I Never Knew That About Colorado

I Never Knew That About Colorado gathers odd, half-remembered episodes from across the state. Abbott Fay set out to collect what the description calls little-publicized or long-forgotten fringes of history, each one unique to Colorado lore. Retail listings give it the subtitle A Quaint Volume of Forgotten Lore, which tells you the spirit of it.

The stories the description names are a good sample: Mark Twain and Denver Censorship, The Man Who Wore Out His Coffin, and Slavery After the Civil War, with many more behind them. Fay was a retired history teacher and an adjunct professor at three Colorado colleges when the book came together, and the description says his writing already spanned five decades.

This is no pile of trivia, according to the publisher's overview at Barnes & Noble. It says that unless an item is marked questionable, it has been cross-documented to show it really happened. The edition is illustrated, covers all of Colorado, and Open Library dates it to 1997 from Western Reflections.

This book suits Coloradans who like a fact they can repeat at the dinner table, and visitors who want something to read between stops on a road trip. The description speaks directly to curious travelers who want to add to what they know about places they have visited. Teachers hunting for short, odd episodes to start a conversation will find plenty, and so will readers who enjoy a collection they can open anywhere and finish in small pieces without losing the thread.

Abbott Fay taught history in Colorado for decades, first in Leadville and Grand Junction and then at Western State College in Gunnison, where he retired as an associate professor emeritus. This is the earliest of his books in our catalogue by publication date, and the description credits him with hundreds of articles besides. A longer account of his career and his other books is waiting on his author page.

More about Abbott Fay →

The Colorado these stories come from took shape quickly. The Pikes Peak gold rush began in July 1858, and Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861, during the opening of the Civil War. President Ulysses S. Grant admitted Colorado as the 38th state on August 1, 1876, and its borders matched the territory's.

That date gave the state its nickname, the Centennial State, because statehood arrived in the nation's hundredth year. Less than three years later, silver was discovered at Leadville in 1879, which started the Colorado Silver Boom. A state that moved this fast in its early decades left plenty of odd corners and forgotten episodes behind, which is the ground this collection works over.

Source: Wikipedia, History of Colorado