Coloradans celebrate 150 years of statehood on a historic Colorado Day

Coloradans young and old spent a hot, sunny day in downtown Denver celebrating 150 years of Centennial State history with cake, sing-alongs, art projects, Legos, lowriders and even a square dance routine in the halls of the Capitol.

After a pancake breakfast, Gov. Jared Polis, dressed head to toe in a red-white-and-blue cowboy getup, kicked off festivities outside the History Colorado Center Saturday morning, introducing musician Isaac Slade, a Boulder native who led the assembled crowd through a sing-along rendition of  John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.”

Polis, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera and other state officials later gathered on the steps of the state Capitol to cut Colorado’s 150th birthday cake. Polis shook hands with Jerry Clayton, a Capitol volunteer dressed as Gov. John Routt, Colorado’s first chief executive, who performed a reenactment of the reading of President Ulysses S. Grant’s proclamation of Colorado statehood on Aug. 1, 1876.

Grant’s order ended a years-long effort by territorial leaders to secure Colorado’s admission as the 38th state in the union. Coming less than a month after the nation commemorated 100 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the proclamation’s timing ensured that Colorado would be known by the nickname that a Denver newspaper had first suggested a year earlier — the Centennial State.

Saturday’s festivities across Colorado followed nationwide commemorations of the semiquincentennial on the Fourth of July. The state’s America 250-Colorado 150 commission was established by the Legislature in 2022 to coordinate the celebration of the twin anniversaries, dubbed the “sesquisemiquincentennial.”

“Our birthdays are always linked — we’re a little bit like a kid with a birthday on Christmas Day,” Polis joked. “Everybody’s celebrating the big America one, but don’t forget us, it’s also our birthday.”

Inside the Capitol, artists premiered a “Colorado Past, Present, Future” themed exhibit, while members of the Colorado Square Dancing Association joined some enthusiastic newcomers in a dance in the building’s north foyer. The Denver Lego Users Group showed off scale recreations of the Capitol’s legislative chambers and invited attendees to help assembling a Lego-brick mountain landscape mosaic.

Celebrations were planned in communities across the state on Saturday, from an airshow at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield to a rock concert in Colorado Springs. As part of an initiative sponsored by the America 250-Colorado 150 commission, teams of climbers ascended nearly all of Colorado’s “14er” mountain peaks, though several of the climbs had to be scrapped amid an active wildfire season.

“This day represents years of planning and partnership by communities across Colorado,” Timothy Wolfe, the commission’s co-chair, said in a press release. “While today marks an important milestone, it is also an opportunity to reflect on our shared history, recognize those whose stories have shaped our state, and recommit ourselves to building a Colorado where every community sees itself in the next 150 years.”

Other commission initiatives include a documentary film series, a new historic marker program, a “digital passport” program to encourage travel and tourism around the state, and “A Portrait of Colorado at 150,” a collection of oral histories from at least 150 living Coloradans. Its website includes an expansive list of events commemorating Colorado’s 150th anniversary throughout the summer.

To escape the heat, crowds enjoyed free admission to the History Colorado Center, the Denver Art Museum and other institutions downtown. At a History Colorado exhibit, “38th Star: Colorado Becomes the Centennial State,” Angel Vigil welcomed museumgoers in costume as Casemiro Barela, a founding father of Colorado and longtime state senator from Las Animas County.

An author and educator at History Colorado, Vigil performs in-character as Barela and other “Hispano men who have been marginalized, erased, or forgotten by history, but actually lived epic lives,” he told Newsline.

“Hardly anyone knows about him, but he lived an important life during his time and made huge contributions for 40 years,” said Vigil.

Barela was one of three Hispano delegates to the Colorado Territory’s constitutional convention in 1875 and 1876, and was instrumental in enacting a requirement that all state laws be published in Spanish for the benefit of the large Hispano community in southern Colorado. He and other framers of the state constitution wrestled with how to address hot-button issues like women’s suffrage, public education, corporate regulation and much more. They succeeded — though several previous efforts at statehood had failed.

“It was not automatic that we become a state,” Vigil said. “We had to work over 17 years to fix all the issues required to become a state, so that took dedication and perseverance, to keep going for it.”