English

When the border crossed over the people

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You can visit the new exhibit a History Colorado Center. Presented in English and Spanish, Borderlands explores the shifting geopolitical history of southern Colorado. This area framed by mountains and rivers is naturally conducive to unique and resilient forms of cultural connection. An international border crossed over the people in this region, changing their lives forever, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo moved a portion of the US–Mexico border from the Arkansas River, which flows through the middle of Colorado, down to the Rio Grande in 1848.

Residents with long generational ties to the region were dispossessed in many ways of land, wealth, and legal claims by this outcome of the Mexican–American War. What emerged was not a clean slate but a new iteration of the everlasting borderlands, a rich tapestry of merged cultures enduring through conflict, collision, and fateful connections that continue in the present day. Through the diaspora of the San Luis Valley, the legacy of the borderlands permeates Denver, as well.