Colorado Tourism and Travel Information Guide

Colorado Tourism and Travel Information Guide - Denver, Aspen, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Breckenridge, Telluride, Keystone and Beyond.

The beautiful State of COLORADO is one of the least geographically homogenous of the United States, ranging from the flat, endless plains of the east to the colossal mountains of the west. In the north, Native Americans hunted and trapped in lush mountain valleys in summer, and returned to the prairies for the winter: in the south, the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde grew corn on their isolated mesas and shared in the great early civilization of the southwest.

We offer Travel Websites that feature these top Colorado Tourism Destinations: Hotels in Downtown Denver, Denver Airport Hotels, Denver Hotels and Boulder Colorado Hotels. Top Regions: Colorado Springs Hotels, Hotels Downtown Denver, Denver Hotels, Aspen Hotels and Aspen Lodging. We offer Denver Hotels in every price range and location; Boulder Colorado Hotels, Colorado Springs Hotels and more. Check out our huge selection of Downtown Denver Hotels, Hotel Monaco Denver, Warwick Hotel Denver, Adams Mark Hotel Denver and Brown Palace Hotel. See Below!

Different parts of what's now Colorado accrued to the US at different times: the east and north were acquired under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, while the south was won 45 years later in the war with Mexico . Land grants issued under Mexican rule were honored by the Americans, which accounts for a still-strong Hispanic influence. Gold-hungry Spaniards came through in the sixteenth century, and US Army Colonel Zebulon Pike ventured into the mountains on an exploratory expedition in 1806, but the Native American way of life only became seriously threatened with the discovery of gold west of Denver in 1858. At that time Colorado was still part of Kansas Territory; it became a territory in its own right in 1861, and a state in 1876. The distractions of the Civil War gave the Native Americans the opportunity to fight back, but they were soon overwhelmed. From then until the end of the century, Colorado boomed; the quantities of gold and silver extracted from the mountains did not really compare with the riches found in California, but they were sufficient to fuel a rip-roaring frontier lifestyle. At first, too, absentee landlords attempted to exploit massive ranches on the plains, but their disregard for conservation ensured that the droughts and storms of 1886 and 1887 swept away the topsoil.

We offer a vast selection of top ski vacation destinations in Colorado including: Telluride Lodging, Telluride Hotels, Telluride Colorado Lodging, Durango Colorado Lodging and Durango Colorado Hotels. Additionally: Durango Hotels, Breckenridge Lodging, Breckenridge CO Lodging and Keystone Lodging Resorts. Plus we offer incredible Vacation Rentals in these top regions: Lodging Keystone Colorado, Steamboat Springs Lodging, Steamboat Springs Colorado Lodging and Steamboat Springs Hotels. We offer huge deals at these top ski destinations: Vail Lodging discounts, Vail Colorado Lodging information, Vail Hotels, Aspen Hotels, Aspen Lodging and Colorado Tourism. See Below!

For the modern visitor, the obvious first port of call is Denver , at the eastern edge of the Rockies and the biggest city for six hundred miles. Outside Denver, the northern half of the state holds the most popular destinations, starting with the dynamic college town of Boulder and the spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park . The majority of the resorts that have made Colorado the continent's foremost skiing destination snuggle into the mountains to the west of Denver: Summit County attracts the most visitors, Vail is considered best for terrain, and Aspen boasts the glitziest après-ski scene. The far west of the state stretches onto the red-rock deserts of the Colorado Plateau. Pikes Peak towers over the enjoyable city of Colorado Springs , but the rest of the state's southeast quarter is mostly agricultural plains. To the southwest untouched old mining towns like Crested Butte and Durango stand in the mountains, while Mesa Verde National Park preserves perhaps the most impressive of all the cliff cities left by the ancient Ancestral Puebloan civilization.
Denver Colorado
Its skyscrapers marking the final transition between the Great Plains and the American West, DENVER COLORADO stands at the threshold of the Rocky Mountains. Despite being known as the " Mile High City ," and serving as the obvious point of arrival for travelers heading into the mountains, it is itself uniformly flat. The majestic peaks are clearly visible, but they only begin to rise roughly fifteen miles west of downtown, and Denver has, during the last century, had plenty of room to spread out.

Mineral wealth has always been at the heart of the city's richness, with all the fluctuations of fortune that this entails. Though local resources have been progressively exhausted, Denver has managed to hang on to its role as the most important commercial and transportation nexus in the state. Its original foundation in 1858 was by pure chance: this was the first spot where small quantities of gold were discovered in Colorado. There was no significant river, let alone a road, but prospectors came streaming in, regardless of prior claims to the land - least of all those of the Arapahoe, who had supposedly been confirmed in their ownership of the area by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Various communities had their own names for the settlement; with the judicious distribution of whiskey, one faction persuaded the rest to agree to "Denver" in 1859. The hope was to ingratiate themselves with the governor of the Kansas Territory, James Denver, but it turned out he had already resigned. The newspaperman Horace Greeley passed through in the early days, and described the place as a log city of 150 dwellings, not three fourths completed nor two thirds inhabited, nor one-third fit to be.

There was actually very little gold in Denver itself; the infant town swarmed briefly with disgruntled fortune-seekers, who decamped when news came in of the massive gold strike at Central City. Denver survived, however, prospering further with the discovery of silver in the mountains. All sorts of shady characters made this their home; Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, for example, acquired his nickname here, selling bars of soap at extortionate prices under the pretence that some contained $100 bills. When the first railroads bypassed Denver - the death knell for so many other communities - the citizens simply banded together and built their own connecting spur.

These days, Denver Colorado is a welcoming and enjoyable, though conservative city. Tourism is based on getting out into the wide open spaces rather than on sightseeing in town, but somehow its isolation, a good six hundred miles from any conurbation of even vaguely similar size, gives its two-million population a refreshing friendliness; and in a city which is used to providing its own entertainment there always seems to be something going on

The City - Denver
Though oil money brought a spate of high-rise construction in the early 1980s, creating the "17th Street canyon," downtown Denver remains recognizable as the Gold Rush town of the 1860s. It's very easy to pick out the oldest sections on a map; though an endless regimental grid stretches for miles in all directions, at its heart one small area of tightly packed streets stands at a sharp angle to the rest. Much of the day-to-day activity centers on the shops and restaurants of 16th Street , which but for its free buses is a pedestrian zone; there's also a range of galleries, brewpubs, shops and lofts in the revitalized district bordered by 14th and 20th, and Wynkoop and Larimer streets, known as LoDo , or Lower Downtown. It was in the Larimer Square district, around Market Street between 14th and 15th, that William Larimer built Denver's original log cabin. That burned down in a general conflagration within a few years, whereupon a city ordinance decreed that all new construction should be in brick. Restored to its late Victorian appearance, Larimer Square provides another lively focus for shops, bars and restaurants.

For a quick appreciation of Denver's geographical position, head for the State Capitol at Broadway and E Colfax Avenue. The thirteenth of the steps up to its entrance is exactly one mile above sea level; turn back and look west, and you get a commanding view - zealously protected by building regulations - of the Rockies swelling on the horizon. The capitol is a rather predictable copy of the one in Washington, DC, but the free tours (Mon-Fri 9.30am-3.30pm) are pleasantly informal, and you can climb its dome for an even better view. The world's entire available supply of red onyx was used to make its wainscoting.

Civic Center Park , right in front of the capitol, is flanked by two of Denver's finest museums. The glass-tile-covered Denver Art Museum at 100 W 14th Ave (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; $4.50, free Sat; ) has a solid collection of paintings from around the world, but is most noteworthy for its superb examples of Native American craftwork, with marvelous beadwork by Plains tribes and some finely detailed Navajo weavings. Some of the pre-Columbian art from Central America - particularly the extraordinary Olmec miniatures - is also spectacular.

The most interesting features of the Colorado History Museum at 1300 Broadway (Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun noon-4.30pm; $4.50; ) are to be found in the downstairs galleries. Several dioramas, made under the auspices of the WPA in the 1930s, show historical scenes in fascinating detail, starting with the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde, following up with trappers meeting with Indians at a "fair in the wilderness" in the early 1800s, and a model of Denver in 1860. An exhaustive archive of photo graphs of the early West showcases the work of W.H. Jackson, who died in 1942 at the age of 99.

Free tours of the US Mint , a short walk northwest at 320 W Colfax Ave (Mon-Fri 8am-2.45pm; every 20min; ), reveal millions of fresh coins gushing from the presses in a flurry of flashing metal; avaricious fantasies are checked, though, once you notice the machine-gun turrets on the exterior, mounted in the depth of the Depression.

The Molly Brown House , 1340 Pennsylvania Ave (June-Aug Mon-Sat 10am-3.30pm, Sun noon-3.30pm; Sept-May same schedule, closed Mon; $6; ), was home to the "unsinkable" Molly Brown, who is most famous for surviving the sinking of the Titanic (she'd already lived through a typhoon in the Pacific) and raising money for the survivors and their families. Interestingly, "Molly" is a moniker picked up after her death - she was known as Maggie during her lifetime. A poor Irish girl who went West to marry a millionaire, she ended up mixing with high society in Denver; after the Titanic brought her notoriety, she went on to become a suffragette and eventually ran for senator. Sadly, the house tours concentrate more on what the Browns owned and what the preservationists have managed to authenticate than on illuminating her extraordinary life.

Denver's black community is most prominent in the old Five Points district, northeast of downtown, created to house black railroad workers in the 1870s. The Black American West Museum at 3091 California St (summer Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; rest of year Wed-Fri 10am-2pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; $3; ) has intriguing details on black pioneers and outlaws. Perhaps the most interesting section is on cowboys, which debunks a lot of Western myths: one-third of all cowboys are thought to have been black, many of them slaves freed after the Civil War who left the South and found work as cattle hands.

Two or three miles east of downtown en route to the airport, the enormous City Park is home to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science , 2001 Colorado Blvd (daily 9am-5pm; museum and planetarium $6, IMAX $6, all three for $9; ). As with many such museums, its brief extends beyond the (very good) dinosaur exhibits and wildlife displays to include anthropological material on Native Americans, which, though fascinating, does seem rather out of place. There's also a large zoo nearby (daily: April-Oct 9am-6pm; rest of year 10am-5pm; $8; ), whose four thousand inmates include a couple of huge lowland gorillas in a large, thickly wooded sanctuary.

Denver's Six Flags Elitch Gardens theme park, on the western edge of downtown at 2000 Elitch Circle (summer Sun-Thurs 10am-10pm, Fri & Sat 10am-11pm; rest of year hours vary; $33 aged 6 and above; tel 303/595-4386, ), is not only unusual for being so close to the city center (accessible by a cycle path along Cherry Creek or on the Cultural Connection Trolley), but also in having a state-of-the-art water park attached. There are some great white-knuckle rides here, including the Mind Eraser, that catapults you at 60mph through terrifying corkscrew loops; the Tower of Doom, a freefall vertical drop of 70ft; and the Sidewinder, which spins you round an impossibly tight loop and then, sadistically, does it again - backwards.

If you're looking for something a little quieter, the glitzy Cherry Creek Mall , a few miles southeast of downtown, is second only to the 16th Street mall as Denver's most popular shopping center. Opposite its main entrance is one of the best bookstores in the US, the Tattered Cover Bookstore at 2955 E First Ave (tel 303/322-7727), which spreads over four extremely well-stocked floors. Even more tranquil is the Denver Botanical Gardens , 1005 York St (daily 9am-5pm; $3; ), where an excellent array of beautifully displayed plant life thrive, including a rock alpine garden featuring local mountain flora.

Finally, twenty miles west of downtown, high above the Coors Brewery town of Golden, Buffalo Bill's Memorial Museum and Mountain Parks on Lookout Mountain (May-Oct daily 9am-5pm; Nov-April Tues-Sun 9am-4pm; $3) is the final resting place of William Cody, famed frontiersman, buffalo-hunter, army scout and showman, who died in Denver in 1915. Though now surrounded by huge electricity pylons, the gravesite offers great views in both directions, over the city and out to the mountains. The adjacent museum does a thorough job of outlining Buffalo Bill's past, and one of the more gruesome elements on display is a pistol whose handle has been fashioned from human bone.

Aspen Colorado
Coffee table magazines might have you believe that a tollgate outside ASPEN only admits film stars and the super-rich. This elite ski resort, two hundred miles west of Denver Colorado via Leadville, is indeed home to the likes of Cher, Jack Nicholson and Goldie Hawn, but it can be an affordable and very appealing place for anyone visit in summer - unless you're on an absolute shoestring budget. Visiting in winter requires more cash, though you can save money by commuting to the slopes from Glenwood Springs, less than fifty miles away.

From inauspicious beginnings in 1879, this pristine mountain-locked town developed slowly, thanks to its remote location, to become one of the world's top silver producers. By the time the silver market crashed fourteen years later, it had acquired tasteful residential palaces, grand hotels and an opera house. In the 1930s, when the population slumped below seven hundred, it was, ironically, the anti-poverty WPA program that gave the struggling community the cash to build its first crude ski lift in 1936. Entrepreneurs seized the opportunity presented by the varied terrain and plentiful snow, and the first chairlift was dedicated on Aspen Mountain (now known as Ajax ) in 1947. Skiing has since spread to three more mountains - Aspen Highlands, Snowmass and Buttermilk Mountain, and the jet set arrived in force during the 1960s. Development is a burning political issue: tight architectural constraints have been placed on businesses ( McDonald's is forbidden to have a neon sign), but the last decade has seen yet more Scandinavian-style lodges, condo blocks and giant houses that remain empty for most of the year.

The town and the mountains
Despite the virtually limitless recreation opportunities in the surrounding mountains, there's not all that much to do in Aspen itself. Even so, sitting around the town's leafy pedestrianized streets, watching the world go by, or browsing in the chichi stores and galleries is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. In summer, the Aspen Historical Society Museum, 620 W Bleeker St (tel 970/925-3721), offers walking tours of Aspen and nearby ghost towns. The Aspen Art Museum at 590 N Mill St (tel 970/925-8050) holds changing exhibits, lectures and special events; Aspen Center for Environmental Studies , 100 S Puppy Smith St (tel 970/925-5756), is a wildlife sanctuary, which gives guided nature tours of some of the taller peaks in the Elk Mountain Range.

Aspen's four mountains are run by the Aspen Ski Co (tel 970/925-1220 or 1-800/525-6200, ); call 1/888-ASPENSNO for conditions. The mogul-packed monster of Aspen Mountain , looming over downtown, is for experienced skiers only; Buttermilk is great for beginners, with an excellent ski school that offers a three-day guaranteed "Learn to Snowboard" program; the wide-open runs of Snowmass , though mostly for intermediate skiers, feature some testing routes. Aspen Highlands has some new high-speed lifts and offers excellent extreme skiing terrain. Daily lift tickets for all mountains cost $45 (up to 27 years) or $65 (27 years and older). Rental of skis, boots and poles usually costs around $18 a day - you can also rent snowshoes in which to trek up and down the mountains. However, the town's best value has to be its fifty miles of groomed Nordic ski trails - one of the most extensive free cross-country trail networks in the US.

Cycling is the main summer pursuit; The Hub, 315 E Hyman Ave (tel 970/925-7970), has a wide range of bikes, while Timberline, 204 S Galena St (tel 970/925-9237), is the cheapest for mountain bikes, and also organizes tours. The Roaring Fork River , surging out of the Sawatch range, is excellent for kayaking and rafting, but sections can be dangerous and every summer sees a few fatalities. Blazing Paddles ($55 for a half-day float trip; tel 970/925-5651) is not the lowest-priced company, but it does have a good safety record.

If you fancy walking in the mountains, the Silver Queen gondola climbs from 601 Dean St to the summit of Ajax (daily 10am-4pm; $18), where guided nature walks set off on the hour from 11am to 3pm. Occasional free lunchtime concerts and talks are held up here, and there's a good restaurant. Even more alluring is the landscape around the twin purple-gray peaks of the Maroon Bells , fifteen miles southwest, soaring above the dark-blue Maroon Lake. The road is closed between 8.30am and 5pm, except for overnight campers with permits, travelers with disabilities and RFTA buses, which leave daily from the Rubey Park transit center every 30min 9am-4.30pm; $5 round-trip, or $19 combination ticket with gondola ride. Details on hiking are available from the ranger station.

Colorado Springs Colorado
Seventy miles south of Denver on I-25, COLORADO SPRINGS was origi-nally developed as a vacation spot in 1871 by railroad tycoon William Jackson Palmer. He attracted so many English gentry to the town that it earned the nickname of "Little London." Despite sprawling for ten miles alongside I-25, modern Colorado Springs, a bastion of conservatism compared to liberal Denver, still retains much of Palmer's vision, thanks to a high military presence, fundamentalist religious organizations, the exclusive Colorado College and a well-to-do Anglo-American community.

Motorists whisk through the incredible Garden of the Gods , on the west edge of town off US-24 W, without bothering to get out of their vehicles. This gnarled, twisted and warped red sandstone rockery was lifted up at the same time as the nearby mountains (around 65 million years ago), but has since been eroded into finely balanced overhangs, jagged pinnacles, massive pedestals and mushroom formations. The visitor center, at the park's eastern border tel 719/634-6666, has details on hiking and mountain biking trails .

At the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame , 101 Pro Rodeo Drive, off I-25 exit 147 daily 9am-5pm; $6, videos and displays explain the sport's various disciplines (calf roping, barrel racing and the like). Other local exhibits of note include the painting and sculpture gardens of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center , 30 W Dale St (Tues-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $6), ranging from Native American art to Post-Modern pieces; the displays and demonstrations of specialized mining equipment at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry , east of I-25 exit 156A (Mon-Sat 9am-4pm, Sun noon-4pm; $6); and the town's history museum, the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum , 215 S Tejon St (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; free), part of which is a restored courtroom, location for a number of Perry Mason episodes.

Steamboat Springs Colorado
Surrounded by wide valleys, STEAMBOAT SPRINGS , 65 miles north of Vail, looks like no other Colorado mountain resort. Its roots are in ranching rather than mining, and its downtown area still evokes a pioneer feel - until you spot the upmarket boutiques. In this ski-mad town, rancher-types judge the quality of snowfall by the number of fence wires it covers; they're usually satisfied with a three-wire winter, which corresponds to its average snowfall of 325 inches per year.

The town's top-notch ski resort (lift tickets $59 per day), snuggled into Mount Werner four miles south of downtown, is boosted by such activities as dogsled expeditions, hot-air ballooning and snowmobiling, available in and around town. A favorite year-round activity is to let all the stress seep out at the secluded 105°F Strawberry Park Hot Springs (daily; 10am-midnight; $5-10), six miles north of town but only accessible by 4WD in winter. If you prefer to stay in town, the Steamboat Springs Health and Recreation Center offers hot mineral pools (6.30am-10pm; $5), as well as workout facili-ties. In the summertime, opportunities for mountain biking, whitewater rafting and horseback riding abound. Outfitters throughout the town can assist you with gear and guides.

Telluride Colorado
Lying at the flat base of a bowl of vast steep-sided mountains, TELLURIDE , 120 miles northwest of Durango on Hwy-145, is located in one of the most stupendously picturesque valleys in the Rockies. Another former mining village, in the 1880s the town was briefly home to the young Butch Cassidy, who robbed his first bank here in 1889. These days Telluride is better known as the home of a top-class ski resort that rivals Aspen as the prime winter destination for the stars. It has, however, achieved this status without losing its character, exemplified by the low-slung buildings on the wide main street, beautifully preserved as a National Historic District. Healthy young bohemians with few visible means of support but top-notch ski or snowboarding equipment seem to form the bulk of the 1200 inhabitants, while most of the glitzy visitors tend to hang out two miles above the town in Mountain Village ; the two places are connected by a free year-round gondola service. In summer, the hiking opportunities are excellent; one three-mile round-trip walk leads from the head of the valley, where the highway ends at Pioneer Mill, up to the 365ft Bridal Veil Falls , the largest in Colorado.

Accommodation is much less expensive in summer than during ski season, though prices do go up for the Bluegrass Festival in June, the Jazz Festival at the beginning of August and the Film Festival at the start of September. As well as being the town's official information service , Telluride Central Reservations, 666 W Colorado Ave (summer daily 9am-7pm; rest of year Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; tel 970/728-4431 or 1-800/525-3455, ), coordinates lodging and package deals, with free lift tickets for the first month of the season for guests in certain lodges. Skiing comes half-price if you stay in any of seven neighboring towns. Of specific places, the 1895 New Sheridan Hotel , 231 W Colorado Ave tel 970/728-4351 or 1-800/200-1891; winter $130-160, summer $50-75, offers some bargain rooms with shared bath, and the Victoria Inn , 401 W Pacific Ave tel 970/728-6601 or 1-800/611-9893; $100-130), has clean, motel-style doubles.

Eddie's, a sports bar at 300 W Colorado Ave tel 970/728-5335), serves good Italian food and home-brewed ales; Smugglers Brewpub and Grille , at San Juan Avenue and Pine Street tel 970/728-0919, is a lively evening hangout with a wide ranging menu and some good local brews.

Boulder Colorado
BOULDER , just 27 miles northwest of Denver on US-36, is one of the liveliest college towns in the country, filled with a young population that seems to divide its time between phenomenally healthy daytime pursuits and almost equally unhealthy nighttime activities - the town is often referred to as "7 miles surrounded by reality." It was founded in 1858 by a prospecting party who felt that the nearby Flatiron Mountains, the first swell of the Rockies, "looked right for gold"; in fact they found little, but the community grew anyway.

With an easygoing, forward-looking atmosphere and plenty of great places to eat and drink, Boulder makes an excellent place to return each night after a day in the mountains. Downtown centers on the leafy pedestrian mall of Pearl Street , lined with all sorts of lively cafés, galleries and stores - including several places where you can rent mountain bikes . The most obvious short excursion is to drive or hike up nearby Flagstaff Mountain , for views over town and further into the Rockies; any road west joins up with the Peak to Peak Highway, which heads through spectacular montane scenery to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. For rock climbing, Eldorado Canyon State Park offers many opportunities and The Boulder Mountaineer (tel 303/442-8355) can answer any questions and, of course, provide gear.

The adventurous University of Colorado offers a mixed bag of events, including in summer the Colorado Music Festival tel 303 449-1397, in the Chautauqua Auditorium tel 303 449-2413, and the seven-week Colorado Shakespeare Festival tel 303/492-0554.

Colorado Tourism and Hotels Websites:
Hotels in Downtown Denver Denver Airport Hotels Denver Hotels Boulder Colorado Hotels Colorado Springs Hotels Hotels Downtown Denver Denver Hotels Aspen Hotels Aspen Lodging Denver Hotels Boulder Colorado Hotels Colorado Springs Hotels Hotel Monaco Denver Downtown Denver Hotels Warwick Hotel Denver Adams Mark Hotel Denver Brown Palace Hotel Denver Colorado Hotels Telluride Lodging Telluride Hotels Telluride Colorado Lodging Durango Colorado Lodging Durango Colorado Hotels Durango Hotels Breckenridge Lodging Breckenridge CO Lodging Keystone Lodging Lodging Keystone Colorado Steamboat Springs Lodging Steamboat Springs Colorado Lodging Steamboat Springs Hotels Vail Lodging Vail Colorado Lodging Vail Hotels Aspen Hotels Aspen Lodging Colorado Tourism