Preserving Colorado's Historic Places
History, culture, and architectural character protected in perpetuity.
Established in 1965, The Colorado Historical Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organization, originally conceived to enhance and complement other Colorado entities' efforts to commemorate, preserve, document, and interpret our state's rich history.
Beckwith Ranch, Westcliffe in Custer County. Built 1870s -1890s.
The spirit of statewide collaboration and support guides our Historic Preservation Easements Program.
What is a Historic Easement?
An easement is a legal agreement between a property owner (the grantor) and the holder of the easement (the grantee), which governs the current and future owners’ treatment of the property.
- National Trust for Historic Preservation
Wink's Panorama, Pinecliffe in Gilpin County. Built from 1925-1928. Photo courtesy of the Denver Public Library Special Collections.
The Colorado Historical Foundation's easements collections includes the following property types:
Art centers and playhouses, banks, camps and lodges, churches, temples, and places of worship, commercial and industrial buildings, working lands, fraternal, social, and labor organizations.
Plus, hotels, theaters and opera houses, cultural landscapes, municipal buildings, private residences, railroad buildings, schools, a hospital, and an armory.
What motivates an individual or an organization to convey an easement?
- Protect their legacies
- Receive public financial support
- Access tax benefits
- Section 106 compliance; Section 106 process ensures historic preservation is considered in federal project planning
Tabor Opera House, Leadville in Lake County. Built in 1879.
In 2020, the Colorado Historical Foundation reached a milestone with the addition of its 100th historic conservation easement property.
Through this program, Colorado's treasured historic buildings and landscapes are protected, preserved, rehabilitated, and revitalized for future generations.
Our 100th easement property: Former Methodist Church, Silver Plume in Clear Creek County. Built in 1880.
Tour Our First 100 Historic Conservation Easement Properties
Explore the diverse and dynamic historic properties we've helped protect since 1981.
All easement properties are historically designated at the national, state or local level. Their "stories" or "Areas of Significance", are included here as available and as they appear on the original nomination forms. That said, beyond traditional documentation methods, most properties hold meaningful social and cultural import, often overlooked, and perhaps, still untold.
Properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places are automatically placed in the Colorado State Register. They may also be nominated separately to the Colorado State Register without inclusion in the National Register. Some properties are located within historically designated national districts.
For more information on Colorado's National and State Register-listed properties.
The future of historic preservation is bright.
The Colorado Historical Foundation is Colorado’s largest historic preservation conservation easement holding organization, with a portfolio of over 100 properties statewide.
Since 2020, we have added many more buildings to our growing list of protected historic conservation easement properties.
Oxford Hotel, Denver in Denver County. Built in 1891.
Explore Our Latest Historic Conservation Easement Properties
"We shape our buildings; thereafter, our buildings shape us."
- Winston Churchill
Beyond the Buildings
Members of the La Sociedad Protección Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (S.P.M.D.T.U.) Concilio Superior in Antonito pose on the south side of the building in 1938. Photo courtesy of Dr. Antonio Esquibel.
Although we're deeply committed to Colorado's treasured buildings and cultural landscapes, we're also drawn to the diverse people who lived, worked, and worshipped within our historic conservation easement properties.
From left to right:
Statue of Celedonia Mondragón, who founded the La Sociedad Protección Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (S.P.M.D.T.U.) in 1900.
Wendall “Wink” Hamlet (left), architect and owner of Wink's Panorama, and his brother, Clarence, in the 1950s. Photo courtesy of Denver Public Library Special Collections.
Minette Miller, born in Leadville, Colorado in 1894, worshiped at Temple Israel and is buried in Leadville's Hebrew Cemetery. Photo courtesy of Temple Israel Museum Collection.
Charlotte Perry (left) and Portia Mansfield founded the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in 1914. Photo courtesy of Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp.
Featured Historic Conservation Easement Property:
Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp
Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Perry-Mansfield students strike a pose on the Main Lodge patio.
A Routt County Creative Legacy
Camp founders Charlotte Perry (left) and Portia Mansfield dance in the style of Isadora Duncan. Photo courtesy of the Perry-Mansfield Archives.
Perry and Mansfield met while students at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and were both well versed in the arts. Mansfield's main interest was dance. As an affluent young woman, she attended Broadway shows and plays in Chicago and New York. Perry's first love was drama. A Denver native, Perry was raised in a prosperous railroad and mining family and attended nationally known theater productions before heading east for college.
Upon graduation, neither woman was interested in the typical high-society path of their peers. Perry invited Mansfield to visit Colorado in the fall of 1912. During the visit, Perry's father asked the two young women to join him on a bear hunt in the remote mountains, where they rode horses and camped under the stars. This experience inspired their shared dream to open a summer arts camp in the Rocky Mountains.
Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp is located near Steamboat Springs in Routt County.
“Creative practice through art and nature manifests in an insightful, compassionate, and courageous life."
- Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield
Various outdoor activities, including horseback riding, have been camp traditions for decades.
Watch this short video to discover a place where innovation and imagination have been soaring since 1914.
Perry and Mansfield’s early vision for the camp, and their own lives, continues to inspire.
Young campers rehearse for the Fourth of July Parade held in downtown Steamboat Springs.
Perry and Mansfield fostered individuality, creative experimentation, and an appreciation of nature that lives on today in the buildings they designed and built over a hundred years ago.
Become an active participant in Colorado's story.
Support the study and preservation of Colorado’s unique history and historic sites like Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp and many others.
Your support of the Colorado Historical Foundation helps sustain the financial, legal, and technical resources needed to archive, protect, care for, and commemorate Colorado’s diverse, complex, and inspiring history.
Thank you to Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp for the use of their photographs and video.