Drainage water west of the Continental Divide flows to the southwest via the Colorado River and the Green River into the Gulf of California. The area of Colorado to the west of the Continental Divide is called the Western Slope of Colorado. The Continental Divide extends along the crest of the Rocky Mountains. View from near the summit of Mount Belford near the Continental Divide. However, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as the farming of crops, Eastern Colorado has a good deal of livestock raising, such as at cattle ranches and hog farms and irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, and also from subterranean sources, including artesian wells. Corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. The summers in the plains are normally hot and dry, while the winters are often cold, snowy, and icy. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches (380 to 630 mm) annually. Eastern Colorado is presently mainly covered in farmland, along with small farming villages and towns. The Colorado plains are usually thought of as prairies, but actually they have many patches of deciduous forests, buttes, and canyons, much like the high plains in New Mexico as well. East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Colorado at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet (1,020 to 2,300 m). Plains Ī little over one third of the area of Colorado is flat and rolling land. Is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. Once agreed upon by the federal, state, and territorial governments, those surveyors' benchmarks, became the legal boundaries for the Colorado Territory, kinks and all. When placing the border markers for the Territory of Colorado, minor surveying errors resulted in several small kinks, most notably along the border with the Territory of Utah. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the only states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The borders of Colorado were originally defined to be lines of latitude and longitude, making its shape a latitude-longitude* quadrangle which stretches from 37°N to 41°N latitude and from 102☀3'W to 109☀3'W longitude ( 25°W to 32°W from the Washington Meridian). Residents of the state are properly known as " Coloradans", although the archaic term "Coloradoan" is still used. Colorado is noted for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and desert lands.ĭenver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado. states with no natural borders, the others being neighboring Wyoming and Utah. The four states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet at one common point known as the Four Corners, which is known as the heart of the American Southwest. Colorado is nicknamed the " Centennial State" because it was admitted to the Union in 1876, the centennial year of the United States Declaration of Independence.Ĭolorado is bordered by the northwest state of Wyoming to the north, the midwest states of Nebraska and Kansas to the northeast and east, on the south by New Mexico and a small portion of the southern state of Oklahoma, and on the west by Utah. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado as the 38th state. The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Río Colorado for the red colored ( Spanish: colorado) silt the river carried from the mountains. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,116,796 on July 1, 2011, an increase of +1.74% since the 2010 United States Census. Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 22nd most populous of the 50 United States. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, and the Mountain States. Colorado ( i / k ɒ l ə ˈ r æ d oʊ / or / k ɒ l ə ˈ r ɒ d oʊ /) is the US state that encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains.
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