The third issue of 2025 features a look at the early history of Colorado, a state which holds a special place in my heart, having visited there many times over the years (plus living there for several years). This issue is actually an updated version of one which featured several articles on Colorado, published six years ago and includes some new content.

● Colorado’s Glory Days: Boom Town to Ghost Town. As far as United States history is concerned when we hear “mining” we think of the glory days, the silver and gold rushes of the nineteenth century in wild west locales like Arizona, Colorado, California, Nevada, Montana and South Dakota. However, mining was one of the first industries established in Jamestown. As America expanded westward the search for minerals, both industrial and precious, continued unabated. A giant leap forward in the quest for precious metals was, of course, the California gold rush of 1849. Ten years later Nevada’s Comstock Lode was discovered, around the same time the first gold was discovered in what is now Colorado.

● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Records of Colorado (and the stories behind them). Colorado, nicknamed the “Centennial State” because it joined the United States as the 38th state in 1876, the centennial of America’s founding, is situated along the “western edge of America’s Great Plains, where the flat expanse suddenly surrenders to the abrupt uprising of the Rocky Mountains”.

● Massacre of the Innocents. It’s long been abandoned, and unlike many deserted mining towns in Colorado, this one has an extremely tragic past. Trouble had been brewing for some time, culminating in what history refers to as the 1914 “Ludlow Massacre”. The event, tragic enough for its victims, also sent a wave of protest across the nation, much of it directed at one man – financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. One newspaper referred to it as a Colorado civil war, pitting migrant coal mine workers seeking to organize a labor union against a titan of industry.

● Lightning Struck Twice (an en-lightning “adventure in research”). I wasn’t necessarily looking for unusual headlines or stories, as I often do “just for fun”. I came across this unusual headline and accompanying article: “Lightning Struck Twice”. Hmm . . . struck not once, but twice, by lightning (and lived to tell about it, no less). This short article had appeared numerous times in newspapers across the country in January 1907. Sounded like there might be a story to research. Little did I know what a research adventure it would be – an “en-lightning” (and l-o-n-g) one, entwined with stories from the early, wild and woolly days of Leadville.

● The Dash: Doc Susie, Medicine Woman. They called her “Doc Susie” and it has been said the 1990s television show Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was in part based on the life of Dr. Susan Anderson, a one-of-a-kind frontier doctor. Today she is still remembered fondly as a pioneering Colorado physician.