Fun Facts About Colorado

Did you know . . .

• over 400,000 people ascend Pikes Peak each year?
• the U.S. Air Force Academy encompasses over 17,900 acres?
• the Colorado is known as "the Mother of All Rivers"?
• the Royal Gorge, near Canon city, is the world’s highest suspension bridge?
• the Garden of the Gods, a beautiful rock park found near Colorado Springs, covers 770 acres?
• the 13th step of the state capitol building in Denver is exactly a mile high above sea level?
• the state of Colorado is 104,247 square miles?
• more than 1/3 of the land in Colorado is owned by the federal government?
• Colorado means "colored red" in Spanish?
• Mount Elbert is the highest peak in Colorado, standing at 14,433 feet?
• Colorado contains 75% of the land area of the United States with an altitude over 10,000 feet?
• Colorado has 222 state wildlife areas?
• the Professional Rodeo Hall of Fame is in Colorado Springs?
• Rocky Mountain oysters are actually fried bull testicles?
• Colorado Day is celebrated on the first Monday of August?
• Colorado was the second state to pass a law allowing women to vote?
• the Alferd Packer massacre took place near Lake City?
• Thomas Jefferson acquired eastern and central Colorado through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803?
• Colorado is known as the Centennial State? (It entered the Union in 1876, one hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.)
• Judge M. B. Gerry tried the case of cannibal Alferd Packer?
• Trail Ridge Road (U.S. 34) is the highest continuous automobile road in the United States?
• Grand Mesa is the largest flat-topped mountain in the world?
• Colfax Avenue, in Denver, is the longest continuous street in America?
• At 8,959 feet, E. Johnson Memorial, on Interstate 70, is the longest tunnel in the U.S.?
• Colorado is the 8th largest state?
• Harvard, Yale and Princeton mountains belong to the Collegiate mountain range?
• Fremont county is called "Criminal Inn" because it has more prisons than any other county?
• Independence Pass is the highest mountain pass in Colorado (at 12,095 feet)?
• At 3,397 feet, Holly has the lowest altitude in Colorado?
• Leadville (10,188 feet) is the highest incorporated city in the U.S.?
• the Great Sand Dunes rise 700 feet above the San Luis Valley?
• Loveland receives hundreds of thousands of valentines each year for remailing?
• the southwestern corner of Colorado is part of the four corners-the only place in the U.S. where you can stand in four different states at one time?
• Colorado applied for statehood three times before succeeding?
• the University of Colorado's first class of 1883 consisted of seven graduates?
• Doc Holliday, of Leadville, once said, "Leadville has ten months of winter and two months of late fall?"
• the University of Colorado, Boulder, started in 1877 with two teachers and forty-four students?
• Bat Masterson started the Olympic Athletic Club in Denver?
• Brush, Colorado annually hosts the world's largest Rodeo Cowboy Association Amateur Rodeo?
• the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo is the largest rodeo in the nation?
• a sitzmark is the term for the mark made by a skier who falls backwards in the snow?
• the headwaters of the Arkansas river are in Climax, Colorado?
• there are 54 "fourteeners" (mountains over 14,000 feet in elevation) in Colorado?
• a "chinook" is a warm wind that blows down the eastern slopes of the Rockies in winter, raising temperatures on the plains by twenty degrees?
• the Great Sand Dunes were formed over 15,000 years by action of the wind?
• Leadville has the highest altitude airport in the United States?
• water boils slower at high altitudes?
• Boulder's water, said to be the cleanest and purest in the nation, comes from a glacier?
• Katherine Lee Bates wrote "America the Beautiful" after being inspired by the views from Pikes Peak?
• Julia Archibald Holmes was the first woman to climb Pikes Peak in 1858?
• The "fourteeners" (the 54 mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation) only vary by about 400 feet. Click here to read more about the "fourteeners"