By Quentin Young | editor
On May 26, we launched a series called Fifty for 150 with a story about the 2023 Colorado Supreme Court decision that said President Donald Trump had engaged in insurrection and could not appear on the Colorado primary ballot. Each of the 50 stories in the series focuses on an event that helped define Colorado over 150 years of statehood. They’ve covered recreational marijuana, the JonBenét Ramsey case, ‘Black Sunday,’ the Chicano Movement, Camp Hale, the Ludlow Massacre, the first Colorado ski resort, Barney Ford, the expulsion of Ute tribes, and many other people and events. Today, exactly 150 years after President Ulysses S. Grant proclaimed Colorado a state, we publish our last Fifty for 150 story, about the “party trickery” that preceded statehood in 1876. Every Fifty for 150 story is collected here. Below is a story about anniversary celebrations around the state today.
Billy Hailey, left, worked as a CrossFit coach while in community corrections in Larimer County. He was expecting to enter parole last summer when, instead, the Colorado Department of Corrections determined it incorrectly calculated his sentence and placed him back in prison. (Photo courtesy of Brandin Kreuzer)
By Sara Wilson
Colorado Newsline has communicated with four men who believed they were making progress toward release from prison and rehabilitation through earned time until the state Department of Corrections adjusted their sentences and rescinded their earned time. Similar department actions between July 2025 and March this year have affected at least 10 people who are incarcerated, resulting in decades of additional time in prison time. The department blames “clerical errors.”
Rudy Villeda Mejía, pictured holding his granddaughter, fears deportation back to his native Honduras due to violence he faced in the country. He has lived in the U.S. since 2010. (Photo courtesy of Mabel Shaffer)
By Lindsey Toomer
Rudy Villeda Mejía has his own roofing business, a wife and three stepchildren in Washington, near the state’s border with Canada. He has never been charged with a crime. He entered the U.S. without authorization for a second time in 2010 after he was kidnapped by a violent cartel in Mexico, and has been in the U.S. since then. Villeda Mejía attended routine check-ins with immigration officials in Seattle for more than a decade. But ICE arrested at at the Denver International Airport on March 30, and he has since been in custody at the ICE detention center in Aurora. Now he’s trying to avoid deportation to Honduras and the violence he was subjected to there.
A historic 38-star American flag, featuring a star for Colorado, the 38th state. (Photo courtesy of History Colorado)
By Chase Woodruff
From an art market in downtown Denver to a pancake supper in Olathe, public events will be held all across the state this weekend to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Colorado statehood. A proclamation by President Ulysses S. Grant on Aug. 1, 1876, admitted Colorado as the 38th state in the union. Coming less than a month after the nation’s 100th birthday celebration, Grant’s proclamation ensured that Colorado would be known by the nickname that a Denver newspaper had first suggested a year earlier — the Centennial State.
TIMELINE 1876
FIFTY FOR 150
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Small town in southeast Colorado declared abandoned | By Lindsey Toomer
Democrats lay out plan to win supermajority in Colorado Legislature | By Sara Wilson
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