National Park Service

Reader: When will we stop destroying important parts of the West?

10 things to do for $10 (5 free!) in Denver this weekend, April 26-28

Denver's thaw couldn't have come at a better weekend. This week only, National Parks throughout the country are waiving their admission fees -- so you can enjoy the spring weather by exploring the natural beauty of this state, for free! And even if the great outdoors aren't your thing, we've got mor ... More >>

History Colorado could shutter its controversial Sand Creek Massacre exhibit

Photos: Civic Center Park is commemorated as a national historic landmark

Mayor Michael Hancock joined state and national representatives yesterday in a ceremony inside the McNichols building to reveal plaques that commemorate Civic Center's new status as a national historic landmark. That honor is determined by the National Park Service and given to areas or buildings th ... More >>

Kaitlin Kenney, R.I.P.: Young musician's body found in Grand Canyon, positively identified

In January, we told you about the search for Kaitlin Kenney, a 21-year-old Denver-area musician who'd gone missing while traveling with a group in the Grand Canyon. At the time, her mom expressed resignation rather than hope for a positive outcome, and unfortunately, she was right. Late last month, ... More >>

A century and a half later, the wounds of Sand Creek are still fresh

Drilling at Mesa Verde and Dinosaur National Monument: BLM boss backpedals after protests

The director of Colorado's Bureau of Land Management office seems to be engaged in an elaborate game of chicken over the past few months. On several occasions, Helen Hankins has announced plans to auction off oil and gas leases in environmentally sensitive areas, including tracts near Mesa Verde Nat ... More >>

Rocky Mountain National Park's sheepish new logo is a ram job

Here at the Wild-Urban Interface Desk, we're puzzling over the new logo just unveiled by Rocky Mountain National Park in celebration of its centennial, chosen two years early from close to a hundred entries. As you can see, it's a highly retro design, strong on pine cones and columbines and the prom ... More >>

Photos: Top ten Colorado mentions in The Onion

Next week's edition of The Onion will be the last in Denver, thanks to the Denver Post's decision to stop printing the paper. To mark this awful sign of the times, and to echo Onion CEO Steve Hannah's call for local readers to switch to the web version, we've photo-illustrated and compiled excerpts ... More >>

Kaitlin Kenney: Search scaled back for musician who vanished at Grand Canyon

Update: Yesterday, we told you about the continuing search for 21-year-old Denver-area musician Kaitlin Kenney after she disappeared in the Grand Canyon, and her mom's sense that she lost her life; see our earlier post below. Now, the National Park Service has announced that the search for Kenney i ... More >>

Ken Salazar approves final fix on Martin Luther King Memorial -- "if" only

The situation was stupid enough that Ken Salazar probably wanted to punch someone. When the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was unveiled in 2011, eagle-eyed wordsmiths quickly pointed out that one of the quotes etched into the granite monument had taken King's words out of context, making him seem l ... More >>

Pollution: Nitrogen levels on the rise in Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park officials have recognized for years that Front Range pollution -- from auto exhausts, power plants, emissions from oil wells and refineries, feedlots and more -- pose a threat to the health and welfare of their high-country streams, fish and plants. Now a new study from ... More >>

Civic Center Park will be open and fenceless by mid-August

They're getting close! Updates to Civic Center Park have shuttered many of its features for months as crews repair work funded by $9.5 million from the Denver Better Bond Project. Surrounded by fences, the park closed to the public in March and partially re-opened in April, and now there's an end in ... More >>

Rocky Mountain National Park wants you to get wild for its centennial

"Wilderness, Wildlife and Wonder." That's the slogan the feds chose to mark the centennial of Rocky Mountain National Park, which was founded in 1915. Personally, we'd have gone with "Crags, Crowds and Crappy Souvenirs" or "Treks, Tics and Traffic," but they didn't ask us. Not for a slogan, at least ... More >>

Civic Center in the running to become a national historic landmark

Within the next three to nine months, Denver's Civic Center could become the city's first national historic landmark. Earlier this week, Mayor Michael Hancock testified at a National Park System advisory board meeting in favor of the area's qualification of the honor, which will move to the National ... More >>

Ken Salazar's plans for tourism in San Luis Valley generates protests

Ken Salazar.​Two weeks ago, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar surfaced in Alamosa, surrounded by state leaders, to present the results of a federal study aimed at promoting tourism and conservation in the San Luis Valley. The National Park Service's study pushes for conservation easements, ... More >>

Latest Word is off for Martin Luther King Day...but the news marches on

Latest Word is off to mark Martin Luther King Day, but will be back on duty early tomorrow morning. The Martin Luther King Marade (that's march/parade) gets under way this morning at 9 a.m. The Colorado Progressive Coalition will be holding its own rally before the marade, asking for police accounta ... More >>

Ken Salazar: How green is his San Luis Valley?

On Wednesday, Alamosa-born Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will return to his roots -- again -- as part of a long-simmering effort to promote tourism and conservation in Colorado's much-praised, much-neglected San Luis Valley. Accompanied by Governor John Hickenlooper and Senators Michael Benn ... More >>

Occupy Denver's legal team explores precedents regarding tents and symbolic speech

​With 23 arrests related to Occupy Denver this weekend, the group's legal team is constantly adapting. This includes a new decision to request that arrestees go through the public defender's office instead of receiving volunteer counsel, as well as frequent reflections on precedents. At this w ... More >>

Summer's Ending: 8 Great Weekend Roadtrips You Need to Take Now

National Park Service​It's the first week of August, so it's likely that many of you are experiencing Endofsummeritis. You may think there's nothing you can do but watch the slow creep to winter, and before you know it, you will be shoveling your car out of six feet of snow while icicle tears form ... More >>

O'er the Land of the Free

John Salazar: Land swap aids big donor

John Salazar.​While Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has been enduring a summer of media broiling over everything from the BP oil spill to federal wild-horse roundups, his brother John has been coolly and quietly toodling toward re-election and a fourth term in Congress. But now, the Oth ... More >>

Ken Salazar finds oil spilling from Gulf into Colorado

​The Deepwater Horizon disaster keeps spilling into my inbox, more than 1,300 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, where there's "oil for miles and miles," Attorney General Eric Holder lamented yesterday in New Orleans. Denver is more than 1,300 miles from the Big Easy, but the disaster has spilled ... More >>

Ken Salazar's shakeup at Interior: Where will it all end?

There's a new sheriff -- and a lot of new acronyms -- in town.​In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil slick disaster, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is barreling ahead in his efforts to reform the embattled Minerals Management Service, the once-obscure agency responsible for overseein ... More >>

Steven Clay Romero pleads guilty to dragging Buddy the dog to death

Steven Clay Romero: Should he be sentenced to serve time in a kennel?​Some of those designated Westword's Shmuck of the Week earn this honor for kinda silly reasons -- like, for instance, the condom website that implied Coloradans have small dicks. Not so Steven Clay Romero, named after he wa ... More >>

Michelle Malkin on internment camps and the positive side of racial profiling

​You won't find Michelle Malkin, the conservative commentator who now calls Colorado home and was just named one of the right's top 25 journalists, out at the Denver Federal Center today. That's because the National Park Service will be holding a meeting at 10 a.m. on $3 million in grants ava ... More >>

Steven Clay Romero indicted for dragging Buddy the Dog to death

Steven Clay Romero won't be getting his own show on Animal Planet.​Some individuals accused of crimes wind up generating a significant amount of sympathy -- but that's unlikely to happen for Steven Clay Romero -- because of what he's accused of doing to a dog named Buddy. Late yesterday, a gr ... More >>

New website charts what parts of Colorado are being stimulated

A photo from the StimulusColorado.org website. StimulusColorado.org, a new website co-sponsored by Associated General Contractors of Colorado, the Colorado Association of Mechanical and Plumbing Contractors, Colorado Contractors Association, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Metro Denver ... More >>

Wake Up Call: The week ahead -- when worse comes to verse

Before we were panicked about swine flu and twisted by torture-memo leaks, we were terrified by the Devil Horse, Luis Jimenez's killer sculpture that stands guard outside Denver International Airport, its red eyes shooting deadly lasers at unsuspecting passersby. Or are those glowing orbs actually ... More >>

Ken Salazar extinguishes a Bush fire sale

Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior, who spent much of last week traipsing around the Denver area declaring that there's a new sheriff in town, has taken what he calls "an important first step" in restoring balance to federal public lands policy -- pulling the plug on a controversial sa ... More >>

USA Today Reporter Patrick O'Driscoll Lands on His Feet

Now Playing

Brief reviews of current shows

Now Playing

Brief reviews of current shows

Now Playing

Brief reviews of current shows

A House With No Walls

Thomas Gibbons keeps the race conversation going.

A House Divided

Black Hawk plays the Lace card.

Digging Deep

On Mesa Verde's hundredth birthday, there's still a lot of dirt behind the "Mystery of the Anasazi."

Carbon Loading

Xcel’s solution to rising energy prices includes a lot of coal. Is that a bad thing?

Wild World

A park ranger gives the skinny on forest follies.

Loved to Death

Besieged by crowds and Front Range pollution, Colorado's premier national park is a vanishing wilderness.

Lights, Camera, Reaction

Films highlight human rights

Forward Into the Past

At Camp Amache, a school project reopens an ugly chapter of Colorado history.

Digging Up the Past

Theater students at UCD explore the history of a Japanese internment camp.

Black to Nature

Bill Gwaltney wants to see more people like him at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Shifting Sands

Night & Day

September 10 - 16, 1998

Artsbeat

Grave Reservations

The Colorado Historical Society has collected Indian artifacts for 120 years. Now it has to give many of them back.

Letters

TIME BANDITS

PRISONERS TACKLE HISTORIC-PRESERVATION PROJECTS.