By Nicole C. Brambila | The Denver Gazette
After three and a half years in Colorado, I knew the state had mountains and sunshine.
What I didn’t know was how often Colorado has reinvented itself.
Or why Colorado is the way it is.
After a 90-minute tour with Katherine Mercier — a historian who developed the “38th Star” exhibition at the History Colorado Center — I began to understand the why.
Colorado celebrates its 150th anniversary as a state on Aug. 1.
I’ve always thought of Colorado as a blue state. But that wasn’t the case in the years before statehood.
Politicians viewed Colorado through a very different lens — as a place more likely to send Republicans to Congress and the White House. This political reality shaped Colorado’s long and winding road to statehood.
On Aug. 1, 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the proclamation officially making Colorado the 38th state in the United States after four failed attempts over roughly 17 years.
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