The signs, which were posted June 13 at all National Park Service sites , begin innocuously by asking visitors to scan a QR code and answer three survey questions. The first asks them to identify areas that need repair. The second inquires about services that need improvement.

It’s the third survey query that is surprising many and alarming some. It asks visitors to identify “signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Williams, whose who want the truth to be known about the forced relocation of Native people in Colorado, was shocked.

“I was a little horrified, but I was scared, too,” said Williams, whose ancestry is Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne. “Basically this gives the average citizen a license to determine what they believe the truth is, and defending it against somebody who has an opposing view could create hostility.”

The signs also upset Japanese Americans after they went up at the . Like Sand Creek, Amache is located in southeastern Colorado near the Kansas state line. It was the site of a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

“The way they are written seems to be more applicable to some of the bigger national parks that talk about natural beauty,” said Kirsten Leong, a fourth-generation Japanese American who is vice president of the . “That����ap not the congressional purpose of places like Amache. In law, the purpose for the park, in the enabling legislation as designated by Congress, is about telling these hard historical stories.”

Amache was one of 10 Japanese internment camps during World War II that were established by the War Relocation Authority. More than 10,000 people, mostly U.S. citizens, were incarcerated there from 1942 to 1945.

At Sand Creek, U.S. troops killed 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864, mostly women, children and elderly.

Bergum’s order, issued May 20, implemented provisions of an titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Trump complained about efforts to “rewrite” history by “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” He asserted that the nation’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

Bergum’s order directs land management bureaus within the Interior Department, which include the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, to identify monuments, memorials, statues and markers that “contain images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living … (or) emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance or grandeur of said natural feature.”

Kyle Patterson, public affairs officer at , said signs have been posted “in a variety of public-facing locations including visitor centers, toilet facilities, trailheads and other visitor contact points that are easily accessible and don’t impede the flow of traffic.”

Sierra Willoughby, public information officer at , said the signs were posted at the park’s visitor center.

“This effort reaffirms the NPS mission by emphasizing the importance of accuracy in how we tell stories of American history,” Willoughby wrote in an email. ”Our visitors come to national parks to celebrate the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of America’s landscapes and extraordinary multicultural heritage. This allows them to personally connect with these special places, free of any partisan ideology.”

Many park visitors have been using the surveys to plead for increased funding. Advocates for the national parks say they were severely underfunded even before Trump took office. The park service estimates its nationwide backlog of , including . Now, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, the as part of Trump’s 2026 budget.

“This is the most extreme, unrealistic and destructive National Park Service budget a president has ever proposed in the agency’s 109-year history,” according to a statement issued by National Parks Conservation Association chief executive Theresa Pierno. “It����ap nothing less than an all-out assault on America’s national parks.”

Estee Rivera Murdock, executive director of the non-profit based in Estes Park, said she’s heard that visitors are complaining about inadequate funding in their survey responses.

“I have talked to NPS folks nationwide who are seeing comments come in from different sites and, loud and clear, the dominant theme is ‘We love these places, they need more funding, they need more rangers,’” Murdock said. “It����ap hard to solicit feedback from folks to make changes if you don’t have any mechanism or budgets to make those changes.”

With the threat of budget cuts, there are concerns that historic sites like Amache and Sand Creek, with far less visitation than the big national parks, could be closed. Rocky Mountain National Park attracts 4 million visitors annually. Great Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde attracted 437,000 and 480,000, respectively, in 2024. By contrast, Amache had only 4,771, Sand Creek 6,400. Another National Historic Site in southeastern Colorado, Bent’s Old Fort, attracted 16,000.

“We believe in evidence-based history, which I think the parks are currently doing,” said Dawn DiPrince, chief executive of , who also serves as Colorado’s official state historic preservation officer. “I don’t think we should be changing that. I am even more concerned about the proposed funding cuts. I’m especially concerned about our three historic sites in southeastern Colorado.

“We have parks that were not created just for visitation numbers,” DiPrince added. “They were created by a whole group of people, collectively, to tell really important American history. That is why they exist, and to measure them by sheer visitation numbers and threaten their existence by budgetary cuts, and suggest we should be amending how we tell those stories in ways that are not evidence-based, feels very problematic.”

Williams said he doesn’t worry much about the Sand Creek Massacre site closing because the land will remain sacred to Native Americans. Victims of the massacre were buried there, Williams said, and their spirits remain.

“Of those 6,400 visitors, probably 6,000 were American Indians,” Williams said, “and they’re going to go there whether it����ap a national park or not.”

Our American story is written into our nation’s cities, towns, wild spaces, and our beloved national park sites, such as Camp Amache and Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Sites in Colorado.

This May, I attended the annual pilgrimage to the Amache National Historic Site, where 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated near Granada, Colorado, during World War II. There is an undeniable historical lesson to be found when you visit this place. The sensory experiences of the high prairie, the ritual reading of names of those who died, the scratchy smell of sage and rabbit brush, and the unyielding horizon intersect with the inarguable foundations of concrete barracks that were once the cramped residences of the thousands forced to live there.

Camp Amache is connected to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, situated less than 50 miles away. It is named after Amache Ochinee Prowers, a Cheyenne woman whose father, Lone Bear was murdered – along with more than 230 other Cheyenne and Arapaho people murdered at Sand Creek by U.S. Troops less than 100 years earlier.

Both Camp Amache and the Sand Creek Massacre are American stories. The survivors and descendants of these histories know that preserving these historic places solidifies their critical memories in our collective American consciousness, carrying them forward into our shared future.

In 1966, Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act as a shared national intention and commitment to preserve places that are important to the American people. The Preservation Act was designed specifically as a collaboration among federal, state and Tribal governments, as well as local communities, because it recognizes that those who are closest to the sites–both geographically and historically — have the most knowledge.

The Act empowers local communities by designating community assets to the National Register of Historic Places, opening pathways for revitalization, providing consultation on federal projects, and utilizing preservation tax credits to create housing and economic opportunities. As State Historic Preservation Officer, I witness the power of preservation to catalyze opportunities everyday in Colorado communities. This past year, alone, we have listed dozens of historic sites on the National Register, everything from the Manzanola United Methodist Church to the Colorado Petroleum Club.

Yet, on the cusp of our nation’s 250th anniversary, we are observing an unprecedented defunding and dismantling of the tools that have preserved historic sites, revitalized communities, safeguarded cultural resources, fostered understanding, shared American stories, and connected us across our nation.

Each year, Congress appropriates funds for State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices. State Offices, like the one that is part of History Colorado, match the funds at a minimum of 40%. Unfortunately, despite this appropriation, preservation funds are not flowing, and Colorado’s irreplaceable history, heritage, and culture–and the staff who work to preserve and protect them — are in jeopardy.

Additionally, the proposed 2026 federal budget includes the near-elimination of the Historic Preservation Fund, which would decimate our country’s long-held commitment to preserving America’s heritage, disregard local knowledge, and significantly diminish local control. The proposed budget also cuts nearly $1 billion from National Park Service operations, which hurts myriad preservation activities as fundamental as the National Register of Historic Places, and could even result in the closure or elimination of park sites, possibly including meaningful but smaller sites in Colorado.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. As is often the case in preservation, we are working to ensure the future of the irreplaceable. We must work strategically and in solidarity to protect and preserve all that we have built together across generations. Contact your Congressional representatives and tell them to 1) immediately disperse 2025 Historic Preservation Funds, 2) robustly fund the 2026 Historic Preservation Fund, and 3) protect our beloved National Park sites for the future.

Dawn DiPrince is the president and CEO of History Colorado and State Historic Preservation Officer.

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Fuchigami was 11 when the U.S. Army forced him and his family from their Northern California farm and imprisoned them at the Japanese-American internment camp, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, for three years during World War II.

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse and Sen. Michael Bennet announced his death Thursday, noting his service in the Navy and work to make Amache a national historic site.

“His grace, fortitude, and endless wisdom will leave a lasting legacy,” Neguse and Bennet said in a statement.

Fuchigami was one of more than 10,000 people imprisoned at Amache on Colorado’s Eastern Plains between 1942 and 1945 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s . The barracks reached a peak population of 7,310 in 1943, according to the

He and his family later , where he graduated high school and attended two years of college before enlisting in the Navy and fighting in the Korean War, according to federal officials.

Fuchigami became an educator, teaching students in grade school, high school and at universities in California, Illinois and Hawaii before retiring in 1992.

He eventually settled with his family in Evergreen and continued advocating to preserve Amache, of it becoming part of the National Parks Service. Amache was named a national historic site in 2024.

The three years Fuchigami, his parents and seven siblings were imprisoned forever changed them, he told the House Natural Resources Committee in 2021.

They lost their 20-acre fruit and vegetable farm and home in Yuba City, California. In Colorado, they endured subzero winters, 100-degree summers, blizzards and dust storms while packed into two rooms of a poorly constructed military barracks with no running water.

Both his parents suffered serious injuries and illnesses at Amache from which they never fully recovered, Fuchigami said.

“As a nation, it����ap only by remembering these events and honoring these stories that we can learn from them,” he wrote in a letter to The Denver Post in 2021.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

This year’s quartet of buildings on list was announced Thursday as part of the Saving Places Conference at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs. The program has for 28 years partnered with preservationists and citizens to try to save significant Colorado historic structures and culture.

That includes not only physical landmarks but also “intangible cultural elements like language, storytelling, music, and other community practices that embody our past and connect us to our future,” wrote Katie Peterson, director of the Endangered Places program, in the report.

The statewide program looks at both iconic buildings and family-owned businesses, rural or mountainous, and in the past has highlighted 144 “historic resources throughout Colorado.” That includes 57 successful saves, she wrote.

Colorado’s Most Endangered Places is the signature program of the nonprofit , which was founded in 1984 and works to route preservation money to vulnerable buildings and cultures. The four new additions to the list are:

Indiana Jones Bed & Breakfast

This modest home near the New Mexico border in Conejos County is an important part of Colorado’s movie culture, preservationists said, but its history stretches back to 1888, when it was one of the first houses constructed in the San Luis Valley town of Antonito.

One hundred years after it was built by the Carroll family — who sold horses and mules to miners — it became the boyhood home of Indiana Jones in 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” “The opening scenes … were filmed there, with the action centered on the historic Cumbres & Toltec Railroad and the charming Victorian building at 502 Front Street, now known as the Indiana Jones Bed & Breakfast,” according to Colorado Preservation Inc. (CPI).

The current owners , but the adobe home is beginning to sag and shift and needs a new foundation before any other work can be done, CPI said.

Knearl Block and Opera House

This red-brick building in Brush has served as a post office, hat-making factory, hotel, restaurant, opera house, bank, bar and telephone exchange — and since 2003 has been the Corral Sports Bar & Grill. Eastern Colorado communities rely on these multi-faceted structures as civic hubs, CPI said, and the architecture of the 1902 building “reflects the grandeur of its era.”

“With its intricate brickwork, tall windows, and timeless facade, the building captures the elegance of early 1900s design,” CPI wrote. “The owner has taken as many steps as possible to stabilize the building using available funds. Unfortunately, time has taken its toll on the building, rendering the upper story unusable and the south wall beginning to detach.” And that’s despite the Morgan County structure joining the State Register of Historic Places, CPI added.

Newman Block

This modest blue building once housed the Granada Fish Market, which was owned by Frank Masa Tsuchiya, who had been incarcerated at the Japanese-interment site Camp Amache near Granada, CPI said. He founded the business in 1943 after his release from the World War II-era camp.

“He worked alongside Frank Torizawa, who had also worked in a fish market before the war,” CPI wrote. “Together, they delivered fish, poultry, and ice to those still incarcerated at Amache (and) donated various items to improve the lives of those behind barbed wire.”

It’s currently vacant and used as a rental event space, but “attention was drawn to the structures when one of the four buildings that share walls collapsed,” CPI wrote. They hope to work with the private owners, the Amache Alliance, the Amache Preservation Society, and the National Park Service to shore it up and explore future uses, CPI said.

Red Cliff Town Hall

This Main Street structure in the Eagle County town of Red Cliff — itself inside the White River National Forest — is a historic town Hall and firehouse that stands as an “enduring (symbol) of the town’s rich heritage and (is) central to its community life,” CPI wrote.

Built in around 1887, it was a key site for the Battle Mountain Mining District. “But after fires in 1882 and 1883 destroyed most of the town, residents realized the need for a better system to help fight fires,” CPI said. The town added water pipes and hydrants that drew from nearby Willow Creek, and eventually the building was used as a dance hall, a jail (added to the rear in 1927) and a day care before its 1980 closure.

“Unfortunately, the building is in failing condition and not structurally sound,” CPI wrote. “Rotting wood and a sloping foundation contribute to the building’s decline.” Boosters hope to turn it into a museum.

Life in the West was often a struggle, and some places represent our ingenuity and perseverance. Some places harbor dark secrets, revealing shameful stories.

So, here are some places to visit on your summer travels to help you understand Colorado’s complex history. At some of these sites, you’ll need imagination to picture what occurred, while others have lasting physical evidence that has survived the centuries.

Mesa Verde/Canyons of the Ancients

Hundreds of years before Columbus, the Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, a large and sophisticated culture thrived in the Southwest.

They built huge cities and lasting cliff dwellings, yet mysteriously vanished in the 13th century.

You can tour the cliff dwellings on guided tours in Mesa Verde National Park, learning from experts about their lives, society, and theories as to why they vanished.

Or you can venture on your own into Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and appreciate how tough life must have been in these arid canyons.

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site

In 1833, there was nothing but wilderness between Missouri and the Mexican settlements of the Southwest.

The Sante Fe Trail was a grueling journey between the two.

That year, William and Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain built the fort, the only major white settlement along the trail for 16 years.

In addition to creating a thriving empire, the fort served as a meeting place where different cultures could connect, including fur trappers, Mexican traders, white settlers, and the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa tribes.

The fort has been rebuilt, with living history exhibits that let you appreciate life on the edge of the map.

It also represents a shining lost moment because it wouldn’t be long before the United States was at war with Mexico, as well as the Native Americans.

The clashing civilizations perhaps could have built a better future here. William Bent himself married a Cheyenne woman and tried to show that peaceful coexistence was possible.

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes were camped along the banks of Sand Creek in 1864 when 700 men of the Colorado State Militia emerged from the morning fog.

The volunteers began shooting and didn’t stop until 230 were dead, mostly women and children.

The tribe had been trying to report to a reservation peacefully, but confusion and conflicting orders marred the process.

The event was celebrated in Denver at the time, but history has viewed it differently. Governor John Evans’ name was stripped from the famous mountain.

Today, you can see exhibits in the visitors center and take a short walk to an overlook, but you’ll have to use your imagination to picture the horrors of that day.

Relations between the tribes and whites never recovered.

Leadville

No other place illustrates Colorado’s history better than Leadville.

The city at 10,158 feet rose practically overnight after prospectors discovered gold and silver in California Gulch in the 1860s.

Soon, Leadville had elegant hotels, a famous opera house, and a population of 30,000. It nearly became the state capital.

But it suffered the fate of most boomtowns in 1893 when the U.S. switched from a silver standard.

Today, you can stroll through town, admiring the beautiful Victorian architecture and touring the numerous former mines while imagining living at 10,000 feet without GORE-TEX.

Independence Pass

Colorado has many mountain passes that will make you marvel at the fortitude of those who built them, none more so than Independence Pass, the route that connects Aspen with Twin Lakes.

The pass gets so much snow it’s only open half the year, but that didn’t stop the settlers of the Independence boom town from carving out the rugged track at 12,095 feet.

Today, you can tour that ghost town three miles west or hike among the tundra and wildflowers, enjoying the stunning views and pondering life in such an extreme environment.

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

Deep in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, few Colorado towns are as isolated as Silverton.

It was often cut off entirely in winter until the construction of this famous railroad in the 1880s.

The train, today reimagined as a tourist attraction, runs 3 hours through improbably rugged terrain.

To ride in a historic rail car past such scenic beauty is an experience you’ll never forget.

Ludlow Massacre site

In the early 1900s, labor relations were tearing the country apart, and the southern Colorado coal fields were to become a flashpoint in the conflict.

The Colorado National Guard came to supposedly keep the peace between striking miners and the owners’ men. But on April 20, 1914, violence broke out in the Ludlow camp that left 25 miners dead, including 11 children.

While nobody knows who fired the first shot, the massacre led to an all-out war that ended when the U.S. Army intervened.

The site, about 12 miles north of Trinidad, still has original buildings and a large memorial, a testament to the mistrust and violence of the day.

Amache National Historic Site

In the barren prairie of southeast Colorado, near Granada, lies evidence of one of America’s most shameful episodes.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, hysteria led to the relocation of 110,000 Japanese-Americans to remote internment camps around the West.

Some 10,000 of them were sent to Camp Amache, held as prisoners from 1942-1945, far from the American public.

Little remains of the buildings, but the area became a national historic site in 2023. Guides and interpretive signs help visitors imagine the pain of being labeled a threat strictly because of your ancestry.

Camp Hale National Historic Site

As World War II raged, the U.S. Army realized it needed specialized troops for the mountain fighting ahead.

The Army chose this large valley north of Leadville as the training ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

From 1942 to 1945, the mountain troopers endured brutal cold and deep snow, learning to ski and fight on flimsy wooden skis while climbing mountains under fire.

At its peak, 15,000 soldiers trained in what became a virtual city. The division would suffer 5,000 casualties, including 999 killed.

Today, you can take a self-guided tour with interpretive signs to ten stops, including a handful of restored buildings.

Eisenhower Tunnel

You’ve likely driven the Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel, perhaps cursing the heavy ski traffic or frequent closures for hazardous materials trucks.

Building an interstate highway through these mountains was initially considered impossible, and proposals included I-70 ending at Denver.

Colorado officials knew the state would become an economic backwater without a route crossing the Continental Divide and successfully lobbied the federal government to build the tunnel at 11,112 feet. When it opened in the 1970s, it was the highest tunnel in the world.

It took 5 years to build and remains the highest tunnel in the interstate system. As frustrating as driving may be, it is a crucial corridor connecting the Front Range, the mountain communities, and the nation.

Denver and Colorado became the economic heavyweight of the Rockies, which likely would never have happened had the interstate ended at the foothills.

Amache, located one mile outside of Granada, was one of 10 incarceration sites used to detain thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The town of Granada acquired and donated the land needed to establish the site as a national park.

“Amache’s addition to the National Park System is a reminder that a complete account of the nation’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams . “To heal and grow as a nation we need to reflect on past mistakes, make amends, and strive to form a more perfect union.”

Nearly two years ago in March 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill backed by Colorado lawmakers to designate the camp a National Historic Site.

The goal then was to make Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, eligible for increased funding to protect and preserve the historical site.

Before becoming a National Historic Site, Amache was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 18, 1994, and designated a National Historic Landmark on February 10, 2006.

“As a nation, we must face the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland stated in Thursday’s news release. “Today’s establishment of the Amache National Historic Site will help preserve and honor this important and painful chapter in our nation’s story for future generations.”

More than 10,000 people were incarcerated at Amache between 1942 and 1945, according to the release. Now, Amache joins six other national parks already established to preserve this chapter of American history.

Although the camp itself is in ruins, Amache’s historic building foundations and road alignments are largely intact, preserved through the years by Amache survivors and their descendants, residents of Granada, the Amache Preservation Society and more.

The site consists of a historic cemetery, a monument, concrete building foundations, a road network and several reconstructed and restored structures from the World War II era including a barrack, recreation hall, guard tower and water tank.

came just four days before the Day of Remembrance of Japanese-American Incarceration during World War II, recognized each year on February 19.

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Space Command will be headquartered in Colorado Springs after our Senators especially congressmen Jason Crow and Doug Lamborn put their foot down and refused to accept a scandalously executed basing location process that for a time threatened to take Space Command from the Centennial state. Now Crow and Lamborn are working together to create a Space Force National Guard.

Representatives Ken Buck and Joe Neguse led the delegation’s push for the U.S. Senate to finally recognize Camp Amache as a federal historic site that will be managed by the National Parks Service.

Senator Michael Bennet fought alongside Democrats and Republicans from Colorado for years for the Arkansas Valley Conduit to bring clean drinking water to thousands of Coloradans in the southeastern plains who had been promised the project for decades. Bennet and John Hickenlooper secured $60 million in Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to finally make the dream a reality.

Working diligently behind the scenes of this progress is Rep. Diane DeGette, the senior member of our delegation and the coordinator of a regular Colorado delegation meeting to plan just such coordinated efforts. We’ve been told by several people familiar with the meetings that Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose district includes southeastern Colorado and Pueblo, is the only person not to attend the bipartisan Colorado delegation meetings.

But the next frontier for the other more productive members of Congress is pushing the U.S. Army to complete the cleanup of the Pueblo Chemical Depot. The old weapons facility which until recently housed thousands of tons of chemical weapons and munitions needs an estimated $600 million investment from the Army to clean up a legacy of contamination.

The restoration of the land to industrial standards is critical for the area’s economy.

Thousands of acres of prime Pueblo real estate are tied up by a combination of toxic chemicals leached into the ground by industrial spills and unexploded ordinances that were once ignited by a lightning strike.

The Army has reduced the groundwater contamination at the facility but TNT and TCE concentrations still exceed the EPA’s standards for drinking water. So far, according to CDPHE none of the contaminants have spread beyond the site, and the Army is actively treating groundwater and returning it to the ground cleaner.

Still, local residents south of the depot in Avondale reported to The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley that they don’t drink the well water out of fear of contamination. The area faces the same problem with unsafe drinking water as much of the area. The main trunk of the Arkansas Valley goes straight through Avondale illustrating the importance of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act finally funding projects like these that have languished for years.

Cleaning up the Depot is critical not only to the environment but to the economic vitality of the region.

Russell DeSalvo, executive director of Depot’s state-created economic development group,  PuebloPlex, has been working to make use of nearly 1,000 storage structures at the site and some of the useable land, including subleases for the space, aviation, and train industries that could bring needed jobs to the area.

But an estimated 7,000 acres cannot be used because of buried munitions.

“It is unsellable if it is not cleaned up. It becomes a burden for the community and for the Army and for the state to monitor this contamination in perpetuity if it is not handled appropriately,” DeSalvo told The Post. “People could be killed if they find a piece of unexploded ordnance that may be live.”

The Depot was once a hub for jobs building chemical weapons and explosives. Then it became a hub for the slow decommission of those same weapons that had been stored. Now that the cleanup is complete, the land must be put to use for the community. A third-life of activity, and not relegated to the same fates as other military waste sites that were remediated only to the level needed to become wildlife refuges portions of which are closed to pedestrian traffic due to fear of ongoing pollution just below the surface could be disturbed accidentally.

Pueblo doesn’t need a wildlife habitat.

Our Congressional delegation should work with laser focus to ensure the Depot is quickly cleaned up to the standards for industrial use. The more quickly the Army funds and prioritizes the project the better for the community.

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At one site, the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company attacked striking immigrant coal miners and their families who’d just endured the state’s snowiest winter in tent camps. They’d risked their lives in defiance of company owners, including John D. Rockefeller, who paid insufficient wages and forced workers to live in company housing and buy food in company stores. More than 20 people died, including 11 children, in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre.

At another location, U.S. troops slaughtered more than 230 native people, mostly women, children and tribal elders, some of them clutching U.S. flags they’d been promised would protect them. The killers removed body parts and paraded them from the prairie to Denver. Colorado Gov. John Evans supported the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. He’d issued a proclamation saying state citizens could kill native people and take their land.

And down by the Arkansas River at Granada, the U.S. government imprisoned more than 7,000 Japanese-American citizens during World War II after President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 ordered them removed from their homes. More than 120 died during this captivity in the chokingly dusty Camp Amache — named after the daughter of Cheyenne leader Lone Bear, who was killed at Sand Creek — where women collected rubble and created gardens to endure.

Now the federal government is laying foundations for more people to confront and better understand the troubling Colorado history represented by the three sites, which lie within 150 miles along the Arkansas River.

Horrific mistreatment happened “where people were seen as other than human,” said Rick Wallner, a retired parks ranger who directs the La Junta-based Canyons and Plains Regional Heritage Task Force, which is considering promotion around a “lessons for our time” theme.

Recent anti-Asian and antisemitic incidents and political polarization point to a need to “look back at the lessons of what happened in the past when that took hold in America,” Wallner said.

Travel oriented toward understanding history, and finding meaning, has emerged as a national trend following the George Floyd murder, tourism industry strategists say. They compare the sites concentrated in rural southeastern Colorado with the increasingly popular locations in the South related to the civil rights struggle and European sites around former Nazi forced-labor and death camps.

“There’s growing interest in our heritage — the good, bad and ugly,” said Amir Eylon, president of Longwoods International, a market research consultancy that has helped guide the Colorado Tourism Office.

“We as a nation right now are going through this questioning of who we are, how we evolved. It is a very good time for destinations like this — if they can bring those experiences to life and help to interpret them. It is a big opportunity.”

Federal authorities are in the process of taking over Amache, which formally was known as the Granada War Relocation Center, as a national historical site run by the National Park Service.

At Sand Creek, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently gathered with native people under cottonwood trees and announced an expansion that will more than double the size to 6,503 acres for restoration as short-grass prairie. A new Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the state-run History Colorado museum in Denver explores how the killing decimated Cheyenne and Arapaho communities.

And at the Ludlow site, a national historic landmark designation creates a path for becoming a more developed destination. “My dream,” said former CF&I coal miner and United Mine Workers of America union leader Bob Butero, who has overseen the site for two decades, “is to have a museum where people can come and spend a couple of hours to actually know the story.”

“We’re all aware of the history that’s down here. We’ve known about it, and the importance of it not only for our region but the history of Colorado,” La Junta tourism director Pam Denahy said, noting a local increase in lodging tax revenues.

“We don’t turn away from encouraging people to come and see these sites — even though they’re from a difficult time in history,” she said.

High-level supporters include Sen. John Hickenlooper, who worked with Sen. Michael Bennet, a fellow Democrat, and Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor, to push the Amache designation through Congress.

“The first step of atonement is recognition,” Hickenlooper said in an interview while welcoming Biden administration officials recently under cottonwood trees at the Sand Creek site.

“There’s no question this was racism in a very pure form back then, just as at Amache,” he said. “The way that successful civilizations stay prosperous, and remain healthy, is by taking wisdom and lessons learned and passing them down to the next generation.”

“A chance to tell that fuller story”

Colorado officials are welcoming the federal push to raise the profile of these sites. They’ve given nearly $1 million to help the workers union maintain the Ludlow site, where contractors recently restored a cave that miners dug to try to hide women and children from attackers.

“More people need to understand this history, and I’m enthusiastic about any platform for educating people about how our ancestors stood up for freedom in this country,” said History Colorado and state historic preservation director Dawn DiPrince, who grew up in La Junta.

“Why is there so much tragedy in these places I love so much? Sometimes, we just need to ask questions. Are we a country defined by what people in power do?” DiPrince said, anticipating a difficult “reckoning” ahead.

“Yes, there have been horrific things, irrevocably horrible things. But, in the face of that, what remains are resilient people. Continued existence is a form of resistance. We should focus on the lives of people who endured so this country can become what it is. Are we a country of the people? Or are we a country of power gone awry?”

For the National Park Service, interpretations at the sites draw on growing bodies of research. University of Denver teams, for example, have explored prisoners’ creation of contemplative “zen gardens” at Amache. Federal staffers plan to improve signage, including signs in native languages.

“To forge that ‘more perfect union,’ we have to shed light on those things that are not necessarily the most positive aspects of our collective history,” National Park Service director Charles Sams said in an interview during the Biden administration visit at the Sand Creek site.

Developing remote sites like these presents challenges different from managing the often-overrun recreation-oriented park sites, such as Rocky Mountain National Park and the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, where rangers operate online camping and timed-entry reservation systems to control access.

“These are very rural sites. And we still want people to go to the bigger national parks, the iconic parks, like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Acadia, Zion,” Sams said. “But you can spend a solid week visiting these smaller national historic sites and have a deeper story and understanding of American history.”

It����ap a matter of “finding the meaning,” he said. Schools often failed to present full details. “We have missed out on a lot. Now we have a chance to tell that fuller story.”

An opportunity to market history

The sites are located in a low-income part of the state that has struggled economically. Prolonged drought in southeastern Colorado, hard hit by the Dust Bowl disaster in the 1930s, has hurt the agriculture that long served as a mainstay. Sell-offs of water rights to Front Range cities have reduced farming that relied on irrigation. Cattle ranchers this past year had to sell parts of their herds. Future jobs at two private prisons have turned uncertain.

Local leaders say expanded tourism will help diversify the economy, bringing stability.

“We’re now looking at tourism through a full state lens,” Colorado Tourism Office director Tim Wolfe said.

While Colorado mountain resort towns increasingly raise concerns about traffic, crowds and commercialization, rural towns in southeastern Colorado may seek benefits by marketing themselves for increased visitation, Wolfe said.

The tourism industry revolves around “life cycles,” he said, and state officials will work with communities to define goals and sustain visitation.

“We’re working on how they want us to market these things,” Wolfe said.

Family road trips here, catching these historical sites and perhaps other attractions such as the , certainly contrast with those along classic routes through the Grand Canyon and Disneyland to California beaches, Wallner said.

But the potential is huge, he said. “We don’t have an amusement park. But we do have places where you can learn the stories of our country.”

As an adolescent, he spent around two years at the Amache camp near Granada — one of 10 U.S. sites created for the unjust mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“We were citizens, most of us,” said Kitajima, who was confined there from 1943 until 1945. “We lost everything.”

In his adulthood, he joined the military, serving in the Air Force during the Korean War. Later, he helped lead the charge in turning the former Colorado internment camp into a federal historic site.

President Joe Biden signed the Amache National Historic Site Act into law in March. The space is meant to “provide places for people to learn about and reflect upon the historic events that occurred there,” according to the .

“As a young boy at Amache, I never thought I’d see about my story,” Kitajima said.

Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the order that set the wheels in motion on Feb. 19, 1942. The Amache camp operated from 1942 to 1945, with more than 10,000 people passing through — including Kitajima, who recalled barbed wire fencing, guard towers, military men with machine guns and searchlights.

The government forced his family to leave California in a matter of two weeks “with only what you can carry.”

Kitajima and his sister were bullied by classmates after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor — an attack that provoked “mass hysteria,” he said. He remembered name-calling and having rocks thrown at him.

So, Kitajima said he was initially “kind of glad” to leave. “But it was a terrible experience,” he said.

He described the camp as a difficult place to endure, as its prisoners suffered dust storms, snow and more, according to the . Still, Kitajima joined a Boy Scout troop, and spent time hunting bugs and fishing.

“Ken was part of an extraordinary group of survivors and descendants who worked for years to tell the story of WWII Japanese-American internment camps,” on Tuesday.

She highlighted the advocacy of survivors, such as Kitajima, in establishing the historic site. “We will honor his legacy in the work we do to acknowledge this painful chapter in our nation’s history.”

So very sad to hear that Ken Kitajima, a survivor of Camp Amache, passed away recently. Ken was part of an extraordinary group of survivors and descendants who worked for years to tell the story of WWII Japanese-American internment camps.

— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland)

Sen. Michael Bennet also acknowledged Kitajima’s passing in

“His tireless advocacy was critical to preserving the site and the memory of what happened there for future generations,” Bennet wrote. “Colorado will miss his leadership.”

its condolences, adding, “NPCA is proud to have been a part of preserving his story.”

So, too, are the craft beers that will be tapped every few weeks at a brand new beer bar in Denver’s Skyland neighborhood, just northwest of the City Park Golf Course.

That����ap because the owners of have come up with a novel idea, one that could add to the complexity of Denver’s beer scene. Rather than featuring a menu of beers from a wide range of breweries, business partners Weston Scott and Shannon Lavelle will focus on just one brewery every few weeks, with up to 20 taps of its beer.

And once they’re gone, they’re gone. Like a sunset.

In addition, the highlighted brewery will always hail from outside of Denver, whether it’s another Colorado town like Greeley or Golden or Grand Junction, or from another state. For the June 18 grand opening, Ephemeral was pouring 18 beers from Toppling Goliath Brewing in Decorah, Iowa, which makes hazy IPAs that are highly sought after around the country. Next up will be Boneyard Brewing, a West Coast IPA specialist in Bend, Ore.

“We’ve made it clear that we’re not anti-local by any means,” Lavelle said, adding that both she and Scott are Colorado natives. In fact, they love nearby breweries like Cohesion, Reverence and Cerebral. But they want to cater to locals who are interested in beers from breweries they can’t get that often as well as to transplants who miss the beers from their home states.

For the breweries in other Colorado cities, having a “Denver taproom” for a few weeks is a great way to get their name out there to more people, said Scott, who used to work in sales for both Aspen Brewing and Pug Ryan’s Brewery in Dillon. “The biggest hurdle for breweries outside of Denver” is not having a local taproom or dedicated taps in a lot of bars.

Scott and Lavelle, who first met while they were both working as bartenders at the now-closed Factotum Brewhouse, are also pumped up about their location, at 2301 E. 28th Ave., on the highly visible corner of York Street, in an area where there aren’t a lot of local watering holes, particularly those with craft beer.

“We looked all over Denver, and we were extremely lucky. It����ap a gem —  and not even a hidden gem, but just a gem,” Lavelle said.

“It����ap different, but it����ap refreshing,” Scott said, adding that the majority of the people who have stopped in from the surrounding neighborhoods to say hello have been excited.

Unlike the beers, the building itself is far from ephemeral. It had previously been Ben’s Super Market, a longtime neighborhood convenience store that was started in the 1940s by Ben Okubo and his family. The Okubos had been living in California before being forcibly detained and relocated, like thousands of other American citizens of Japanese descent, to prison camps in the United States during World War II — in this case, to Colorado’s , in Granada.

After being released, the Okubo family had nowhere to return to in California since they no longer had a house, possessions or jobs. So they moved to Denver and started Ben’s.

The Okubos sold the market in 1961, according to grandson Derek Okubo, who still lives in Denver. But the store lived on for decades under new owners who kept the name.

In 2021, Ben’s Market was included on due to its ties to Japanese American heritage in Denver and Amache. The list was compiled after input from Denver residents about places and spaces in the city that mattered and should be saved or commemorated in some way, according to Historic Denver’s website.

Local property developer Nathan Beal, who specializes in the northeast Denver neighborhoods of Skyland, Whittier and Five Points, bought the property, which had fallen into disrepair even when it was still operating, in 2020. Then he leased it to Scott and Lavelle, who has worked as an architectural designer. They remodeled it, gutting the interior, incorporating much larger windows, and adding a black corrugated metal façade for a more modern look.

Scott and Lavelle also kept one of the Ben’s Market signs and decided to add a few shelves of convenience items on a wall in the taproom, which they sell as a tribute to the building’s history. The sign is now inside, above the shelves stocked with ketchup, spaghetti sauce, chips, pickles, candy and salt, along with a wide selection of cold beverages. Based on customer feedback, they plan to add milk, eggs, baking soda, tonic water and limes.

Derek Okubo said Beal and the Ephemeral owners contacted him about the renovations. “That was a very kind gesture on their part and I look forward to meeting them and seeing the new site.”

Michael Flowers, director of preservation action for Historic Denver, says the group is working with Beal on some interpretive signage for the building that would explain its role in Denver history.

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