Red-colored earth

That's how the first European explorers referred to the region of "Colorado" when they first came to this land in the late 1500s. This area was ceded to the U.S. in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War  of 1846-48. Located in the Rocky Mountain region of the western United States, the state's abundant and varied natural resources attracted the ancient Pueblo peoples and, later, the Plains Indians. During the Plains Indian Wars (1860s-80s), Colorado's wild frontier was the scene of intense fighting between Native Americans and white settlers. Colorado joined the Union as the 38th state in 1876, today it's America's eighth largest state in terms of land mass. In 1858 gold was discovered in Colorado and that discovery attracted thousands of new settlers.