The Rocky Mountains

The mountains and basins were home to many Native nations: the Shoshone and Bannock of the Snake River Plain and Wind River country, the Ute of Colorado and Utah, the Blackfeet, Crow and Salish of Montana, the Nez Perce of the Idaho valleys, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne on the plains edge. In the canyon country, Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont peoples farmed and left rock art and the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. Spain claimed the south, and the eastern slopes passed to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; Lewis and Clark crossed Montana and Idaho in 1805. Fur trappers followed, meeting at annual rendezvous in the 1820s and 1830s, and the Oregon Trail carried emigrants across Wyoming and Idaho.

In 1847 Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young reached the Salt Lake Valley, then Mexican territory that passed to the United States after the Mexican–American War. The Colorado gold rush of 1858–59 founded Denver, and later silver and copper booms built Leadville and Butte. Settlement brought war with the Native nations: Colorado militia killed well over a hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho, most of them women, children and elderly people, at Sand Creek in 1864; Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated Custer at the Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876; and the Nez Perce were pursued across four states in 1877. The transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, and Yellowstone became the first national park in 1872.

Colorado became a state in 1876, Montana in 1889, Idaho and Wyoming in 1890 and Utah in 1896, after the Latter-day Saint church ended plural marriage. Wyoming Territory gave women the vote in 1869. During the Second World War Japanese Americans were held in camps at Heart Mountain, Minidoka, Topaz and Amache. Since the late 20th century the region has been one of the fastest-growing parts of the country, and Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The region's identity mixes the working West of ranches, mines and rodeos with the outdoor culture of skiers, climbers and river guides who moved here for the mountains. Cheyenne Frontier Days, held each July since 1897, is one of the largest rodeos in the country, and small-town rodeos and county fairs fill the summer calendar in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Cowboy hats and pickup trucks are everyday wear and transport rather than costume.

Utah stands apart because of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members make up a large share of the state's population and whose Salt Lake City headquarters shapes local life: large families, low alcohol consumption, strong volunteering, and Pioneer Day on 24 July, marking the 1847 arrival. Colorado by contrast has a more secular, liberal city culture, and was among the first two states to legalise recreational cannabis, in 2012.

Native nations remain a living presence. The Blackfeet, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and other nations hold reservations in Montana, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho share the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, and the Ute keep lands in Colorado and Utah. Powwows such as Crow Fair in August draw dancers from across the West. Park City's Sundance Film Festival long made Utah a winter destination for film, though it is due to move to Boulder, Colorado, from 2027.

About 13 million people live across the five states, but very unevenly. Colorado has around 6 million and Utah over 3 million, while Wyoming, with under 600,000, is the least populous state in the country. Most people live along the Front Range from Fort Collins through Denver to Colorado Springs and Pueblo, and along Utah's Wasatch Front from Ogden through Salt Lake City to Provo. Denver has about 700,000 people in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million; Boise, Idaho's fast-growing capital, has around 235,000.

The economy has moved from mining and ranching towards technology, finance, government and tourism. Wyoming remains a major producer of coal, oil and gas; Idaho grows potatoes and dairy; Montana ranches cattle and grows wheat; Utah's corridor south of Salt Lake City, nicknamed Silicon Slopes, hosts software firms; and Colorado mixes aerospace, military bases and outdoor brands. Tourism supports the park gateways and ski towns.

Life follows the seasons: skiing and snowmobiling in winter, hiking, fishing and rafting in summer, and hunting in autumn. The main current issues are growth and cost. Housing prices in Boise, Denver and the resort towns have pushed out many workers, the Colorado River that supplies much of the West is overallocated, and wildfire has moved into the suburbs: Colorado's Marshall Fire destroyed more than a thousand buildings in Boulder County at the end of 2021.

Mountain food is hearty and plain, built on beef, game and potatoes. Bison and elk appear on menus in burgers, steaks and sausages, rainbow and cutthroat trout come from the rivers, and Rocky Mountain oysters — breaded, deep-fried bull calf testicles — are an old ranch dish now served mostly as a dare. The Denver omelette combines ham, onion and green pepper, and Colorado smothers burritos and burgers in green chile, with Pueblo holding its own chile festival.

Idaho is synonymous with potatoes, and the state also claims finger steaks, strips of battered, deep-fried beef. Utah has fry sauce, a mix of ketchup and mayonnaise for chips, and funeral potatoes, a cheesy potato bake with a crunchy topping served at church gatherings; its drive-through soda shops mixing fizzy drinks with syrups and cream are a local craze. Butte's miners brought the pasty, a meat-and-potato pastry, from Cornwall, and Montana and Idaho pick wild huckleberries for jams, pies and ice cream in late summer.

Colorado grows Palisade peaches on the Western Slope and Rocky Ford melons in the Arkansas Valley. The state is one of the country's great beer centres: Coors has brewed in Golden since the 1870s, and Denver holds the Great American Beer Festival each autumn. Utah's liquor laws are the strictest in the region, with stronger drinks sold in state-run stores.

Yellowstone, mostly in north-west Wyoming with edges in Montana and Idaho, holds Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin, the rainbow-coloured Grand Prismatic Spring, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with its waterfalls, and the Lamar and Hayden valleys, where bison and wolves are seen. Grand Teton lies just south, its peaks rising above Jenny Lake, the Snake River and the cowboy resort town of Jackson. In north-west Montana, Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road climbs to Logan Pass, with Lake McDonald and Many Glacier below; the park joins Canada's Waterton Lakes as an international peace park. Wyoming's Devils Tower and Montana's Little Bighorn Battlefield lie to the east.

Denver has its museums and the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in the foothills at Morrison, and Rocky Mountain National Park is about two hours north-west. The Colorado ski towns — Aspen and the Maroon Bells, Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs and Telluride — are summer hiking bases too. In the south-west corner, Mesa Verde preserves Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, and Great Sand Dunes rises in the San Luis Valley.

Utah holds five national parks. Near Moab, Arches has over 2,000 natural stone arches, including Delicate Arch, and Canyonlands looks down from Island in the Sky into the canyons of the Colorado and Green rivers. Capitol Reef lies west, and in the south Zion's sheer canyon holds Angels Landing and the Narrows, while Bryce Canyon's amphitheatres are packed with orange hoodoos. Salt Lake City offers Temple Square and the Great Salt Lake, with the Bonneville Salt Flats further west and the ski resorts of Park City in the Wasatch. Idaho adds the Sawtooth Mountains, Sun Valley, and the lava fields of Craters of the Moon.