The 150th ‘Colorado Day’

Saturday, August 1, 2026, is Colorado Day, as well as the anniversary—this year, the 150th—marking the day, in 1876, when President Ulysses S. Grant declared our state the 38th of the Union. 

Around the same time, farming and ranching had begun to eclipse mining as more profitable enterprises for those living here. Growing food began to make more sense (and money) than digging for silver and gold.

Colorado foodstuffs such as the sugar beet, the Palisade peach and Rocky Ford cantaloupe, all trace their lineage to this period of the late 1800s.

Nowadays, Colorado agriculture is huge: $47 billion a year spread over 36,000 farms and 30 million acres of land. We eat but one of the officially designated state critters—the greenback cutthroat trout—although moves have been afoot since 2014 to entitle the Palisade peach as the official state fruit.

(The debate has been both rancorous and difficult, a unique cocktail that could occur only in Colorado. On the one hand, folk from Rocky Ford dearly love and promote their melon as a foremost Colorado fruit. On the other, Colorado is the only state in the country where it is a crime to malign or disparage a fruit or a vegetable.)

Other foods come to mind when thinking Colorado: bison meat, Olathe Sweet Corn (always use the entire three-worded name), Pueblo green chiles, and, of course, those “swinging’ steaks” called Rocky Mountain oysters.

Some of the reasons all these foods of Colorado taste so very good are themselves distinctly Coloradan. We’re dry; we’re high (I reference elevation). Our growing conditions are marginal, with large day-to-night temperature fluctuations and relatively poor but mineral-rich soils.

Abundant uninterrupted sunlight—the “high” part—and mineral-rich soils help develop color and flavor intensity in fruits such as peaches and cantaloupes. Diurnal temperature swings slowly ripen and augment fruit sugars but also retain fruity acidity (meaning that that peach is both sweet and tangy).

And even lack of water can be a benefit. The “father” of the Rocky Ford melon industry, George Washington Swink, found that watermelons and cantaloupes grown in the dry climes of southeastern Colorado were more concentrated in flavor and fruit sugars, and less prone to melon burst from excess rainfall. 

Recipes on this site featuring Colorado foods:
- Colorado Striped Bass with Tomatoes
- Spicy Peach-accented Guacamole
- An All-Colorado Farmer’s Sandwich
- Agrodolce of Palisade Peaches and Fresno Chiles
- Migas, of Colorado