Ute Park — Aspen's Original Inhabitants
Near Aspen, Colorado
According to its marker, the park you see here was dedicated to the Ute people, the original inhabitants of this high valley, in commemoration of the First Ute Summit held in nineteen ninety-three, the United Nations International Year of Indigenous People. Three Ute nations came together for that gathering: the Uintah-Ouray Nation of Utah, the Southern Ute Nation, and the Ute Mountain Ute Nation, all descendants of the people who called these mountains home for centuries before silver prospectors arrived in the eighteen seventies. The Ute were forcibly relocated in eighteen eighty-one following pressure from settlers and mining interests.
The summit and this dedication represented a moment of reunion, in the words of the marker itself: united with hope for the future. The Roaring Fork Valley sits on ancestral Ute land, and this small park carries that memory forward.
