Fort Morgan Public Library

"Portraits of the Past offers a collection of local history stories originally published in the Fort Morgan Times between 2014 and 2019. Researched and written by a small group calling themselves “The Community History Writers”, these stories detail the lives and events of people living in, and beyond, Morgan County on the eastern plains of Colorado, from the late 1880’s up to the present day.Although Fort Morgan’s founders envisioned an up-standing...

Established on April 5, 1851, Colorado's oldest town, San Luis de la Culebra, remains remarkably true to its heritage. Nestled below the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant in the San Luis Valley, San Luis and its descendants sustain a way of life and preserve a culture in this high, isolated desert region. Eighteen men migrated north from New Mexico into the northernmost area of Spanish exploration in the mid-1800s to settle San Luis along the Culebra River....

Mesa Verde National Park was America's first cultural park and also the world's first cultural heritage park. Created in 1906, it preserves the sites and materials of the prehistoric Puebloan people. Located in southwestern Colorado near the famous Four Corners, where the states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, the magnificent Mesa Verde is situated in Montezuma County, just south of Cortez and directly west of Durango. The park's...

As the ancestral hunting grounds of mountain people known as the Utes, the future site of Silverton was explored by nomadic hunters for generations. During the 1860s, Charles Baker, an early mining prospector, discovered some mineral wealth in the area and spread highly exaggerated rumors that brought in even more prospectors. Significant wealth was found in Arrastra Gulch along the Alpine Loop, north of Baker's Park. From the beginning of its mining...

Army scout Kit Carson rode the Southwest in many capacities. He served and retired in Colorado, and so Fort Carson is appropriately named. On land once traversed by Lt. Zebulon Pike, Camp Carson was constructed almost overnight under the watchful eye of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt and with the approval of the neighbors in Colorado Springs. Since its creation, the post has been the home and training grounds for thousands of soldiers who have fought in...

As early as 1851, photographers journeyed along the arduous Santa Fe Trail on horseback and in covered wagons on a quest to capture the magnificent vistas on film. In the ever-changing light of New Mexico's landscape, they photographed the faces of the Pueblo People and helped to document their ancient, unimaginable world. They became witness to millennia of history. New Mexico's first inhabitants are believed to have descended from the Anasazi, the...

In spite of its relentless reputation as a "cow town," Denver has grown from a dusty prairie burg into a thriving metropolis nestled against the foothills of the great Rocky Mountains. Gold brought the area's first settlers in the 1850s, and mining camps sprouted up along the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. The first rudimentary structures of canvas, mud, and logs were soon replaced with sturdy buildings made of brick, stone,...

When the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad laid narrow-gauge tracks into La Veta in southern Colorado in July 1876, it preceded Colorado statehood on August 1 by about one month. The southern Colorado frontier from Walsenburg west to Wolf Creek Pass had only a few scattered villages at this time, but silver mines in southwestern Colorado lured the railroad ever westward to haul out the riches. On the scene to photograph these developments was Iowan Ory...