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Visit Colorado :: Experience Mountains, Snow, & Night Life |
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COLORADO is one of the least geographically homogenous of the United States, ranging from the flat, endless plains of the east to the colossal mountains of the west.
In the north, Native Americans hunted and trapped in lush mountain valleys in summer, and returned to the prairies for the winter; in the south, the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde grew corn on their isolated mesas and shared in the great early civilization of the southwest.
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 Different parts of what's now Colorado accrued to the US at different times: the east and north were acquired under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, while the south was won 45 years later in the war with Mexico . (Land grants issued under Mexican rule were honored by the Americans, which accounts for a still-strong Hispanic influence.) Gold-hungry Spaniards came through in the sixteenth century, and US Army Colonel Zebulon Pike ventured into the mountains on an exploratory expedition in 1806, but the Native American way of life only became seriously threatened with the discovery of gold west of Denver in 1858.
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Steamboat Springs Colorado :: World Class Ski Resorts |
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Surrounded by wide valleys, STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, 65 miles north of Vail, looks like no other Colorado mountain resort. Its roots are in ranching rather than mining, and its downtown area still evokes a pioneer feel - until you spot the upmarket boutiques. In this ski-mad town, rancher-types judge the quality of snowfall by the number of fence wires it covers; they're usually satisfied with a three-wire winter, which corresponds to its average snowfall of 325 inches per year.
The town's top-notch ski resort (lift tickets $59 per day), snuggled into Mount Werner four miles south of downtown, is boosted by such activities as dogsled expeditions, hot-air ballooning and snowmobiling, available in and around town. A favorite year-round activity is to let all the stress seep out at the secluded 105°F Strawberry Park Hot Springs (daily; 10am-midnight; $5-10), six miles north of town but only accessible by 4WD in winter.
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