The 38th state admitted to the US was Colorado, on August 1st, 1876. Known as "The Centennial State", Colorado became a state exactly one century (plus one month) after signing the Declaration of Independence. The very first cheeseburger was invented in Denver, and the world's very first rodeo was held in Dear Trail on the 4th of July in 1869. The 13th step of the capital building in Denver is a mile above sea level, making Colorado the "Mile High State". This elevation is also seen in The Dwight Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel, which was named the highest auto tunnel in North America, and the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, as the tallest sand dunes in the US. The capitol of Colorado is Denver, the state bird is the Lark Bunting, the state flower is the Colorado Blue Columbine, and the state tree is the Blue Spruce.
The oldest inhabitants of the state of Colorado were the Ute people. They traveled the country on foot routes, as they were nomads in separate bands of family groups who spoke the same language. This was long before horses were introduced to the land. The Ute fought as people, but would also unite to participate in religious ceremonies. They were hunter-gatherers, finding berries, roots, and edible plants, and taking the extra time and energy to use every part of the animals they hunted, so they were able to hunt much fewer animals at a time. Native tribes of the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Pueblo, and Shoshone were also occupying Colorado before the Spanish arrived. The first Spanish explorers of Colorado were said to arrive in 1593, but didn't have a defined territory until 1819. An 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie stated that Denver belonged to the Arapaho tribe, but when gold was discovered in the late 1850's, new treaties were formed and the land was stolen from the Indigenous peoples. In 1864, the Sand Creek Massacre resulted in hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne being killed or relocated out of the state. More and more Europeans moved West to seek new opportunities, and the state continued to grow and expand in population.
Today, Colorado is home to about 50,000 Indian//Alaskan Native residents (under 1% of the state's population). In the 1950's and 1960's, Denver was one of nine Native American federal relocation sites that helped them move from reservations to urban centers across the country. Since 1984, there has been a 3-day event held every March to celebrate Denver's Indigenous history. In 2015, the governor signed an Executive Order for public schools to include American Indian representation in their studies. To this day, these groups believe that equal representation, education of our country's history, and cooperation of all different types of people can help to unify us in this country, which benefits everyone in the end.
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