Colorado history

Saturday, September 26, 2026

A six-week-old state puts on a fair with six-foot grass and a sack of flour for a prize, a Bronco returns two punts before Cleveland can find the zipper, and the date still cannot choose between 93 degrees and a 28-degree first snow.

Colorado's first state-sized fair opens on Denver's east edge, cheese and all

1876 · Denver fairgrounds and Ford's Park

On the afternoon of Sept. 26, 1876, eight weeks after statehood, Denver opened what the papers called the first state fair: the Colorado Industrial Association's annual exposition on 40 acres at the city's eastern edge. Every wagon and rail car in town was pressed into service. Tempest won the trot. Bay Billy won the run. El Paso County brought enough cheese to surfeit the whole state.

Colorado was 56 days old and already late for its own party. The Industrial Association had been staging expositions in Denver since the 1860s. Statehood turned the same fair into a civic dare. The Rocky Mountain News said every person felt a certain pride in having the first fair since Colorado became a state especially successful, and then, because it was the national Centennial year, men were spurred on in their liberality. That is 1876 for you: a new constitution and a booth full of plumbing fixtures.

Wagons and railroad cars had been rolling in all week. The grounds sat on 40 acres east of downtown. Next door at Ford's Park, 40 shooters contested a pigeon match whose prizes ran from $100 cash to a sack of flour, which tells you what a sack of flour was worth. The real draw was five days of horse racing. On opening day Tempest took the trot and Bay Billy took the run, $150 each. Inside the halls: mammoth squashes, beets, potatoes, and melons from the Clear Creek Valley Grange; freshly cut grass measuring over six feet; oil paintings; needlework; hides; furniture; and the El Paso County Cheese Company, which the News judged sufficient to surfeit the whole state.

Friday the 29th, Mayor R.G. Buckingham declared a holiday after 50 bankers and businessmen asked him to. The grandstand filled so early that sitting room vanished before the races even started. Pueblo will later win the argument about where a state fair lives. Southern Colorado had already been holding its own association fair since 1872, and the State Fair Association incorporated there in 1886. Denver's job in 1876 was simpler: prove a brand-new state could fill a hall with produce and still have enough people left over to watch a horse named Tempest.

Same day, quieter and more consequential, was the registration deadline for Colorado's first statewide election on Oct. 3. The papers spent the morning hunting voters. The afternoon they spent looking at six-foot grass.

Sources: Colorado Newsline — first state fair, 1876 · Colorado Newsline — September 1876 canvass · Colorado Encyclopedia — State Fairgrounds · Colorado State Fair — history

Rick Upchurch takes two punts to the house and Cleveland never quite sits down

1976 · Mile High Stadium, Denver

On Sept. 26, 1976, Rick Upchurch returned Cleveland's first punt 73 yards for a touchdown and added a 47-yarder in the third quarter. Nobody touched him on either run. The Broncos beat the Browns 44-13. It was the first two-punt-return game in the merged NFL, and it started the season in which he took four punts to the end zone.

Upchurch was 24, a fourth-round pick out of Minnesota, and already the reason Mile High got quiet in a useful way when a punt hung. Cleveland kicked the first one. He cut back, found the lane the coverage thought it had closed, and went 73 yards. Jim Turner kicked the extra point. The Browns had not run a play that felt like a play.

The rest of the afternoon was the Orange Crush doing Orange Crush things. Otis Armstrong punched in from a yard. Turner hit a 47-yard field goal. Calvin Jones scooped a fumble and ran 43. Then Upchurch did it again, 47 yards this time, still untouched. Steve Ramsey found Haven Moses for 36 and Jim Kiick for 12. Tom Jackson picked Brian Sipe twice. Final: 44-13. Upchurch finished with four punt returns for 125 yards and the two scores.

He would take two more punts to the house before the year was over, four in a season, which was an NFL record then and is still the Broncos' season mark. Eight for his career, tied with Jack Christiansen when he retired. Ring of Fame in 2014. All-Decade in two different decades, which is a lot of decades for a man whose job was to catch a ball nobody wanted and run until the geometry gave up.

The stadium in the picture is gone. The trick is not. You still hold your breath on fourth down in this town, waiting to see whether the returner has decided the play is already over.

Sources: Denver Broncos — Upchurch legends · Broncos Ring of Fame — Rick Upchurch · Wikipedia — Rick Upchurch · 1976 box score, Broncos vs. Browns

The date keeps a 93-degree record and a 28-degree first snow in the same drawer

1927 · Denver

Sept. 26's average high is about 74. The record high is 93, set in 2024 after a 90 from 1892 finally gave way. The record low is 28, from 1927, when 1.7 inches of snow mixed with sleet became the first measurable snow of the season and the high stalled at 34.

The calendar is selling a mid-70s afternoon and a mid-40s morning, the version of late September that lets you leave a jacket in the car and call it wisdom. The sheet has other plans.

Hottest official afternoon on the date: 93 at DIA in 2024, which retired a 90 first posted in 1892 and tied in 2010. Boulder hit 92 the same day. Coldest morning: 28 in 1927. That year the high only made it to 34, still the lowest high for the date, and 1.7 inches of snow mixed with sleet became the first measurable snow of the season. Official snow on the 26th itself is logged at 1.6 inches in some modern tables; the Weather Service narrative still says 1.7. Either way, it was enough to make September feel like it had skipped a month.

The 1936 storm that still owns September started as intermittent flakes on this date after the dust-choked Friday night, then became continuous on the 27th and left 16.5 inches downtown by the 28th. In 1908 the first snow of the season had already arrived overnight from the 25th and totaled 6.5 inches by morning. In 2012 the date was the metro's wettest on the sheet, 1.41 inches, and a lightning strike outside the Hebrew Educational Alliance stopped a man's heart until his wife started it again.

Wear the layer. This date has already done a 132-year heat record, a freeze, first snow, and the opening credits of the biggest September storm on the books without bothering to change its name.

Sources: Extreme Weather Watch — Denver Sept. 26 · NWS Boulder public information statement · NWS notes via ThorntonWeather · Denver Gazette — 2024 record high