History Colorado Center

The History Colorado Center is an American museum located in Denver, Colorado. It focuses on the history of Colorado. Construction of the $111 million building began on 19 August 2009. The museum opened at 1200 Broadway on 28 April 2012. It is one block from the site of the Colorado History Museum's predecessor, which closed in 2010. History Colorado, formerly known as the Colorado Historical Society, manages the center.

The Stephen H. Hart Library & Research Center houses a collection of artifacts and archives, as well as photography, that can be used to supplement the History of Colorado Collection.

This unique exhibit focuses on Denver's capital. The alphabet's journey reveals interesting facts about Colorado's largest city, from the fascination with zombies to big blue bears.

The Denver Diorama is a local favorite. It shows what Denver looked like as a small town in the 1800s Colorado plains.

Colorado Stories is a detailed look at the people who have shaped Colorado's history, and made it the state that it is today. Highlights include a ski jumping simulator and a short loop that shows the struggles of internees at Granada War Relocation Center. This camp was located in Southeastern Colorado and used to house Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The cramped conditions of the internees' quarters is shown in a walk-through exhibit. The exhibits also include a Silverton silver mine, Colorado, and a section that examines the triumphs and hardships of Colorado's African-Americans.

Upon entering the museum, visitors are greeted with a map of Colorado measuring 40x60 feet. Steven Weitzman, a renowned artist, created the map using a unique type of concrete tiles that he invented. Visitors can move a large steam punk-style time machine over specific areas of the map. The screens come to life and relay fascinating stories from different periods of the area's past.

Visitors can see the beauty of Colorado's mountains and how they have shaped the state's roads and rivers. The museum uses a water diorama as an example and trees affected by Mountain pine beetle to show how important it is to preserve Colorado's resources.

Destination Colorado is a documentary about the former town Keota in Colorado, which has since been unincorporated. The historic town was established in 1880 and is known as the "Illustrious Homesteading Mecca" that survived drought and famine, but was also full of kindness and community. As the exhibit winds through the school and general store, it is narrated in part by actors who portray real Keota residents. Many of Keota's relatives and some of their residences are still in existence today.

Mesa Verde is a focus on the daily lives and customs of the Ancestral Puebloans. The exhibit includes dioramas as well as artifacts such pottery and tools.

This section allows museum visitors to experience the Black Sunday Storm of the 1930s, and the hardships that the Dust Bowl presented homesteading Coloradans.