{"id":13460,"date":"2026-02-18T00:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T07:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-museum-focuses-on-preserving-history-in-colorados-150th-year-of-statehood\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:37:27","slug":"montezuma-museum-focuses-on-preserving-history-in-colorados-150th-year-of-statehood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-museum-focuses-on-preserving-history-in-colorados-150th-year-of-statehood\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma museum focuses on preserving history in Colorado\u2019s 150th year of statehood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Montezuma Heritage Museum gets an oral history from Deb Keel whose family members were early settlers in Montezuma County. (Courtesy of Barbara Stagg)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma Heritage Museum is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Colorado\u2019s statehood, while the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.<\/p>\n

Barbara Stagg, the museum development coordinator, said the museum, 35 S. Chestnut St. in Cortez, is using a grant from the Ballantine Family Fund to present \u201cYesterday\u2019s Stories,\u201d a weekly five\u2011minute radio program on KSJD that will run May through October.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be at the same time and same day each week. So we\u2019re hoping people will get in the habit of simply tuning in so they can listen to all of them,\u201d Stagg said. \u201cAnd that, of course, is going to reveal a whole lot about the history of this county and this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Information about the date and time of the program is forthcoming. Stagg said the stories to be aired come from a combination of sources in the museum\u2019s archive, including oral histories, written stories and early newspapers available through History Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could do the same kind of program for the next 10 years and never use all the stories,\u201d Stagg joked.<\/p>\n

The museum is also organizing the first Montezuma Heritage Days, which Stagg hopes will become an annual tradition. On May 1 and 2, the museum will host arts and crafts activities, storytelling and music performances honoring the diverse cultures integral to Montezuma County\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren \u2013 young people especially \u2013 know much less than they need to about their own history, the history of their own land,\u201d Stagg said.<\/p>\n

In addition to Heritage Days, the museum is organizing special exhibits with History Colorado. Stagg recommended seeking information on southwest Colorado events for the special year at colorado150southwest.org.<\/p>\n

She called on Cortez and Montezuma County to join in honoring Aug. 1, the exact date of Colorado\u2019s induction into the United States 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get the word out to people because hardly anybody realizes Aug. 1 will be the exact date of our 150th anniversary of Colorado,\u201d Stagg said.<\/p>\n

avanderveen@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Initiatives by the museum bring attention to the county\u2019s history this year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18988,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460\/revisions\/18988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13460"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}