The Colorado Flag
I like the Colorado State flag. I guess you could say I am proud of the flag. Here in Colorado you see the flag all over the place. Flagpoles, of course, bumpers, hats, t-shirts, marijuana stores, on the iPad I’m writing this on, window stickers, building foyer floors, notebooks, backpacks, patches on jackets, tattoos, hoodies, on state highway signs, and lots of other places.
One place it isn’t on are Colorado State Line signs. There are the venerable wooden Welcome to Colorful Colorado signs. They were there when I was a kid. I always felt a bit of a thrill when we passed the one on US 6&50 coming from Utah. They’re rustic and distinctive. The one on I-70 coming from Wyoming has had a No Vacancy sticker from time to time.
Recently the state government made a mistake in adopting a new logo. It is a triangle which can be paired with a state agency. The triangles so small as to be unreadable from any distance. The logos are an example of committees going too far. Why not the Colorado flag with the agency name on a separate sticker? Denver does it with success.
The flag colors represent blue sky, red earth, and golden sunshine. I think the gold also represents the gold responsible for attracting settlers in large numbers back in 1859 and 1860. The gold brought people, wealth, farms and ranches to feed the miners and a fascinating mountain railroad history.
Along with the gold rush came a big mess. Gold mines, mills, smelters, huge waste dumps, polluted streams, and superfund sites scattered throughout the mountains and in Denver. We will always have the sad legacy of exploitation with no regard to the future. It’s ironic one of the most famous photographs is a mine building in the canyon below the Million Dollar Highway.
The development of extractive industries also
Old Mine on the Million Dollar Highway
created a boom-bust economy. The silver panic of 1890 closed mines and left ghost towns. More recently, the big oil and gas downturn of the 1980’s severely damaged the economy. There was a bumper sticker saying “Please God, bring another oil boom, I won’t waste it this time”. Weld county, just north of Denver is densely populated with oil and gas wells creating an environmental crisis.
Maybe the Colorado flag should incorporate a black stripe.