The majestic beauty of Grand Teton National Park has moved people throughout time. Native Americans believed in the spiritual power of the towering mountain peaks and journeyed there to gain special powers. Early fur traders, who had just crossed less ominous mountain ranges, viewed with trepidation the massive obstacle that loomed before them on their passage to the Pacific Northwest. In others, the Tetons ignited vision and passion -- a vision to...

Southern Colorado's unique Great Sand Dunes rise to a height of 750 feet above the San Luis Valley floor and are the nation's highest dunes not adjacent to an ocean or lake. The sweeping dunes were protected as a national monument in 1932 and as a national park in 2000. From prehistoric hunter-gatherers to the historic Ute Indian tribe, inhabitants have long used the resources of the land around the dunes. Zebulon Pike was the first American explorer...

Established on April 5, 1851, Colorado's oldest town, San Luis de la Culebra, remains remarkably true to its heritage. Nestled below the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant in the San Luis Valley, San Luis and its descendants sustain a way of life and preserve a culture in this high, isolated desert region. Eighteen men migrated north from New Mexico into the northernmost area of Spanish exploration in the mid-1800s to settle San Luis along the Culebra River....

Mesa Verde National Park was America's first cultural park and also the world's first cultural heritage park. Created in 1906, it preserves the sites and materials of the prehistoric Puebloan people. Located in southwestern Colorado near the famous Four Corners, where the states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, the magnificent Mesa Verde is situated in Montezuma County, just south of Cortez and directly west of Durango. The park's...

"The Army's 10th Mountain Division, developed during World War II for combat missions in the mountains of northern Italy, evolved into ski patrols as we know them today. Far-reaching and nuanced, the job of a ski patroller combines long days, physically demanding work in high alpine environments, and the ability to respond to complex medical emergencies. In Colorado, ski patrol has grown from a volunteer operation to a professional workforce--incorporating...

Lesser known than the gold and silver mines of Western lore, Southern Colorado's extensive coal mines fueled the engines for Western industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of the numerous companies operating the mines, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was king. With a total of 62 mines, the majority of them in Colorado's Las Animas, Huerfano, and Fremont Counties, CF&I ruled the lives of countless miners in company towns...

Photographer Mark Miller opened his studio in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1914. The town he chose to live and work in sits in a river valley in northern Colorado, nestled between the Rocky Mountain foothills and the semiarid high plains, with Denver to the south and Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the north. Established as a Civil War-era army post, the town was a Wild West frontier outpost until it was tamed in the 1870s by the arrival of a land-grant college...

As early as 1851, photographers journeyed along the arduous Santa Fe Trail on horseback and in covered wagons on a quest to capture the magnificent vistas on film. In the ever-changing light of New Mexico's landscape, they photographed the faces of the Pueblo People and helped to document their ancient, unimaginable world. They became witness to millennia of history. New Mexico's first inhabitants are believed to have descended from the Anasazi, the...