More That I Never Knew About Colorado

More That I Never Knew About Colorado is the second volume of Abbott Fay's Colorado oddities, and it carries on from where the first left off. The title promises more of what its predecessor delivered: facts about Colorado that most people were never taught. Open Library files it under history, anecdotes and civilization.

Our description of the book is mainly about its author. It says that for over five decades Fay was dedicated to the vibrant history of Colorado, and that he wrote seven books and hundreds of articles. It also calls him a sought-after speaker and tour guide who taught as an adjunct professor of history at three Colorado colleges.

The description credits him with a unique ability to search out little known facts, saying it always keeps the reader spellbound. We have no table of contents to quote, so we won't list stories we can't check. What we can say is that this is a nonfiction collection of Colorado history and anecdote, published in 2000 by Western Reflections.

If you finished the first volume and wanted more, this is the one to pick up. It also suits readers who enjoy Colorado history in small servings rather than long chronologies, and anyone who gives books to relatives who grew up in the state. Libraries building a Colorado shelf will want both volumes together. We can't promise a particular story or region, because the record does not list contents, but the subject headings point to history and anecdote.

Abbott Fay taught at Mesa College in Grand Junction until 1964, and then at Western State College in Gunnison until 1982. He carried on as an adjunct for years after retiring, which matches the description of him as a longtime teacher and speaker. For the rest of his working life and the other books we carry, visit his author page.

More about Abbott Fay →

The Colorado of these anecdotes grew from a gold rush that the history record dates from July 1858. An estimated 100,000 gold seekers took part in the Pikes Peak rush, which lasted until Colorado Territory was created in 1861. Several camps founded by parties of prospectors in 1858 eventually merged into the city of Denver.

The Ute people held most of what is now Colorado before that, and the territory they controlled shrank across the following decades. Silver, discovered at Leadville in 1879, set off the Colorado Silver Boom and brought a second wave of fortune seekers. That quick succession of rushes, towns and booms is what makes a book of small, strange stories possible: so much happened so fast that plenty slipped out of the standard accounts.

Source: Wikipedia, History of Colorado