Colorado history

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

An NHL team changes zip codes, a federal park service is born for places Colorado already had, and Kansas draws a county that will outlive Kansas here.

Kansas City ships Denver an NHL team and a new nickname

1976 · McNichols Sports Arena, Denver

On Aug. 25, 1976, the Kansas City Scouts — two seasons old and already exhausted — officially relocated to Denver as the Colorado Rockies. McNichols Arena got hockey. New Jersey eventually got the franchise.

The Scouts had lasted two winters in Kansas City: 27 wins, 110 losses, not enough season tickets. In late July oilman Jack Vickers bought the wreck. On this date the move became official and the sweaters changed from scout to mountain.

Denver already had a new barn. McNichols Sports Arena had opened in 1975 next to Mile High. The Rockies played there six seasons, made the playoffs once, and taught a generation of kids that an NHL sweater could be blue, red, and gold without being good. In 1982 the club left for the Meadowlands and became the New Jersey Devils. Denver went 13 years without the league, then inherited the Quebec Nordiques in 1995 and named them the Avalanche.

So the baseball Rockies borrowed a name the hockey Rockies had already abandoned. The Devils still trace their family tree through McNichols. Denver traces the good years through 1996.

Sources: The Hockey Writers — Aug. 25 in hockey history · Wikipedia — Kansas City Scouts · Wikipedia — Colorado Rockies (NHL)

Woodrow Wilson signs the Park Service into existence

1916 · Washington, D.C. / Colorado parks

On Aug. 25, 1916, President Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act. Colorado already had Mesa Verde (1906) and Rocky Mountain National Park (1915). The new agency was the ranger those places had been missing.

Parks existed before the Park Service. What they lacked was a single shop whose job was to keep them “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Wilson’s signature created that shop inside the Interior Department.

Colorado was not a spectator. Mesa Verde had been a national park for a decade. Rocky Mountain National Park was a year old. Later came Black Canyon, Great Sand Dunes, and a roster of monuments, historic sites, and recreation areas that now make the state one of the Service’s busiest addresses.

Every summer traffic jam in Estes Park is, in a sideways way, an Aug. 25 story. The Act did not invent the mountains. It invented the idea that someone on a federal payroll had to keep them from being loved to death.

Sources: AP — Today in History, August 25 · National Park Service — Organic Act

Kansas Territory draws Arapahoe County on a map that is not Kansas

1855 · Western Kansas Territory (future Colorado)

On Aug. 25, 1855, Kansas Territory created Arapahoe County across its far-western end — the plains and Front Range that would become Colorado. The county was never really organized. The name survived anyway.

Three years before anyone shouted gold on Cherry Creek, the Kansas legislature drew a giant county and named it for the Arapaho. It covered the extreme west of the territory, which is to say most of what we now call eastern and central Colorado.

Organizing it was another matter. The county seat was a rumor. Officials were scarce. After 1858 the gold towns invented their own governments because Leavenworth was a long ride with bad news. Jefferson Territory tried to finish the job in 1859. Congress created Colorado Territory in 1861 and finally put a border where a county line had been pretending.

Arapahoe County still exists, just smaller and suburban. The 1855 version was a placeholder with a mountain range attached.

Sources: Wikipedia — Timeline of Colorado history · Wikipedia — Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory