Attending a film festival is really fun for me as a big film nerd. Sure, the big ones are a blast because you could be watching next year’s biggest films before any of your friends, but sometimes a small festival can be fun too — You can see films that you might otherwise never have  a chance to see. And, obviously, Colorado is becoming a hotbed for film festivals, as evidenced by the recent announcement that the Sundance Film Festival, arguably the most prestigious film fest in the country, will be moving to Boulder, Colorado.

“Boulder is an art town, tech town, mountain town, and college town,” said the Sundance Institute’s acting CEO, Amanda Kelso, in a press release about the festival’s decision to relocate to Boulder. “It is a place where the Festival can build and flourish.”

Colorado governor Jared Polis echoed those sentiments in boasting about the city — and, by extension, Colorado as a whole — being a perfect fit for the festival, saying, “Here in our state we celebrate the arts and film industry as a key economic driver, job creator, and important contributor to our thriving culture.”

Still, it won’t be until 2027 that we’ll see Sundance take root in its new Colorado home. But there are still other great festivals that see Colorado and its surrounding states as the perfect home for a film fest. In that spirit, we put together a chronological guide of all the great film festivals taking place throughout the coming summer in Colorado and surrounding states. However, since we all know Colorado gets warm weather from late May through mid-October, we extended our definition of what constitutes a “summer” festival a little beyond the official start and end of the season. Below is our collection of 25 film festivals in Colorado and beyond, with a little bit about what makes each one special. Take a road trip to experience one of them for yourself, or pop in to one of the festivals that just happens to take place in your own backyard.

Mountainfilm, Telluride, CO, May 22-26

While it may not be the festival that Telluride is renowned for, the Mountainfilm documentary film festival has been highlighting outstanding documentaries since 1979. Plus, as of this year, Mountainfilm is a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards’ short film category, making it an important destination if you really value the brilliance of the documentary art form.

Women+Film Festival, Denver, CO, May 30 – June 1

Put on by Denver Film — the same organization behind the Denver Film Festival — the Women+Film Festival is one of their smaller, themed, offshoot festivals focusing on films by and about women. This year they’ll be giving the Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award to Julia Stiles for her directorial debut, “Wish You Were Here.”

deadCenter Film Festival, Oklahoma City, OK, June 11-15

Boasting the title of being the largest and only Oscar-qualifying festival in Oklahoma, deadCenter is one the best festivals to see if you’re looking to take a road trip to neighboring Oklahoma. Of particular interest is the fact that, in addition to the typical prize categories like Best Narrative Feature and Best Documentary Short, they have special awards like Best Pride Feature, Best Indigenous Feature, and Best High School Short.

Arizona Short Film Festival, Tucson, AZ, June TBA

If you happen to be traveling to Tucson, Arizona in June, you might just be able to catch the Arizona Short Film Festival which prides itself on screening the best shorts from around the world one night at The Screening Room. This year’s date hasn’t been announced, but having taken place on June 18 last year, it seems safe to expect an announcement soon.

Ouray International Film Festival, Ouray, CO, June 19-22

Though it often feels like summer starts sometime in May, the first official day of summer is June 20th, and what better way to celebrate the official start of the season than watching movies in the beautiful mountain community of Ouray, Colorado which is known for its pristine mountain views?

ABQ Indie Film Festival, Albuquerque, NM, June 19th

What makes an indie film “indie” enough for the ABQ Indie Film Festival? Apparently, the festival defines indie as “a state of mind,” and one that seems almost endangered today. The festival seeks to “re-create a nostalgic space for that state of mind.” Its Instagram says that the 2025 edition of the festival is in the works, so expect it to take place somewhere around June 20, which is when it was held last year.

Doc Sunback Film Festival, Mulvane, KS, June 27-28

This smaller festival in the unassuming town of Mulvane, Kansas is named after a beloved veterinarian born in that town in 1879 who, over a century later, is still warmly remembered by the locals. Priding itself on covering all genres of independent film, this is a small festival with a big heart.

Fear No Film Festival (Part of Utah Arts Festival), Salt Lake City, UT, June 28-30

Fear No Film is part of the larger Utah Arts Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah. So, while it’s a small, short-film festival, there’s still plenty more to do if you decide to make the trek out to SLC. Fear No Film is one of the festival’s no-ticket-required events too, so tie it into a larger experience at the arts festival.

Wyoming International Film Festival, Cheyenne, WY, July 9-13

Not only is the Wyoming International Film Festival one of the biggest and best festivals in the region featuring films from all over the world, it also features the added bonus of a 48 Hour Film Festival in which filmmakers have to shoot, edit, and turn in a completed film within 48 hours, with the films being screened on the last day of the festival. It’s always a fun experience to see what creatives can pull off in such a short amount of time.

Circle Cinema Film Festival, Tulsa, OK, July 11-14

This Oklahoma film festival stands out from the crowd in that they show a unique commitment to local filmmaking by only allowing films made in Oklahoma. It makes the festival a great platform for filmmakers who eschew the traditional Hollywood route to stardom in favor of building a local film industry.

Prescott Film Festival, Prescott, Arizona, July 16-20

The Prescott Film Festival in Prescott, Arizona is a small but quirky little festival on and around the Prescott campus of Yavapai College. There are five days of films and workshops and even a sing-along to “The Wizard of Oz,” which is a favorite of festival-goers.

CinemaQ Film Festival, Denver, CO, August 8-10

A personal favorite, this small festival, also from Denver Film, focuses on films by and about the LGBTQ+ community. In recent years, opening night films have given festival-goers early opportunities to see movies like “Bottoms” and “My Old Ass,” which went on to become big, queer cult flicks.

Mesa International Film Festival, Mesa, AZ, August 20-24

Billing itself as Arizona’s premiere film festival, the Mesa International Film Festival not only offers an opportunity to watch great films every year, but it also offers great opportunities to learn from filmmakers through workshops and one-on-one mentoring sessions.

Telluride Film Festival, Telluride, CO, August 28-September 1

Easily the biggest festival on our list, Jeffrey Ruoff of HuffPost wrote in 2015, “Early buzz at Telluride opens the fall season of North American award speculation that climaxes with the Oscars.” The 2024 lineup included several films that were nominated for Oscars, including the brilliant comedy and Best Picture winner “Anora.”

307 International Film Festival, Laramie, WY, August 30-31

The 307 International Film Festival, as its name suggests, has films from all over the world, but the festival gives back to its local filmmaking community by having specific categories amongst its Jackalope Awards for Best Wyoming Film and Best Wyoming Documentary for films by Wyoming filmmakers that capture the spirit of the state.

Arizona Underground Film Festival, Tucson, AZ, September TBA

Focusing on filmmakers with “defiantly independent visions,” the Arizona Underground Film Festival prides itself on bringing the best of genre cult films to the state. With award categories including Horror, Experimental, and even Exploitation, it really honors genres that are not always highlighted in bigger festivals.

Breck Film Festival, Breckenridge, CO, September TBA

Started in 1981 as the Breckenridge Festival of Film, the festival morphed in 2020 into a year-round nonprofit that even purchased the local art house, The Eclipse Theater. Still, the Breck Film Festival remains the focal point as it approaches its 45th anniversary in 2026.

Aspen Filmfest, Aspen, CO, September TBA

Back in 1979, founder Ellen Kohner Hunt passed a note to a friend at an Aspen Arts Council meeting saying, “How about having a film festival?” Since then, Aspen Filmfest has become one of Colorado’s biggest festivals, celebrating its 45th anniversary in 2024. Last year’s lineup included Oscar-nominated films like “A Real Pain,” “Memoirs of a Snail,” and “The Wild Robot.

918 Film Fest Tulsa Shorts, Tulsa, OK, September 18

Moving from the big name festivals to one of the smaller, more local festivals on the list, the 918 Film Fest in Tulsa offers up eight of the best short films from Oklahoma filmmakers in one night. If you happen to be in Tulsa, this is a great way to celebrate the end of summer.

Crested Butte Film Festival, Crested Butte, CO, September 24-28

At this point in our list, we’re technically getting into the first few days of fall. But it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the passing of the seasons with a festival in beautiful Crested Butte, Colorado. Not only is the festival full of great films, but there’s the added bonus of the amazing scenery and fall foliage.

Albuquerque Film + Music Experience, Albuquerque, NM, September 24-28

The Albuquerque Film + Music Experience festival is another great way to celebrate the passage from summer into fall with its celebration of the dual art forms of film and music. In addition to showcasing great films, the festival also gives a platform to independent music artists with a particular focus on local musicians.

Flatwater Film Festival, Seward, NE, September 26-28

The Flatwater Film Festival in Seward, Nebraska prides itself on creating a non-competitive space specifically for Nebraska filmmakers to showcase their work. Plus, this film festival has its own 48-Hour Film Challenge (last year’s challenge included a required prop — a slice of toast — and required dialogue — “Why is that wet”), which is always a good time.

Peoria Film Fest, Peoria, AZ, October TBA

The Peoria Film Fest in Peoria, Arizona is put together by the same people who put together the Phoenix Film Festival. In 2024, the Peoria Film Fest took on a new focus: family-friendly films. The schedule hasn’t been announced yet for 2025, but assuming it keeps the same family-friendly focus for this year, it would make for a great family road trip.

Telluride Horror Show, Telluride, CO, October 10-12

Who doesn’t love a good scary movie? Featuring films that range from smart, psychological thrillers to campy horror romps, the Telluride Horror Show is known for being one of the best specialized festivals around.

Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, Colorado Springs, CO, October 17-19

Closing out our list is a great specialized festival that, like Denver’s Women+Film Festival, focuses on the importance of women in film. Held on the campus of Colorado College in Colorado Springs, the festival was sparked by an idea from founders Donna Guthrie and Jere Martin on a car ride back from the Telluride Film Festival in 1987.

If one were to make it to every festival on our list over the coming months, well that would make for an epic summer adventure. But more realistically, maybe you’ll want to take a day trip to one of these festivals and catch some films you wouldn’t otherwise find at your local Cineplex. If you do, I hope it makes your summer months a little sweeter and gives you an experience you’ll never forget.

Like journalism like this? Support the local press that’s been telling the truth for 25 years. Become a sustaining member and get our monthly print edition at home. We’ve weathered 9/11, floods, fires, economic crashes—and some deeply chaotic years. With your support, we’ll keep going. Because democracy still depends on journalism.

The post 25 Summer Film Festivals in Colorado and Beyond appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Historic photography provided by Colorado University Digital Library (CUDL) from the Joseph Sturtevant, James F. Willard and Charles F. Snow galleries.

The people of the sky

Around 1825, on the vast expanse of plains east of the Rocky Mountains, a baby boy was born. His parents soon noticed his tendency to reach for dried buffalo meat with his left hand, so they named him Niwot, or Left Hand. Left Hand’s people called themselves the Hinono’ei, which means “Our people.” Their allies, the Cheyenne, called them Hitanwo’iv, or “People of the sky.” Today they are called the Arapaho.

Left Hand stood over six feet tall with a muscular build as a young man. He had a gift for learning languages. In addition to several other native languages, Left Hand became a fluent English speaker, learning from the mountain men that his people traded with. His mind was geared towards reason and compromise over conflict. His patience was legendary.

By the mid-1840s Left Hand and his people had entered an apocalypse that threatened their survival. The trickle of lone whites who ventured their way across Arapaho land in the year of Left Hand’s birth had become a horde that grew exponentially. The whites brought with them invisible death in the form of diseases that Left Hand’s people had no immunity against. By 1850 the Southern Arapaho had lost two-thirds of their people to disease.

While the Arapaho dwindled in numbers, so did the bison from which their existence depended. Pioneers and soldiers laid waste to the prairie and its natural bounty, killing the bison by the millions.

When gold was discovered on the edge of Colorado’s mountains in 1858, the whites who flooded into the territory no longer passed through but came to stay. Their numbers exploded. While many of these new settlers were decent people with good intentions, there were also many outlaws, scoundrels, and greedy fortune-seekers who would double-cross any friend or foe to get a leg up in a lawless country.

Sand Creek Massacre. Painting by Robert Lindneaux

Left Hand, now a young chief, understood the power dynamics of the situation. He knew his people lacked the numbers to expel the white horde by force. Many of his young warriors failed to understand this or didn’t care. Left Hand worked as hard to keep his warriors at bay as he did in his tireless efforts to negotiate with his white counterparts.

By 1858 Left Hand knew his people’s survival depended on transformation. It was far from his desired choice, but he was a realist who knew that the white man was here to stay.

Two Days in November

After a long journey east to investigate if farming would work for his people, Left Hand and his family, to great dismay, found a group of gold prospectors encamped on his traditional winter grounds at the opening of Boulder Canyon.

After much deliberation among his band, Left Hand allowed the miners to stay that winter so long as they agreed to leave come spring. The miners agreed, but within three months broke their word. When they struck gold in the hills above their camp, they immediately founded the new city of Boulder right on top of the land of Left Hand’s people. Likely disgusted, Left Hand moved his winter lodge north.

Things worsened from there as Left Hand and his compatriots tried to manage a fruitless engagement with a revolving door of white misfits in Denver with varying degrees of competence and inconsistent objectives. The whites in Denver suffered from a lack of clear direction as their outpost was a world away from Washington, which would soon become distracted with a bloody civil war.

By 1863 Left Hand’s people began to starve with the bison disappearing rapidly. He briefly lost control of some of his warriors who unleashed a series of attacks on the settlers. They killed and scalped several dozen men and took women and children captive. While their bounty from these raids may have provided some temporary rations, in the long run, as Left Hand feared, it would be their undoing.

Camp Weld Conference

These attacks gave Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans and his lead military man, Colonel John Chivington, the pretext they wanted to, as they put it, “chastise” the Indians. Evans was a smart but corrupt businessman who viewed the Indians as nothing more than obstacles in his path to greater wealth. Chivington was a complete ignoramus, but what he lacked in brains and humanity he made up for with brute force.

While Evans continued to deceive and confuse the chiefs, Chivington raised a local militia including “Company D” from Boulder. In the fall of 1864, the Cheyenne and Arapaho were essentially tricked into congregating many of their people into a camp at Sand Creek where they were told they would receive much needed government annuities before winter set in. The chiefs really had little choice but to show up if they wanted to save many of their people from starvation that winter.

As the Indians arrived by the hundreds in late November, Chivington marched his nearly thousand-strong militia out of Denver to the southeast. The militia fell upon the Indian camp at dawn on November 29, 1864 with a sickening fury, first firing into the bodies of Cheyenne women who had just risen to prepare the camp for the day.

When gunfire erupted, some of the men frantically emerged waving white and American flags. They must have thought it was a horrible mistake and urgently tried to deescalate the situation. Despite this, Chivington and most of his men — some did refuse to engage — continued to fire. It is said that the legendary Cheyenne Chief White Antelope simply stood with his arms folded in front of him singing the Cheyenne death song.

The slaughter went on for six hours, with soldiers using knives to dispatch anyone their firearms had not killed. When the bodies stopped moving, Chivington and his men were still unsatisfied, so they mutilated them, moving from one to another, cutting off body parts to take back to Denver as trophies.

Records still vary, but between 150 and 250 people would lay dead, many of them children, very few of them warriors. Left Hand was inside the camp with his family when it came under attack. There is no account of his own actions during the massacre, but his wife and children were all killed. It is believed that Left Hand was severely wounded but was carried away from the camp by some of his men in the night only to die a short time later. The great Native American Arapaho chief was only about forty years of age.

Sandstone sculpture of Chief Left Hand at 9th and Canyon. Photo by Doug Geiling

Sand Creek was not in any way a warrior camp, and everyone involved knew it. What happened was a despicable act of deliberate mass murder against the most innocent and helpless of people, those seeking relief from famine, who had already been subject to the slow brutalization of having their very livelihoods stripped away from them.

While Chivington and Evans had their share of supporters, most people in the nation were disgusted and horrified by the massacre. Three separate congressional investigations all concluded the attack to be entirely unjustified and abhorrent. Evans was forced to resign his governorship and Chivington was relieved of military command, but neither of these two were criminally prosecuted despite the protestations of many — native and white alike.

The massacre would finally cause the remaining chiefs to give up on the whites. They would be engaged in a guerilla war for the next two decades, the remainder of their people ultimately pushed into reservations in Oklahoma and Wyoming where many of their descendants remain today.

George Bent and Magpie, a Sand Creek Massacre Survivor

Emergence

Tom Aikens and his group of gold miners who betrayed Left Hand at the mouth of Boulder Canyon in 1859 founded the city of Boulder. That winter, as Left Hand moved his camp north, the miners plotted out 4,000 lots on Left Hand’s land and put them up for sale. Boulder’s growth was slow at first, but it gradually established itself along Pearl Street as a typical western mining town.

The University of Colorado opened to an initial class of 47 students in 1877 with the construction of the iconic Old Main as the first lecture hall. At the time, Old Main was like a lost castle plopped onto the high prairie. In an early sign of Boulder’s coming progressivism, the university hired a woman, Mary Rippon, as one of its first professors.

A group of Texans brought the Chautauqua movement to Boulder in 1898. “Chautauquas” were open forums and speeches on intellectually stimulating ideas, like an early version of a TED Talk. In an alternative history, one could easily imagine an elderly Left Hand holding court there among his white friends after achieving a lasting peace.

During this era, several former Black slaves or their children moved west and settled in Boulder. Oliver Toussant Jackson, son of former slaves from Ohio, bought a nearby farm, built a home, and started two restaurants in Boulder before founding the all-Black Colorado settlement of Dearfield.

By the First World War, Boulder had successfully completed its transformation from gold mining into a blossoming university town mostly characterized by free thinkers and new ideas. The town did have its turn with the Klan in the 1920s. That was an unfortunate episode of Colorado’s history and sadly not unique to Boulder.

The Beautiful Haven

Isabella Bird was a pioneering 19th century adventure travel writer. The Englishwoman came through Boulder at age 42 in 1873, was unimpressed with the infant dusty town at the time, and headed up the hill to Estes Park. There she met and became smitten with one-eyed outlaw Jim Nugent. Together, they climbed to the summit of Longs Peak via the classic Keyhole route.

Bird’s collection of letters from her Colorado trip was published in 1879 as “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains.” It was an instant best seller. It was also a tourist draw, helping to make Boulder the first gateway to the Colorado Rockies in a new American West.

In the early to mid-1900s tourists would stop on the way up the canyon to gander at the Perfect Spruce, a gigantic tree with a symmetrical shape standing near the far bank of Boulder Creek. Images from a hundred years ago show the enormous tree standing perhaps 200 feet, towering above the less perfect trees around it. It stood until the 1990s. By then it was no longer an attraction as its perfect shape had long deteriorated due to old age before it finally fell.

So fascinated was I with the idea of this tree that I went looking for its fallen husk, wading through the icy April water of Boulder Creek like a madman, stomping over snow covered ground up and down the streamside. I never found it, but I haven’t given up on the idea that its massive carcass may still lay somewhere in the brush.

Athletic Field. Courtesy of the J. Raymond Brackett Photograph Collection

From an early date, the people of Boulder recognized the value of their city’s natural beauty, and they would implement at times controversial policies to maintain a balance between the city’s development and the integrity of its natural surroundings. As locals know well, these policies in recent years have helped make Boulder real estate some of the most expensive in the West.

I discussed this with long-time Boulder resident Tom Fowler, of Fowler Real Estate Group. Fowler moved to Boulder as an infant with his family in 1955. After arriving in town Fowler’s father opened their real estate office on a dirt road that became 28th Street. Fowler described how the flow of traffic on the Boulder-Denver Turnpike has reversed with more commuters now driving into Boulder in the mornings from Denver.

Athletic Field. Courtesy of the J. Raymond Brackett Photograph Collection

The Emerald City

Bob Ditlow and Billy Hoke don’t know each other, but they have remarkably similar stories. Both grew up in military families and, for different reasons, found themselves in Boulder in the late 1960s, a time and place of incredible energy and change. I spoke with Hoke at his business, The Boulder Drum Shop. His easygoing and welcoming vibe seemed nostalgic as a customer tested out a drum set behind me.

Hoke moved to Boulder in 1969 from Aspen and landed in the middle of the city’s music scene. “One of the first things I did when I moved here is I got on the Rolling Stones crew as stage security for a show up in Fort Collins,” he said. “I went up there and Mick (Jagger) took me under his wing and made me smoke hash with him for a couple hours.” Hoke went on to reminisce about playing drums with Todd from Big Head Todd and the Monsters or getting the chance to do some session work at the Caribou Ranch Recording Studio up in Nederland. During our conversation, Hoke rattled off numerous big-name musicians who have, at one time or another, called Boulder home, like Joe Walsh, Stephen Stills, Dan Fogelberg, Michael Clarke of The Byrds, and others.

The Hale Science Building was built from 1890 to 1894 and was one of the first buildings on the Boulder campus. Courtesy of J. Raymond Brackett Photograph Collection

Ditlow first moved to Boulder from Colorado Springs in the fall of 1968 as a freshman music major at the University of Colorado. Arriving on the CU campus was a culture shock for Ditlow who grew up the son of an army sergeant. But Ditlow was, and still claims to be, just a “kid chasing windmills.” The following is how Ditlow described his first day at CU:

“We got past the engineering building, and there was this guy on a literal soap box in a white sheet preaching about the end of times. Then we walked up to Norlin Library, and there must have been a hundred people in a lotus position. Now, my parents were freaking out, but I’m thinking this is the ‘Emerald City.’ Then we walked up to The Hill across Broadway, and we saw all the Hare Krishnas in their orange outfits. I’m lovin’ it! This is a different world. It was amazing. This is where I belong.”

By the start of the 21st century Boulder had fully blossomed into the scientific, technological, media, and cultural hub that it remains today. The city of Boulder’s history is far too robust to attempt to cover in this one article. There are multitudes of historical topics to delve further into, some of which I haven’t even touched on here. For better or worse, the city has come light years from its first days as a rough frontier mining town. But, for all this achievement, generational transformation, and growth, I don’t think these really define the essence of Boulder, Colorado.

Party at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Courtesy of Charles F. Snow Photographs

In the Spirit of Left Hand

What I keep coming back to is this: The crossing of the people. Perhaps more than any other city in all of Colorado, the uniqueness of Boulder’s history is about its repeated confluence of different groups of people and the ideas that come with them. Whether it be Left Hand and the gold miners, the hippies and the cowboys, rock stars and college students, Boulder is truly a people’s crossing.

Boulder Creek near Left Hand’s winter camp. Photo by Doug Geiling

I recently visited Left Hand’s traditional winter grounds at the mouth of Boulder Creek Canyon, now the People’s Crossing Park. As I walked up the trail over a small rock outcropping, a broad meadow came into view below me, concealed by a ridge of red sandstone spires and cloaked in a ring of ponderosa pines. It would have been an ideal winter camp. As I continued up the path with fresh spring snow on the pine branches, a late afternoon burst of sunshine suddenly broke through the clouds, illuminating the white and red landscape.

I crested the hill and a view down to the entire city of Boulder unfolded before me. I could see the University of Colorado, Broadway and Pearl Streets, and the tree-lined old neighborhoods around town. I went back in time in my mind and envisioned a band of Arapaho riding up towards the edge of the mountains across the open plain. I pictured a few ramshackle miner shops and saloons on a dusty Pearl Street. Then came the early tourists, first in horse-drawn carriages, then in Model T’s, as they headed into the mouth of the canyon to see Boulder Falls. As the town continued to grow in my mind, I saw an isolated dirt road in the distance — old 28th Street. A growing city now, I saw and heard the year 1969, the vibrancy and the cultural change happening in real time.

But somewhere around 1990 the dramatic changes slowed in my mind. Where does it go from here? Standing there looking over the city of Boulder, I recalled earlier that day, reading about the recent name change of this place from Settler’s Park to The People’s Crossing. And in that story, there was an image taken just this past March of white Boulder residents and Native Americans, all standing and smiling together.

And as I recalled that image, it was then that I sensed a Left Hand resting gently on my shoulder.

The post Boulder: Crossroads of the People appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

From humble beginnings to a lasting legacy, a multi-faceted Black cowboy’s journey along the road less traveled

By Bob Wooley
Special to the Wyoming Truth (AP Storyshare)

For many young boys, growing up to be a cowboy and rodeo star is the ultimate dream. But for Abe Morris the dream became a reality, leading him to a new home in the Mountain West, a successful bull riding career and a life filled with adventure.

Morris attended the University of Wyoming on academic and rodeo scholarships in the mid-1970s — a time when Black cowboys on campus were a rare sight. After earning  a degree in business management, Morris hit the rodeo circuit, qualifying for the Mountain States Circuit Finals Rodeo eight times and the Dodge National Circuit Finals Rodeo twice. A career in rodeo broadcasting followed, including calling the action at Cheyenne Frontier Days for nine seasons.

Now in his 60s, Morris works for the Department of Veterans Affairs to help families access their benefits and spends time with his son, Justin, a sports journalist.

A life-long affinity for chocolate chip cookies has spurred his interest in creating a business to rival the Keebler Elves and sweeten his legacy.

The Wyoming Truth spoke with Morris about his career and life away from the chutes. What follows are excerpts from the conversation.

How does a kid from New Jersey get interested in bull riding?

Morris: I had four older cousins who lived about 150 yards from a rodeo arena and participated in junior rodeo events. When I was like 5 years 0ld, just out of the blue, my father said “I’m gonna take you down the road to live with your aunt for a while.” I went and stayed with her family for the whole summer of 1962 before I started kindergarten.

Had you ever been on a horse before that?

Morris: No. My cousins wanted me to be a cowboy like them. I didn’t want anything to do with what I called “them stinky animals,” so they would bribe me to get on a pony. They didn’t give me any instructions. They just put me on and told me, “Hold on to the mane.” The ponies would just take off running. My cousins thought it was funny. Once I figured out how to ride, I thought it was fun.

How did you go from riding ponies to riding bulls?

Morris: This guy named Howard Harris got me started. He added junior bull riding to his rodeos to get younger bulls used to getting into the bucking chutes and [give] kids a chance to learn how to ride bulls. So I started riding junior bulls when I was 10 years old.

Do you remember your first bull ride?

Morris: Oh yeah! My cousins picked out the easiest one — basically, a runner — so I got on, and he ran around the whole pen. My hand was shaking like a leaf. . . .I remember the gate opening and the bull just crow-hopped out of the chute. I didn’t know if I was on or off at that point. It was like I blacked out. Then the next thing I remember is hearing the whistle blow, and I was still on the bull. I won second place and got paid $7.50. I was hooked.

Was there ever any doubt you’d turn pro?

Morris: When I was 16, I broke my leg riding a bull in practice. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come back. I sat out for a whole year. When I came back, I was scared to get on. They picked out an easy bull for me to get my confidence back up. So I got on the bull, and he started jumping around and bucking the chute. I said, in a terrified tone, “Just let me get off, and I’ll get back on.” Of course, they didn’t let me get off. And afterwards, they said, “If you’d have gotten off, you’d have never gotten on another bull again.”

How was your reception at UW?

Morris: They embraced me like you wouldn’t believe. The rodeo team just wrapped their arms around me. . . .

Were you expecting a warm welcome?

Morris: I didn’t know what to expect. . . I’d never even competed at a rodeo unless my cousins were on the bucking chutes.

In rodeo, people judge you by your buckles. Every freshman on the rodeo team had a buckle. But I’d never had an opportunity to compete for one. I was shy and skinny. I stashed my hat and boots away. I didn’t want anybody to know I was a cowboy because I didn’t like the attention.

Then, one day I was wearing a T-shirt that said “Rodeo. America’s Number One Sport,” and one of the Black football players asked why I was wearing it, and I said, “I’m a cowboy.” He was cracking up, saying, “There’s no such thing as a Black cowboy!” When I showed him pictures of me competing, he ran off with my photo album to show the other football players that I really was a Black cowboy.

Back then, the college rodeo was on campus. So the first time I competed, all of the football players and people in my dorm came to support me.

When did you decide to give professional bull riding a shot?

Morris: I got my PRCA card the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college.

Back then, were you aware that the first Black cowboy to get a PRCA card had gotten it just 10 years earlier?

Morris: Oh yeah! When I was a kid, I knew all about Myrtis Dightman. Sometimes when I was riding junior bulls, they’d call me Myrtis Morris.

You were one of the pioneers. Do you ever think about that?

Morris: I understand what I’ve done, and the legacy, or whatever I’m going to leave behind. But I don’t dwell on it.

Is that from a good upbringing or the fact that rodeo keeps people humble?

Morris: It’s both. We were all scared — not terrified to the point we wouldn’t get on. But every bull rider has that moment of fear. How could you not? Getting into that bucking chute keeps you pretty grounded.

I didn’t stop riding bulls until around 1994, when I was 38 years old. I won first place at a rodeo in Riverton that season. The next night, I got a bull in Cheyenne that jacked me up. He blasted me — messed up my hip. It was a long recovery, but I wanted to come back. And then one day a guy told me, “You’ve gone about as far as you can. It takes a braver man to walk away from this sport.” I took his advice; I never rode another bull after that.

I’d already had my PRCA announcer’s card by then, and I was also selling life insurance. I worked as an announcer for the next nine years. I was so busy when I retired from riding, I never had time to look back.

What made Cheyenne Frontier Days a special event to cover?

Morris: When I was a kid, I watched Cheyenne Frontier Days on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” Curt Gowdy was the announcer, and I never dreamed that one day I’d be doing what he was doing. The first year I was the announcer was the year that Lane Frost was fatally injured during his ride. I was the last on-camera interview he did before his final ride. Afterwards, when I heard he hadn’t survived, I sobbed. Lane was such a friendly and cordial guy, and it was a tremendous loss for the sport.

Was your son a rodeo fan?

Morris: My son loved the rodeo. He used to watch tapes of me competing, and he would pretend he was riding a bull on the arm of the couch. When his ride was over, he would jump off, toss his hat in the air and throw his hands up in victory…just like he’d seen me do. He got on a steer one time, and he wanted to keep going, but since he was playing other sports at a high level, I felt it was too risky to let him keep doing it.

What’s the latest with your cookie business?

Morris:  When I have time, I bake cookies to sell at rodeo events. It’s something I hope to pursue in a big way when I retire.

The post Bull Rider Reflects On His Groundbreaking Rodeo Career appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Beginnings

A blanket of January snow buries many of the small gravestones. The taller memorials stand over the snow in gray or black marble. Thick evergreen tree trunks rise like pillars throughout the cemetery. The names reveal perhaps a surprising diversity in the town’s early residents. Hispanic, Eastern European, English, Greek, Japanese.

A prominent memorial commands attention, so I walk carefully between the graves, the snow crunching under my feet, until I stand before it to read the inscription:

“Lest we forget. At dawn on November 21, 1927, six union miners were killed at the Columbine Mine fighting for a living wage and a measure of human dignity. Five are buried here.”

Photo courtesy of Doug Geiling

Coal. It is the reason Lafayette exists. Seventy million years ago the land on which the Lafayette Cemetery was built, where I stand, was under a shallow inland sea. A great swamp formed. Tropical plants grew and died in the swamp, sending their remains drifting down to the bottom over eons to form a thick black muck. Under pressure, as the Rockies lifted, the muck hardened to become the Northern Colorado Coal Field. This energy reserve powered most of the Denver area for decades, and Lafayette was the epicenter of northern Colorado’s coal industry.

Those who exploited these coal deposits beginning in the late 1800s were preceded by hundreds of generations of others who used this land. Imagine a twelve-foot length of rope laid out in a straight line. Each foot of the rope represents one thousand years. The coal miners show up only about an inch from the end. Indigenous peoples account for the other eleven feet and eleven inches of the timeline. One of the earliest of these, the Clovis culture, took down massive beasts. A railroad crew in 1932 unearthed a pile of hunted mammoth bones near Greeley carbon dated to nearly 13 thousand years ago. A site near Rock Creek on the south edge of Lafayette was occupied six thousand years ago.

The Native Americans that the white man first met here were Cheyenne and Arapahoe. But they, too, were relative newcomers to the Front Range. The Cheyenne and Arapahoe had reinvented their way of life to suit the high plains environment after being forced to move west from their Great Lakes homeland due to European settlement in the previous century. Just as they arrived in the Front Range area, from points north and east, the first European fur trappers also appeared. Chief Niwot (which means Left Hand) already spoke English when he encountered the first gold prospectors at the mouth of Boulder Canyon in 1858.

The common story is that the Indians and the mountain men coexisted relatively well. Both survived off the land, were in tune with natural cues, and were reliant on reading the mercurial seasons. These interactions are romanticized by Americans but seen very differently by the tribes whose land they were encroaching on. Many tribes were relative newcomers to this area as well, surviving as hunter-gatherers due to necessity rather than choice.

Other interpretations see the mountain men as the first wave of colonizers, paving the way for further American expansion into lands already occupied. Agriculturalists from successful societies suddenly forced into a nomadic lifestyle by disease and disruption differ drastically from the early tendrils of entrepreneurial colonialism that were mountain men.

Everything changed drastically when gold brought hordes of prospectors and their hangers-on to the area in the late 1850s. By 1864 the mostly white settlers outnumbered the Cheyenne and Arapahoe by at least three-to-one. What happened during that time was disgraceful. It started with broken promises, progressed into coercing the Cheyenne and Arapahoe into ever smaller and less desirable territory, and culminated in wanton slaughter at Sand Creek where approximately 200 Native Americans, mostly women and children, were murdered by a 700-strong militia out of Denver. Among the dead was the ever conciliatory Left Hand.

Photo courtesy of Doug Geiling

As I walk through the cemetery, I try to imagine this place in 1864. There would have been no gravestones or structures and probably no trees. I envision an expanse of dry grass with low rolling hills extending for miles in every direction — high prairie. To the west is a clear view of the Rockies. In the foreground is a wagon road where 111th Street is today. This is the Cherokee Trail, and it passed right through what would later become Lafayette.

I imagine the earthy thumps of hooves on dirt, faint at first, building into a rumble as a six-horse team rides up from the south pulling a Wells Fargo coach. The party is headed north to Cheyenne. They would have recently passed through one of two stage stops not far to the south. I head that way from the cemetery.

From the Centaur Village neighborhood, I walk east on ice and mud along the beautiful Coal Creek Greenway. Just before the wide path reaches Highway 287 a spur trail breaks off to the right and crosses the creek on a footbridge. Here I find a historical marker for the “Old Laramie Trail Crossing.” I walk down to the snow-covered bank, leafless winter cottonwoods all around. The unfrozen creek pools into a dark swirl at my feet. I imagine in 1864 a group of tired and dirty travelers bent over the creekside at this very spot to wash sweat-stained clothing. By the time they arrive here they have already come a great distance for many weeks across a monstrous prairie wilderness under nothing but horse and foot power.

Photo courtesy of Doug Geiling

Photo courtesy of Doug Geiling

Just up the hill from the crossing is another historical marker near three big cottonwoods. It’s the old Waneka Stage Stop. Before moving his operation to the stage stop, Adolf (sometimes spelled Adolph) Waneka built a small cabin in 1861 near the bank of Coal Creek in what is now south Louisville. Although records are conflicting, some historical information suggests that he may have lived in a small cave near the creek until his cabin was ready. Waneka’s descendants are still in the area to this day, and every July 4th Lafayette residents celebrate their independence at Lafayette’s Waneka Lake.

In 1864, the future founder of the town of Lafayette would have been just a couple miles to the south at Rock Creek. Lafayette and Mary Miller, young twenty-somethings and pioneers from Iowa, set up a stage stop and tavern there. Unlike most of the other Lafayettes, Fayettevilles, and Fayettes scattered around the country, Lafayette, Colorado is not named after the French fellow who helped Washington win the American Revolution. The town is named for Lafayette Miller, or just “Lafe” to his friends and family.

Lafe, however, did not found the town of Lafayette. He drank himself to death (most likely) in 1878 at the age of 38. The real dynamo of that partnership in marriage was his wife, Mary. She was just nineteen years old when she ventured into the vast western wilderness of the Colorado Territory, chasing a dream born out of the 1862 Homestead Act.

When Lafe died, he left Mary with their six kids. Along with her brother, James Foote, Mary started many local ventures. In 1888 Mary subdivided her land, sold off the lots, often directly to other women at deep discounts versus the men, and the town of Lafayette was formed. Learning of massive coal deposits under her land, she worked smart deals with coal mining interests creating the passive income of royalties on the extracted coal. She became the first woman in America to head up a bank. She started Lafayette’s first school and hired its first teacher. Likely because of her husband’s alcohol addiction, Mary was a prohibitionist and made Lafayette a dry town everywhere east of Public Road, a rule that remarkably stood until the early 1980s.

The First 40 Years

Coal mining began in Lafayette in 1888 with the opening of the Simpson Mine in the southeast part of present-day Old Town Lafayette. The various coal mines in the area excavated a massive honeycomb of shafts, passages, and underground rooms. Walk around Old Town Lafayette, and you will be walking over places where, just a few decades ago, subterranean men in canvas hats and oil headlamps moved about like moles through a dangerous underworld of creaking mine timbers and wafting coal dust.

The life of a coal miner in those days was often brutal. The companies that owned the mines cared little for the wellbeing of the miners. In those days the predominant perspective of the mine owners was that, if a miner didn’t like the job, he was free to quit. The problem with this is that swinging a coal miner’s pick was often the only game around for a roughneck with a family of mouths to feed and few marketable skills. The mining companies knew this and put the miners into a de facto state of slavery, often paying them in scrip (fake money) that could only be spent at the company store. They offered them housing in the company town (The one at the Columbine Mine was ironically named “Serene.”) for which the miners became indebted to pay the rent.

Photo courtesy of Lafayette Library

The working conditions were dangerous — inhumane even. Since most coal mining was done in the winter, Sunday was truly “sun day” for miners. On all other days of the week, they would drop underground before sun-up and not emerge until after sun-down, never feeling the sun on their faces until Sunday just to do it all over again week after week. The miners also only got paid for actual mining work. If they needed to secure a bulging beam so their skull wouldn’t get crushed in a collapse, they were not paid for that work. This led to horrible accidents in the mines as desperate miners were loath to spend time on unpaid labor, called “dead work.”

These conditions inevitably led to revolt. Strikes broke out regularly which were often suppressed with brutal indifference to the miners by both the mining companies and the local and state authorities.

I learned a lot about Lafayette’s nationally instrumental coal mining labor movement from two great local historians and published authors, Nicholas Bernhard and Dr. Leigh Campbell-Hale. Bernhard wrote the historical novel “November in America,” and Dr. Campbell-Hale is the author of the 2023 book “Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine: The Colorado Coal Strike of 1927-1928.”

Dr. Campbell-Hale is a coal miner’s daughter from the mines of Arkansas. Unlike in Arkansas, according to Dr. Campbell-Hale, Lafayette coal mining depended largely on immigrant miners. First, they came primarily from England and Wales. Then, in the 1910s and 1920s, a second wave arrived, often as strike-breakers, from all over the world — Eastern Europe, Mexico, Greece, Japan, and many other places.

Photo courtesy of Lafayette Library

In the 1910s and 1920s the town of Lafayette was filled with tension during strikes as clashes erupted between strikers and strike breakers (called scabs). In one such account, described in Doug Conorroe’s book “Lost Lafayette,” a great gun fight erupted between the two groups in east Lafayette in 1913. Apparently, while miners may be good with a pickaxe, they are terrible shots. Over one thousand rounds were fired, and the only fatality was a single horse.

It was during this time that Lafayette was also put on the map, literally. Before Eisenhower’s Interstate Highways, and even before Route 66, there was the Lincoln Highway. It was the first transcontinental automobile route. Thanks to the then recent designation of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915, local lobbyists convinced the Feds to route a south-to-north spur of the highway from Denver to Cheyenne right through Lafayette. It followed the same general route as the Old Cherokee Trail, right up 111th St. past the Lafayette Cemetery.

The combination of World War I and the route of the old Lincoln Highway resulted in the construction of the World War I pillars at Nine Mile Corner in 1928. It was part patriotic remembrance and part marketing scheme by the citizens of Boulder to encourage more traffic to turn left at this gateway and go to Boulder instead of Longmont. The pillars are a historical site, and they are under threat from development. They will likely need to be moved soon, and the Boulder Rotary Club is leading an effort to organize that work. At a recent town forum on the project it was confirmed that there is a time capsule in the south pillar. Legend has it that a live toad was placed in it. When the pillars are moved and restored, the contents of the time capsule will be revealed. Hopefully, it will not be a mummified toad.

Photo courtesy of Doug Geiling

As the World War I pillars went up, so did the burning crosses. Throughout much of the 1920s and into the 1930s the Ku Klux Klan menaced minorities and Catholics in Lafayette and the state of Colorado. On July 4, 1923, the fireworks show in town was a burning cross on a hill just east of Lafayette. Extensive local Klan membership included William Lafayette Miller, Mary Miller’s grandson, who once led a Klan parade from the saddle of a white horse through downtown Lafayette. In the mid-1920s most of Lafayette’s city council, volunteer firefighters, teachers, school board members, and Mayor Lee Baker were members of the Klan, as was Colorado governor Clarence Morley.

On November 21, 1927, six miners on strike were killed by gunfire from state rangers in plain clothes as violence erupted at the gates of Erie’s Columbine Mine. Dozens of others were injured. But out of this tragedy came progress. Shortly after the massacre, Josephine Roche took over majority ownership of the mine and implemented some of the most progressive labor policies of the time. This set an example for other heavy industries to follow. After running for Colorado governor in 1934 Roche served in Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet as the second woman in American history to hold a cabinet level position.

The Last 100 Years

By the 1930s, coal was in decline with natural gas taking its place. The Great Depression and then World War II did not allow the town to relax from the trauma of its coal mining heyday. Coal mining continued into the 1950s before petering out completely. By then Lafayette had become a sleepy hub for local agriculture and a bedroom community for a growing Denver-Boulder metropolitan area.

Jerry Morrell, founder and owner of long-time local business Morrell Printing and President of the Lafayette Historical Society remembers what Lafayette was like when he first moved to town in the mid-1960s. In those days, if you lived in Lafayette, you did your business there. You got your groceries, did your banking, and bought your appliances right in town. High school kids cruised up and down Public Road on weekends. “It was American Graffiti,” said Morrell. Instead of a Mel’s Diner there was an A&W. It was classic mid-20th-Century Americana.

By then Lafayette had become a sleepy hub for local agriculture and a bedroom community for a growing Denver-Boulder metropolitan area.

One of the culminating local events of this era was the epic rivalry between Lafayette and Louisville High Schools. As Morrell described it, they had to stop football games between the two schools due to the fights, not between the students, but between the parents. In 1968 some kids from Lafayette prematurely burned down the bonfire pyre at Louisville High School. Louisville kids retaliated by setting fire to the press tower at Lafayette High.

Then things changed. Malls and big grocery stores went up in surrounding communities, and local stores closed up shop. Centaurus High School was built in 1973, mixing the student population and ending the rivalry. Downtown Lafayette became a place that you drove through to get somewhere else. “Nobody walked up and down Public Road in the 1980s,” said Morrell. “No one had any reason to.”

Morrell recognizes the similarities between the new vitality of today’s Lafayette and that of the 1960s, although the nature of it is different. Back then Lafayette was a town of necessity. You went to town because that’s just where business was done and where local life happened. Now it’s a town of choice. We go to Old Town for the atmosphere and a sense of nostalgia, choosing that local, small-town experience over the suburban big-box sprawl down the highway.

Long-time resident Bill Gougler moved to town in 1979, recruited by Storage Tech which was building offices on Lafayette’s west side. I learned from Gougler that, in the 1980s, the west side of Lafayette was a boomtown. People were moving in to fill new jobs in the burgeoning tech scene of the 1980s and housing developments like Indian Peaks were going up. But the boom was bypassing downtown Lafayette as Louisville arguably benefited more from Lafayette’s west side growth.

As I was speaking with the very enthusiastic Mr. Gougler, his wife Barb jumped on the phone to tell me about the origins of what became the world’s largest annual oatmeal festival. Started in 1996, the Lafayette Oatmeal Festival was just a crazy idea to get people back into downtown Lafayette, and it arguably worked.

Back then Lafayette was a town of necessity. You went to town because that’s just where business was done and where local life happened.

In the 1990s there was concern in the town that the Highway 287 bypass would hurt the town’s economy by directing thru-traffic away from Public Road. According to Gougler the bypass was a blessing because it allowed downtown Lafayette to become a bonafide destination. Before the bypass, Public Road was just an exhaust-choked thoroughfare as motorists squeezed through town to get somewhere else but never having any reason to consider stopping in Lafayette.

Lafayette’s current mayor and Angevine Middle School teacher, J.D. Mangat, was born in Lafayette just twenty-seven years ago, the son of Indian immigrants. Mangat told me that, despite popular belief, Lafayette is not currently experiencing high levels of population growth like it did in the 1990s through the early 2000s. Now it is growing inwardly, figuring out what it really wants to become.

Mayor Mangat was proud to point out that “Lafayette currently has the most diverse city council in the history of Boulder County.” Reflecting on that comment I thought it to be a perfect closing to this brief journey through the town’s history. Lafayette is originally a town of immigrants who came here to find a life, but through their struggles, they built a legacy. Like the high school kids who used to cruise down Public Road, Lafayette is a town that is now coming of age. Like the mayor said, it’s time for the town to grow internally, to leverage its rich legacy, and finally come into its own.

The post Lafayette: Out of the Coal Dust appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

NORTHERN COLORADO – The YMCA of Northern Colorado is seeking donations to provide free summer camp for hundreds of local children in need, including those impacted by the Marshall Fire.

Every year, hundreds of local children in need access YMCA of Northern Colorado Day Camps with the help of the Y’s donor-funded financial assistance or CCAP (Child Care Assistance Program). This year, the nonprofit is setting a goal of also providing camp scholarships for 250 children impacted by the fires.

“This summer, the need is intensified because so many families have faced devastation in our community,” said Chris Coker, President and CEO of the YMCA of Northern Colorado. “The fires caused chaos, stress and trauma for many local children. The Y must step up to provide day camp for these families. As the largest childcare provider in the area with numerous camp sites throughout Northern Colorado, we must give these children a supportive, safe and healing summer at camp. Our children deserve that.”

The Y needs support from donors to realize this goal: Gifts can be made at ChampforCamp.org.

The YMCA of Northern Colorado provides a social-emotional learning curriculum during summer camp; all camp staff undergo Mental Health First Aid and SEL training to ensure children dealing with trauma, stress and big emotions have support.

“The YMCA is dedicated to providing year-round programming that supports mental wellness and social- emotional learning for children, so that they can better manage stress and build resiliency,” said Lisa Swainey, Vice President of Community Programs for the YMCA of Northern Colorado. “We know that many children in our community have been impacted by the tragic fire that swept through the area, and we are here to partner with families to provide a space where they can heal.”

YMCA of Northern Colorado Day Camps are offered at 10 sites throughout Boulder, Larimer and Weld counties, so camps are convenient for families that have relocated. The Y will also provide free YMCA memberships for these families — to ensure that all family members can utilize Y spaces and programs to move forward together and restore their emotional and physical health.

Families that have been impacted by the Marshall Fire and need financial support for summer camp can email Lisa.Swainey@ymcanoco.org. Other families in need can access information about financial assistance at www.ymcanoco.org/financial-assistance-ccap.

About the YMCA of Northern Colorado
The YMCA of Northern Colorado is a nonprofit organization that strengthens the foundations of community. We do that through programs that focus on youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. More than 50,000 youth, families and adults from all walks of life are served annually by the YMCA of Northern Colorado. Our facilities include the Johnstown Community YMCA in Johnstown, the Mapleton Y in Boulder, the Ed & Ruth Lehman Y in Longmont, the Arapahoe Y in Lafayette, the Cheyenne YMCA in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Camp Santa Maria overnight camp in Bailey. Learn more at ymcanoco.org

The post YMCA of Northern Colorado Raises Funds to Provide Free Camp for Hundreds of Families Impacted by the Marshall Fire appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.