungens, with pungens meaning “sharply pointed,” referring to the needles.

23. The official nickname is the Centennial State because it joined the Union in 1876 — exactly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence.

Weird and Cool Colorado Facts

24. Denver International Airport is twice as big as the island of Manhattan!

25. The very first Chipotle opened in Denver in 1993 and it’s been fast-casual history ever since.

26. It’s possible that the first rodeo in the world to ever rodeo was in Deer Trail. It should be noted that a lot of towns in America — like Pecos, Texas, Payson, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, among others — also make that claim to fame. However, a guy named Clifford P. Westermeier, who wrote Man, Beast, Dust: The Story of Rodeo, found an old copy of the Field and Farm Journal of Denver that contain a report on an organized competition for cowboys that took place on the Fourth of July in 1869. This predates any other rodeo we know of and if it’s the first, then an Englishman cowboy named Emilnie Gardenshire and his horse Montana Blizzard was the first rodeo champion.

27. According to Title 12, Article 6, Part 3 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, you cannot buy a car on Sundays in Colorado.

28. In Aspen, it is illegal to throw a snowball at a building or at someone else. Technically, it’s a violation of a local anti-missile law, which means, slingshots and catapults are also illegal.

29. Colorado once turned down an opportunity to host the Olympics. They won the bid for the 1976 Winter Olympics, but voters turned it down because to be honest, hosting the Olympics is a true pain-in-the-ass for any city. 

30. The teddy bear was invented in Colorado. Because Teddy Roosevelt formed such a great relationship with the staff at the Hotel Colorado, a whole bunch of maids created one to present to him.

31. You’re not allowed to herd pigs in public in Boulder. It’s illegal.

32. The big-ass parking boot you get on your tire for not paying your parking tickets was invented in 1944 by a guy named Frank Marugg — who was actually a violinist who played with the Denver Symphony. Ever the handyman, he even made his own violin.

33. Nikola Tesla conducted high-voltage electrical power experiments out of his laboratory in Colorado Springs between 1899 and 1900.

34. The actual birthplace of the cheeseburger is debatable, but the trademark was awarded in 1935 to Louis Ballast, who owned the Humpty-Dumpty Barrel Drive-in Denver. Unfortunately for cheeseburger-lovers, it’s no longer in operation, and the building is now a Key Bank.

35. The Jolly Rancher candy was invented in Colorado by Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, who named the hard rectangular glass confectionery after the candy store they owned in Golden.

36. Live in Boulder and own a llama? You are not allowed to let it graze on public land.

37. Once upon a time in the late 1960s, surgeon general Stanley Biber was asked by a patient if he could do a sex-change operation. He did his first one in Mount San Rafael in Trinidad and from 1969 to 2003, he performed an estimated 6,000 sex-reassignment surgeries. He stopped practicing because he couldn’t find suitable insurance, but not before Trinidad became known as the “Sex Change Capital of the World.”

38. The root beer float was invented in 1893 by Frank J. Wisner, who owned a brewing company in Cripple Creek. Inspired by how the snowy peaks on Cow Mountain looked like soda topped by ice cream, it was called a Black Cow.

39. Just like driving and driving, drinking and riding a horse in Boulder is not allowed.

Who are Famous People from Colorado?

40. East High School in Denver has a lot of prestigious alumni in the movie business. They include Hattie McDaniel (Oscar winner for Gone with the Wind and the first Black person to win an Academy Award), Oscar nominee Don Cheadle (who also has a Grammy award for his contribution to the Miles Ahead soundtrack), Foxy Brown and Jackie Brown star Pam Grier, influential silent film comedian Harold Lloyd, as well as his contemporary Douglas Fairbanks. Incidentally, Fairbanks was expelled for cutting the wires on the school piano.

41. More well-known actresses who have Colorado roots include five-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams (who was raised in Castle Rock), Supergirl star Melissa Benoist (who was born in Littleton), Elvira performer Cassandra Peterson (who is from Colorado Springs), comedian Kristen Schaal (born in Longmont), and Mary Jo Catlett (born in Denver), who does the voice of Mrs. Puff on SpongeBob SquarePants.

42. Other actors from Colorado include Toy Story and Home Improvement star Tim Allen (born in Denver), Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder (born in Fort Collins), and Lon Chaney (born in Colorado Springs), the silent film star of so many famous monster movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.

43. Bandleader and composer Glenn Miller was born in Iowa, but moved to Fort Morgan as a teenager and was a high school football star. One of the most popular musicians in the history of popular music, the beginning of Miller’s professional ambitions were in Colorado.

44. Colorado has produced an incredible number of astronauts. More than five dozen astronauts have some connection to Colorado, whether they were born or grew up in the state, or came through the aerospace engineering program at University of Colorado Boulder.

45. Prominent professional athletes born in Colorado include well-mustachioed Hall-of-Fame relief pitcher Goose Gossage (Colorado Springs), three-time Indianapolis 500 winning driver Bobby Unser (Colorado Springs), snowboarding Olympic medalist Arielle Gold (Steamboat Springs), and two-time Cy Young Award winning pitcher Roy Halladay (Denver), who was elected posthumously to the Hall of Fame in 2019.

Film & Music in Colorado

46. Serious cinephiles and movie snobs look forward to the Aspen Filmfest every year, which has been an annual event since its inception in 1979.

47. Pikes Peak is so gorgeously breathtaking that it inspired Katherine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful.”

48. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, considered one of the best records in the history of indie rock, was recorded at the now-defunct Pet Sounds Recording Studio in Denver.

49. A few miles west of Denver is the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, an open-air music venue noted for being built into a rock structure that helps amplifies sound. Though it’s been opened to the public since 1941, it hosted private performances starting in at least 1906, when Cosmopolitan Magazine publisher John Brisben Walker put on a production of Grand Opening of the Garden of Titans. In 1983, it was the site of U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky.

50. In addition to the famous U2 performance, other artists that have recorded and released live material from the venue include Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Nicks, The Moody Blues, Widespread Panic, Steve Martin, Incubus, and, um, John Tesh.

51. John Denver was born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. in New Mexico, but his stage name created an immediate connection to Colorado and he lived in Aspen for much of his life. He was named the poet laureate of the state in 1974, and his 1975 Rocky Mountain Christmas special at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver was watched by 65 million people — the biggest audience that an ABC music program had at the time. In 2007, the state adopted “Rocky Mountain High” as one of its state songs.

52. Other musical acts with Colorado roots include Earth, Wind & Fire, The Apples in Stereo, Judy Collins, The String Cheese Incident, Christine Front Drive, and The Fray.

53. Some of the more well-known movies with scenes shot in Colorado include Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Peter Farrelly’s Dumb and Dumber, and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

54. For Country Music Month in October 1978, the music director for 740 KSSS Colorado Springs successfully petitioned governor Richard Lamm to temporarily change the state song to Merle Haggard’s “Colorado.”

Colorado Geography and Topography

55. Denver is the capital of Colorado, and it’s also the largest city.

56. Colorado is a pretty big state; it’s 8th in total area at 104,000 square miles. About 376 square miles of that is water.

57. Grand Mesa near Grand Junction is the largest flat-top mountain in the world.

58. Want to drive across Colorado? It’s 380 miles north to south, and 280 miles from east to west.

59. The largest natural hot springs pool in the world is in Glenwood Springs. It’s basically a two-block long pool by the Hotel Colorado. Speaking of the Hotel Colorado, Teddy Roosevelt loved to stay there. He visited Colorado often during the early 1900s and led a six-week hunting excursion near Glenwood Springs and became especially fond of the area.

60. Mount Elbert is the highest point in Colorado, at 14,440 feet above sea level.

61. Even at its lowest point, Colorado is still pretty high above sea level. In fact, it’s the highest lowest elevation point in any state. Flowing out of Yuma County and into Kansas, the Arikaree River is 3,317 feet.

62. There are 64 counties in Colorado.

Tourist Attractions and Places to Visit in Colorado

63. You know that big, spooky, haunted hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining? It was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (though it should be noted that the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film was not actually shot there). The hotel even takes advantage of this claim to fame with special packages and memorabilia from the gift ship.

64. Want to drive over the highest suspension bridge in the United States? Take your car to the Royal Gorge Bridge in Cañon City, which is a thousand feet above the Arkansas River. If you’re not too overcome by vertigo, you can walk across the bridge and admire the breathtaking natural wonder of the gorge.

65. The Four Corners Monument is located on the southwestern-most point in Colorado, where it borders Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Lay on your back and it’s literally possible to be located in four states at the exact same time!

66. Park Theatre in Estes Park is the oldest movie house in the western United States that is still in operation. Built in 1913, it’s also an architectural marvel, with an 80-foot tower with neon outlining.

67. Ever wanted to see an alligator sunbath in the snow? You can at the Colorado Alligator Farm! It’s located in Mosca and has been opened since 1990, and even hosts gator wrestling classes.

68. Like Merry-go-rounds? One of the oldest in the country is the the Kit Carson County Carousel in Burlington. Built in 1905, it’s the only antique carousel that still has the original paint on the animals and scenery! Even the price of admission to ride is a throwback: only 25 cents.

69. Want to travel on the highest railway train in the world? Catch a ride on the Pikes Peak Cog Railway in Manitou Springs, which climbs 14,115 feet above seal level. It’s been in operation since 1891, although it is currently inactive while they replace the old Abt rack railway system with a new Strub system. It expects to reopen in May 2021.

70. Sure, you could go to a Denver and watch the Rockies impersonate a Major League baseball team for the next few years but true baseball fans should check out the Rocky Mountain Vibes of the independent Pioneer League. The Vibes play their home games at UCHealth Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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