In The NOCO

When KUNC senior managing editor Stephanie Daniel journeyed into the mountains to work on her podcast The Colorado Dream , she met Javier Pineda, a snowboard instructor and Mexican immigrant. She was reporting on the housing crisis in Summit County, which has had a major impact on Pineda’s life. But as is often the case with journalism, telling one story led to the discovery of another.  Daniel le...

Although it is technically still winter — at least until March 19 — the flowers will soon be in bloom at Colorado State University’s Trial Garden. That is where many of the flower varieties hitting garden stores in the coming weeks undergo a rigorous, real-world testing process to see which varieties are resilient enough for Northern Colorado. The garden was started back in the 1970s on a small pl...

A national childcare shortage has its grip on Northern Colorado. It is affecting not only parents trying to hold down jobs, but also communities more broadly and local economies. The need is so great, in fact, that in February,  Larimer County had to freeze enrollment in its state-subsidized childcare program because it ran out of funds. “Childcare is this cyclical, community issue, where we need...

People of color in Denver breathe some of the area’s worst air. New research from the University of Colorado Boulder not only shows that the air in some neighborhoods is more polluted than others, it also links that disparity to an outlawed practice called redlining. In the 1930s and 40s, lenders and governments used color-coded maps to identify areas where people of color lived and deny those res...

Today is Super Tuesday — traditionally the biggest day for primary elections and caucuses across the nation. In Colorado, unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot for either the Republican or Democratic candidates. For more on the election and how KUNC is working to engage Coloradans in the democratic process, KUNC statehouse reporter Lucas Brady Woods joined In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole. In today’s ep...

In the West, two elements play an outsized role in our quality of life — fire and water. We know wildfire is part of the natural cycle of life here, yet climate change has intensified fires, making them deadlier, more destructive and more frequent. Meanwhile, our Western snowpack determines just how much water we have available to sustain our people, plants and animals. The relationship between th...

Just off Highway 34 outside of Greeley sits a ghost town dotted with a couple of deteriorating buildings and a sign. In the early 1900s this area was home to Dearfield . The thriving agricultural community founded by O.T. Jackson was Colorado’s largest Black homesteading site. Settlers grew corn, winter wheat, melons and strawberries and the community enjoyed great prosperity until drought, the Du...

Wolves are a contentious topic in the West, especially in Colorado where they were recently reintroduced. They are also central to a new 20-year study looking at their removal and reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park and what that means for disruptions to the food web.  Tom Hobbs and his research team at Colorado State University found that reintroducing apex predators like wolves failed to...

In 2021, Nicki Gonzales became Colorado’s first Latina state historian. History is a lifelong vocation for the Regis University professor – one that has helped to inform her own identity, and honor her family’s legacy. "When I was state historian, I would dedicate my presentations and my activities to my paternal grandmother, who I never met, but who was a single, mother of three boys here in Denv...

One in 27 students in Poudre School District is experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. That’s a statistic that KUNC senior editor and reporter Leigh Paterson recently stumbled on. Her reporting on youth mental health had suggested there was a problem, but this number told her the issue was more urgent than she’d thought. “It is on the radar of all of the school districts that I interact...

Museum curator Acoma Gaither has been a student of Black history for as long as she can remember. She’s pored over rich historical accounts of Black life in America’s North, South and East. But she says a lot of the history of Black life in our state still needs to be uncovered.    “And that's what really drew me to Colorado,” Gaither said. “I think there's so much opportunity and learning about t...

Health care is a fast-growing industry in Colorado, but finding people to work these jobs is a constant struggle amid the state’s ongoing worker shortage. State leaders are hopeful that a new bipartisan bill will alleviate some of the pressure. It would fund healthcare training across the state, including a new medical school — the College of Osteopathic Medicine — at the University of Northern Co...

One of Cary Morin’s guitars is proudly displayed at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery . That black Fender electric speaks to his musical legacy here in Northern Colorado as an Americana artist — or rather, "Native Americana," as some have dubbed his musical style. It is a style with deep Indigenous roots that Morin brought with him from Montana and replanted in Fort Collins four decades ago. "T...

As a teen, author Oscar Hokeah was an avid reader. He devoured dark fantasy novels and envisioned writing Native American versions of those stories. His studies drew him on a more literary path — but it took a long time to get there.   "So the last grade I completed was sixth grade, and then I got a GED when I was 17," Hokeah said. "And so I didn't even think of myself as being [a writer] even tho...

Forced prison labor is widespread across the U.S. and a recent investigation by the Associated Press details a large, complex web linking some of the world's largest food companies to work performed by incarcerated people. The two-year investigation featured data from Colorado State University’s Prison Agriculture Lab . "The signal from the prison system is that you don't deserve more than this, t...

In Colorado, the water that comes from our taps and keeps our fields growing can be in limited supply. That means heated debates over water – who gets to use it and how money should be spent to keep it flowing – are constant. That is evident right now, after a Colorado water agency announced plans to buy nearly $100 million of water from the Colorado River , even without plans to change how that w...

During Jim Crow, and even after those laws were overturned in the late 1960s, green book sites were safe places where Black Americans could stop when they were traveling. The sites bear the namesake of what’s known as the Green Book . It contained listings for hotels, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores and more.  Terri Gentry says her grandparents never left home without that book.  “We wer...

Estes Park resident Jason Van Tatenhove used to live a very different life than the one he has now. The former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers had an inside view of the far-right militia group and its subversive strategies.  His skepticism of government and a need for adventure initially drew him to the Oath Keepers – but when he became an insider, he knew he had to leave. Since then, he has exp...

Sean Short at Blooming Health Farms runs what he calls a working aquaponic chicken farm. First things first, what does that even mean? “It's a great question,” Short laughed. “I've put a few of those words together.” The farm uses aquaponics, “a fancy way of saying that we have some fish, and we use the fish water to grow plants.” In other words, aquaponics combines fish farming with hydroponics....

One of NPR’s founding mothers, Linda Wertheimer , is leaving the mothership, as we public radio nerds like to call NPR.  Wertheimer is a senior national correspondent and her five-decade career marks a lot of firsts – she was the first director for All Things Considered when it debuted in 1971. Five years later, she became the first woman to anchor an election night as presidential candidate Democ...

Funeral homes in Colorado have been operating like they exist in a Wild West time capsule. The lack of regulations has been center stage after authorities recently discovered almost 200 bodies that had been improperly stored at a funeral home in southern Colorado. That shocking discovery wasn't the only example of funeral home improprieties . Now lawmakers are looking at ways to regulate the indus...

When the Colorado Rockies’ official scorer Jillian Geib talks America’s favorite pastime, even baseball neophytes catch the excitement. The game is pretty central to her life. “I have watched thousands and thousands of baseball games in my lifetime, so that in itself was training — just watching games and seeing all sorts of situations that could occur because I still feel like every time I watch...

The legislative session is underway at the Colorado state Capitol and lawmakers have identified a long list of priorities that could have big impacts on life in Colorado. Strengthening renters’ rights has returned to the forefront after some successful bills and a few failed ones last year. Meanwhile, the Colorado Black Caucus is pushing for a comprehensive review of entrenched racial disparities...

We continue our look at doulas today and the crucial role they could play in addressing high rates of maternal mortality for Coloradans of color . Jannah Farooque is a doula with Mama Bird Doula Services. For the people of color she works with, she says just showing up at the hospital and being by their side makes a difference. “As an African American Muslim woman doula, I know that my presence is...

Colorado’s maternal death rate has been on the rise . It is a nationwide problem and the data tends to surprise people. The U.S. ranks higher than other countries in the so-called developed world for maternal death rates with people of color hit the hardest. In Colorado, this is especially true for Native Americans and Black residents. Research suggests systemic racism is often at play — a legacy...