History Colorado Center

See classic baseball artifacts—from Babe Ruth to the Blake Street Bombers. Treasured memorabilia and iconic photographs bring the past to life through stories that begin on the ball field and echo through American history. Size up your hand...

In celebration of Colorado's long history of murals, we're excited to present the work of Anthony Garcia Sr., director of Birdseed Collective in Denver's Globeville/Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. Anthony will be hand-painting the wall of our...

A hundred objects. A hundred portals to the past. Presented by Colorado State University Our newest exhibition has 100 stories to tell. Zoom in on 100 powerful artifacts to see how Colorado became Colorado. Culled from the vast collections...

Museum Day is an annual celebration of boundless curiosity hosted by Smithsonian magazine. Participating museums and cultural institutions across the country, including the History Colorado Center, provide free entry to anyone presenting a...

Kirby Stokes, director of the Trinidad History Museum, joins us to speak about the unique resilience of southern Colorado and the ways Trinidad has recreated itself over the years. She'll give some of the more famous stories a little extra...

The public is welcome as the newest US citizens and their families take part in a naturalization ceremony in the atrium of the History Colorado Center.

In the early years of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush, men outnumbered women twenty to one, yet the gentler sex played an important role in every aspect of mining life. Join author J.v.L. Bell as she discusses the adventures of well-known...

Bring your 2 to 5 year olds for storytime in our Destination Colorado exhibit and learn about farms, cowboys and animals. We'll read stories and then have playtime in the exhibit before the museum opens. Free with admission!

Bring your 2 to 5 year olds for storytime in our Destination Colorado exhibit and learn about farms, cowboys and animals. We'll read stories and then have playtime in the exhibit before the museum opens. Free with admission!

Join Charlottle Waisman, co-author of Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America, for a discussion of women of the West. She'll highlight some of the most interesting women who helped shape Colorado and its region.

History Colorado is proud to once again host the 2018 Indigenous Resource Management Partnership. The History Colorado Center will host both the all-day roundtable, “Visualizing and Realizing Diversity in the Museum of the Future,” and the...

Join us in exploring three historic Fort Collins organs! Whether making monumental sounds on a Sunday morning or standing silent and austere, organs bring to life the spirit of the divine and the music of the past’s greatest composers. Our...

Join us for our Hands on History Family Fun Days! On the second Saturday of each month, families have the opportunity to explore and create their own history, art, and culture through hands-on, immersive activities like adobe brick making,...

Stephen Batura will discuss the photography of Charles S. Lillybridge (1849–1935) and his own paintings and drawings—which derive exclusively from Lillybridge’s images. Batura isn’t concerned about the differences between life in...

Time to tempt the zombies! Knowing that Cheesman Park once held Denver’s first cemetery will encourage you to tread lightly on our walking tour, lest you disturb what lies beneath. We’ll share the gruesome and the grandiose history...

Join us as we float from room to room in the historic Byers-Evans House to tell you spine-tingling tales of theatrical Colorado ghost stories based on real life. Each story takes you through different areas of the historic house museum...

Join Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel as he continues our journey through the rich tapestry of the city’s immigrant past by looking at those who joined us from the other side of the Pacific. We’ll explore our Asian heritage, from the lost...

Beginning as a remote Army post in 1862, Fort Collins has evolved over about 150 years to become a vibrant city on the High Plains, a center of education and commerce. Through images and stories, author Barbara Fleming, a Fort Collins...

Neyla Pekarek, a Denver native, received her music education degree from the University of Northern Colorado. She began playing with local folk band the Lumineers, performing on their Grammy-nominated debut and follow-up album. Tonight’s...

Be ready to light up your jack-o-lantern on Halloween with master pumpkin carver John Bardeen! John is a passionate crafter who's been carving for 65 years. You'll learn the carving technique invented by his family as you use tools created...

Build (and keep!) your own Colorado-style LEGO® set, then take a special guided museum tour based on your creation. On October 27th, we'll build the LEGO Creator Vampire and Bat Kit. The kit features a Vampire with plus a small pet bat with...

It’s natural for neighborhoods to change over time. Once-prosperous areas fall on hard times, perhaps to be discovered and reimagined anew. Few of Denver’s neighborhoods epitomize this phenomenon as well as River North, known today as...

Except when it floods, as it did most memorably in 1965, most people don’t give the South Platte River much thought. It’s the river that gave us our start and sustains much of the metropolitan area’s population. Long neglected, the South...

Bring your 2 to 5 year olds for storytime in our Destination Colorado exhibit and learn about farms, cowboys and animals. We'll read stories and then have playtime in the exhibit before the museum opens. Free with admission!

You may have crossed it, perhaps even driven along it, but now it’s time to hear the stories of one of our original downtown streets: Market. Join historian Kevin Pharris and Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel for a special program to discover the...

Build (and keep!) your own Colorado-style LEGO® set, then take a special guided museum tour based on your creation. On November 17th, we'll build the LEGO Creator Turkey, Pug, and Koala Bear Kit. The set will take about 30 minutes to build...

The streets around Union Station were once home to the heavy and unromantic equipment that sustained a thriving boom town. Hardware, plumbing supplies, tractors and more kept the city running. Though the warehouses have become offices and...

Do you really know water? Water is Denver’s history. Native Americans camped where the Cherry Creek and South Platte River met; Denver evolved from three towns surrounding that confluence. City Ditch supported gold rush settlers. Lack of...

By popular demand, we once again ask: “Think you know Denver?” We drove around town last year to see who knew what, and we crowned a winner. Now, it’s your chance to be the Denver “Know-It-All” as we reveal a new slate of trivia. We’ll ask...

Bring your 2 to 5 year olds for storytime in our Destination Colorado exhibit and learn about farms, cowboys and animals. We'll read stories and then have playtime in the exhibit before the museum opens. Free with admission!

Come enjoy the history and beauty of Denver’s holiday lights with History Colorado! The festive evening begins with an informal program exploring our state’s historic holiday traditions. Then it’s all aboard a comfortable, heated bus as we...

Join us for our Hands on History Family Fun Days! On the second Saturday of each month, families have the opportunity to explore and create their own history, art, and culture through hands-on, immersive activities like adobe brick making,...

Build (and keep!) your own Colorado-style LEGO® set, then take a special guided museum tour based on your creation. On November 17th, we'll build the LEGO City Arctic Exploration Team Building Kit. The kit includes a snowmobile with...

Lecture by Dr. Jared Orsi, Colorado State University Jared Orsi, professor of history and director of Colorado State University’s Public Lands History Center, will present from his book Citizen Explorer: The Life of Zebulon Pike. The...

Lecture by Steven Conklin, Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado The rich history of radio in Colorado is shared through the stories of many of the broadcast pioneers, including the dentist who put the state’s first commercial station on the air...

Lecture by Dr. Erica Ellingson, University of Colorado A thousand years ago, the Ancestral Puebloans built a great civilization in a landscape where even now the sky is a powerful presence. In this presentation, we’ll explore the deep...

Lecture by Dr. Tom Noel Join our new State Historian, prolific author Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel, as he reflects on five decades of studying Colorado history and how he’s seen the field rethink the state’s heritage. In this address he’ll look...