History Colorado

Denver Public Library, Special Collections and Archives

Early History - Political Leaders

African American Cowboy, c. 1900, possibly taken around Leadville, Colorado.

Early History - Cowboys

The early trappers and fur traders, who came to be known in the West as Mountain Men, were the pioneer explorers of Colorado.

Early History - Mountain Men

Camp Nizhoni was founded in 1924 in response to the segregationist policies of the time, which prevented African American girls from attending the same YWCA camps as white children. 

Lincoln Hills - Camp Nizhoni

Opened in 1922 by Black entrepreneurs from Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, Lincoln Hills was an oasis in a segregated society—the biggest resort west of the Mississippi built BY and FOR African Americans. People from across the country came to Lincoln Hills to camp, stay in Wink’s Lodge, or buy a lot and build a cabin.


Lincoln Hills

Colorado has a long, rich history of African American owned businesses and enterprise. This history is best exhibited in communities such as  Denver’s Five Points.  Five Points became a central point for African Americans moving to Denver in the 1920s.

Early History - Entrepreneurs

10th Cavalry soldiers in uniform at Fort Washakie, Wyoming.  More than 180,000 African Americans fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. Of them, more than 33,000 died. War’s end left the future of the Army’s African Americans in doubt.

Early History - Buffalo Soldiers

In the early 1920s, Denver entrepreneur Obrey Wendell Hamlet, known as “Wink,” set out to build a resort in Lincoln Hills. He and first wife Naomi broke ground on a three-story, six-bedroom lodge in 1925 and finished it three years later. They officially named it Wink's Panorama, but everyone knew it as Wink's Lodge.  Wink's Lodge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980


Lincoln Hills - Wink's Lodge

Thanks to the all-Black Phyllis Wheatley branch of the YWCA and the vision of the Lincoln Hills Development Corporation, the YWCA established Camp Nizhoni at Lincoln Hills. The name comes from the Navajo word for “beautiful.” Segregation kept African American women and girls from attending the nearby YWCA girls’ camp at Lookout Mountain. So every summer, up to fifty girls went to Camp Nizhoni to hike, swim and learn outdoor skills. After 18 years in operation, Camp Nizhoni closed in 1945 with the integration of Camp Lookout.


Lincoln Hills - Camp Nizhoni Album

Explore the development of civil rights throughout Colorado and the United States of America.

Civil Rights Timeline

There were no formal Jim Crow laws in Denver, home to Colorado’s largest African American community. But Black citizens still faced widespread discrimination in the early twentieth century. Denver’s Five Points neighborhood created a sense of community when people  had trouble finding housing except in limited areas, were largely confined to low-paying jobs, and met with segregation in schools, parks, and other public places.  CLICK ON THE STARTS TO EXPLORE DENVER IN THE 1920s.

Explore Denver in the 1920s

From exploring the Colorado territory to fighting discrimination, to expanding voting rights, African American people have had a long and active role in shaping Colorado's past and present.


Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library

Letter From Birmingham Jail-Martin Luther King Jr.

Early African American History in Colorado

U.S. History

Social Studies

Enslaved from birth, Clara Brown was born in Virginia in 1800. At the age of eighteen she married and had a total of four children. In 1835, all of her children and husband were sold to different people across the country. When she was fifty-six she received her freedom and worked her way west to Denver as a cook and laundress.

Brown settled in Central City where she worked as a laundress, cook and mid-wife. With the money she made, she invested in real estate and mining claims. She became known as Aunt Clara for her emotional and financial support to anyone in need, regardless of race or religion.

Photograph, Clara Brown

After the Civil War, Brown sold all her belongings to travel to Kentucky to find her family. Although she was unsuccessful, she helped other relatives and former slaves move to Colorado. In 1882 she was reunited with her daughter Eliza Jane and Eliza’s daughter. Clara Brown died in Denver on October 23, 1885.

Discrimination kept Justina Ford from practicing medicine in Colorado hospitals when she moved to Denver in 1902. But that didn’t stop her from caring for thousands of patients, most of them African Americans and recent immigrants. The first African American woman licensed as a medical doctor in Colorado, Ford specialized in gynecology, obstetrics, and pediatrics, delivering more than 7,000 babies in her fifty-year career. Excluded from city hospitals, Ford ran a successful practice at home in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. 

Known for her generosity, the “Lady Doctor” refused to turn away any patient. Her home is now the Black American West Museum.

A former enslaved person and agent on the Underground Railroad, Barney L. Ford made and lost fortunes in Chicago and Nicaragua before blazing a trail to the Colorado gold fields in 1860. Denied a mining claim because of his race, Ford relocated to Denver where he established a variety of businesses, including Barney Ford’s People’s Restaurant in August 1863. Over time, Ford opened other hotels, restaurants, and barber shops throughout Colorado and Wyoming. He also served on the board of the Dime Savings Bank along with Denver capitalists William N. Byers and John Evans. Ford’s prominence in business led to the inclusion of his wife, Julia Lyoni Ford, on the Denver Social Register in 1898.


Lewis Price was an African American land speculator in Denver. The “Black Wizard” would purchase land in prominent white neighborhoods under the guise of building a Black church on the land. When neighbors heard of the plan, they would offer to buy the land back from him at double the price in order to keep their neighborhood racially intact. Price only hired white servants and could be seen on the streets of Denver in a horse-drawn carriage with a white driver.


Born in 1867 to former slaves in Louisiana, Sarah Breedlove was an orphan by age seven and a widowed mother by age 20. She made her way to Denver via St. Louis, taking the name Madam C.J. Walker and creating a line of hair-care products. Walker went on to establish a chain of beauty parlors throughout the United States, South America, and the Caribbean, becoming the wealthiest African American woman in the nation. She used her wealth and fame to speak out about injustice, in particular campaigning to make lynching a federal crime.


Denver and Boulder restaurant owner Oliver T. Jackson established the all-African American farming community of Dearfield near Greeley, Colorado, in 1910. Inspired by Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, Jackson and others hoped to create a model of Black self-sufficiency on the plains. Drought and hard times shuttered the colony in the 1930s. 

A coalition of historians, museums, and civic offices is currently working to preserve Dearfield as an example of Colorado’s pioneering heritage.

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Early African American History in Colorado

Early History - Entrepreneurs

Clara Brown