Colorado

Hunters tracked down bison and now-extinct mammoths and mastodons through what is now Colorado about 15,000 years ago.The first long-term settlements appeared in the southwest part of the state thousands of years ago; their ancestors built the ruins at Mesa Verde National Park. Many other Native American cultures later lived in this area, including the Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne tribes. Spanish conquistadors arrived in Colorado in the 1500s, the first Europeans to arrive.