Colorado Love Letter
Dear Friends,
From the ponderosa to the piñon, from the top of Trail Ridge Road to the adobe of the San Luis morada, I’ve been shaped by the land of this place. I’ve breathed in the fresh-air relief of Lincoln Hills, and I’ve wept through the smoke of wildfire skies. I’ve eaten melons and chiles straight from the field, and I’ve foraged for wild raspberries along the Squirrel Creek Trail. I’ve watched the sun come up at the Sand Creek Massacre site, and I’ve watched the Perseid meteor showers from campsites. I’ve hiked to the beauty of Hanging Lake, and I’ve cooled my feet in the fleeting Medano Creek at the Sand Dunes.
Wallace Stegner noted that whatever landscape we first experienced as a child would always be our gauzy lens on the world. Lucky for me, the wildness of Colorado and its boundless blue sky have given me a vision for freedom and the kind of strength that makes most things feel possible. It is the unfettered optimism I feel the moment I can see the Spanish Peaks on the horizon or start to smell the piñon and juniper of the foothills. My heart knows that it is home.
Our team at History Colorado talks a lot about this feeling. There’s a Spanish word “querencia,” which isn’t directly translatable, but it’s this sense of knowing you belong and are rooted in a place. This is what it means to be of Colorado—not just from here.
Whether newcomer or generationally rooted, you can be formed by this place. Our exhibitions on the Ute people feature the powerful words of Regina Lopez Whiteskunk, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, “Our history is written on the land.” John Denver famously wrote about his transformation in moving to Colorado, “He was born in the summer of my 27th year/coming home to a place he’d never been before.” Or, I think about a photo of one of my ancestors, Maria Josephine DiPrinzio, an Italian immigrant woman working on the land in Pueblo County and carrying a basket of newly topped onions on her head—quite literally carrying her old-world traditions as she learns to grow new life in Colorado. Beyond my own family, this image offers a beautiful metaphor for all of the many different ways Coloradans have rooted themselves in this place that we love.
As we sit at this milestone anniversary, we must look backward and forward. This Colorado that has formed us requires us to sustain it and to preserve it so that it can form future generations too.
I’m in the community often and there are two practical and seemingly paradoxical things I hear about the most: the need to preserve cemeteries; and the fear that young people will leave because there is no future to sustain them. Both are human essentials. As we sit at this milestone anniversary, we must look backward and forward. This Colorado that has formed us requires us to sustain it and to preserve it so that it can form future generations too.
Colorado is vast and it is wild. It has the audacity of nearly sixty 14,000-foot peaks and miles of autumnal aspen gold. As we honor the 150 years of our statehood and imagine our next 150 years, History Colorado knows that we, too, must be audacious enough to hold the vast and wild history of our humanity in this place that we call home. We understand the joy and solemnity of our obligations: to tell the truth, to archive the evidence, to memorialize the dead, to celebrate our traditions, to remember our ancestors, to pass on our practices, to preserve our places, to build new knowledge, to teach the young, and to shape a better future.
Colorado, as we mark your 150 years of statehood, we know that you are ageless. History Colorado is grateful to work alongside the many communities we love to steward this state we love as we create the best possible futures. Together, we are Colorado.
In partnership,
Dawn DiPrince
President/CEO & State Historic Preservation Officer
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