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Roots of the Rockies: Reclaiming Colorado’s Past to Understand Its Future

Colorado has long been a canvas for the American imagination: snow-capped peaks, gold rush lore, cowboy grit and ski towns perched high above the clouds. But beneath the postcard beauty lies something deeper: a layered story of homeland, migration, resilience and reinvention.

The latest episode of World of Travel explores Colorado not just as a destination, but as a living archive, one shaped by Indigenous nations, Black pioneers, immigrant laborers and modern leaders still wrestling with the past.

Where the rivers meet

Long before it was called Denver, before gold was discovered, before rail lines stitched it into the American West, the land at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek was sacred ground.

For Rick Williams, CEO of People of Sacred Land and former president of the American Indian College Fund, that confluence is more than a landmark, it’s home.

“Nations have been coming together for over 11,000 years to trade and interact,” Williams told us. “When I think about Denver, I think about it as my homeland. I think about it as the place where my ancestors were.”

He describes a Colorado that existed long before statehood, a place where Ute, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota people lived in relationship with the land. Buffalo sustained entire communities. Chokecherries and wild grapes were harvested seasonally. Work and survival were symbiotic with nature.

“We had a wonderful life,” he said. “We were living with nature in a good way.”

But that life was disrupted by broken treaties, illegal settlement and the 1858 gold rush that drew nearly 100,000 newcomers into Indigenous homelands. The founding story often told as rugged determination also carries the weight of displacement and violence, including the Sand Creek Massacre, the deadliest day in Colorado history.

Today, Denver’s leadership is confronting that legacy head-on.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston believes Colorado’s future depends on its willingness to tell a fuller story.

“The nature of history is you have to hold all the hard truths,” he said. “If you don’t tell the full truth, you leave out full communities.”

He points to efforts like establishing a permanent American Indian cultural embassy in Denver — not as symbolic gestures, but as necessary acknowledgments of who built and shaped the city.

Without immigrant laborers building the rail spur that connected Denver to the transcontinental railroad, he noted, the city might have been “a dusty, abandoned cow town.” Chinese and Japanese workers helped put Denver on the map. Black pioneers helped cultivate its economy. Indigenous nations stewarded the land for millennia.

“When all the diverse communities in Denver can see themselves in Denver’s history in a way that is empowering and not minimizing,” Johnston told us, “then you feel that much more ownership over your own home.”

The Black West that history forgot

Just as Indigenous histories are often overlooked, so too are the stories of Black cowboys who helped define the American West.

At the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center, board member Terri Gentry walks visitors through a truth rarely taught in textbooks: nearly one in three cowboys was Black.

The Exoduster movement of 1877, one of the first large migrations of African Americans after slavery, brought formerly enslaved families west in search of safety and opportunity. Many became ranchers, farmers, miners and skilled horsemen across Colorado and neighboring states.

“Black cowboys found employment on ranches and cattle drives where their expertise was recognized,” Gentry explained. “There are a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in this room.”

She also underscores a powerful and complicated alliance: Indigenous nations often gave Exodusters passage and space to settle, even as the U.S. government violated more than 400 treaties with Native tribes.

“In spite of all of those horrific things happening,” Gentry told us, “they were still trying to be guardians and help us with our own freedom.”

That layered solidarity is part of the West’s true story and one far richer than Hollywood often portrays.

Gold in the mountains

Colorado’s gold rush transformed mountain towns like Telluride into boomtowns almost overnight. At 13,000 feet above sea level, miners chased veins of silver and gold forged by volcanic upheaval millions of years earlier.

As our guide Mike Dougherty of Telluride Outfitters put it with a grin: “The money resides in Telluride!”

But those towns were as rough as they were ambitious. Saloons, gambling halls, and brothels dotted the streets in the late 1800s. Colorado went “dry” in 1916, years before national Prohibition, and remote mountain communities became havens for bootlegging and hidden speakeasies.

Today, echoes of that era remain in places like The Tunnel, where a refrigerator door opens into a modern speakeasy inspired by mining-town history.

Colorado’s culinary story stretches from ancestral food systems to modern farm-to-table dining.

For Indigenous communities, chokecherries, buffalo, elk and seasonal harvests formed sustainable food systems tied directly to place. During the gold rush, settlers relied on Colorado’s more than 6,000 miles of streams and 1,300 lakes for trout.

In the Vail Valley, fly-fishing guide Pete Mott, owner of Trout Trickers, calls his drift boat his “office.” Fly fishing, he says, is less about strength and more about timing and patience.

“There is no age limit to start,” he told us. “When they’re ready, we’re ready.”

And in Telluride, restaurants like 221 South Oak celebrate seasonal Colorado cuisine — elk, bison, and Rocky Mountain trout — while blending global influences that reflect the state’s evolving identity.

Food here is more than flavor. It’s geography. It’s migration. It’s adaptation.

From snowshoes to ski resorts

Winter sports, which are now synonymous with Colorado, began as survival tools. In the late 1800s, Scandinavian miners strapped on handmade “Norwegian snowshoes” to navigate deep alpine terrain.

Today, those same peaks draw skiers and snowboarders from around the world. Gondolas glide above tree lines that once challenged prospectors on foot. What began as necessity became industry and then culture.

But even amid the thrills, snowmobiling through the San Juan Mountains, snowshoeing historic mining trails, the mountains remain a reminder of what drew people here in the first place: opportunity.

Sometimes that opportunity glittered like gold. Sometimes it flowed like a river full of trout.

A frontier sense of fairness

When we asked Mayor Johnston what he hopes Colorado’s legacy will be, he described the state as a potential model for navigating national division.

“We think Colorado can be a balance of this national struggle about who we are as a country,” he said.

“We believe everyone should have opportunity, and everyone has some responsibility.”

He calls it a frontier sense of fairness, open to newcomers, honest about history, and committed to building something better than what came before.

As we hiked through alpine basins, cast lines into icy rivers, listened to stories of broken treaties and reclaimed legacies, one thing became clear: Colorado is more than a backdrop.

Its history lives in the land. In the rivers. In the museum artifacts and the snow-covered fault lines. In the communities who were here first and those who came searching for something new.

From sacred confluences to saloon-lined streets, from Black cowboys to immigrant railroad workers, Colorado reminds us that every place holds complexity.

And every story, when fully told, connects us to something greater.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lindsey Granger and Kolyn Boyd are the co-creators of “World of Travel,” a series that

explores the past, present and future of extraordinary places around the globe. You can watch “Colorado: Roots of the Rockies” and future episodes each Wednesday at 4 p.m. EDT on The Hill’s YouTube page.

Lindsey Granger is the co-host of “Rising.” Kolyn Boyd is a film director based in Washington, D.C.

Catch complimentary podcasts every Thursday at 4 p.m. on The Hill’s YouTube channel.

The Colorado episode of “World of Travel” was sponsored by GetYourGuide, Visit Denver, 221 South Oak, The Tunnel, and Telluride Outfitters.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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