Colorado is the country’s highest state, with an average elevation of 6,800 feet. It has 54 peaks that rise beyond 14,000 feet (called colloquially as “fourteeners”), including Pikes Peak, one of the state’s most popular tourist destinations. Denver, Colorado’s biggest city and capitol, is known as the Mile High City because of its elevation of 5,280 feet.

In the Centennial State, things are changing quickly. With a five-year growth rate of 6.5 percent between 2010 and 2014, Colorado is the third fastest growing state in the United States. It was once predominantly a rural state noted for its frontier spirit, but it is currently quickly urbanising. The Denver-Aurora-Broomfield metro region, which is one of the ten fastest expanding in the US, is home to over 2.7 million people, or more than half of the state’s total population. With this expansion comes more diversity, with 20% of inhabitants identifying as Hispanic. Germans are the state’s most populous ethnic group, accounting for 14 percent of the population.

Colorado is dominated by the Rocky Mountains and is divided by the Continental Divide, which runs north to south and passes through several of the state’s main cities. The eastern portion of Colorado is a plateau, and the economy is highly reliant on agriculture, particularly cattle and dairy products, as well as a few main crops such as sugar beets, wheat, beans, maize, potatoes, apples, and carnations. Colorado, which was historically a mining state, continues to generate considerable amounts of coal, oil, natural gas, molybdenum, sand, gravel, and gold. Newmont Mining Corp., one of the world’s major gold producers, is headquartered in Denver, and the state ranks third in gold output in the United States. Following the Great Depression, which had a significant impact on Colorado’s mining and agricultural industries, the state’s economy began to move toward tourism and government jobs. Thousands of military and civilian jobs were created in the Colorado Springs area during the 1950s with the establishment of the United States Air Force Academy and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD); today, Colorado has six military bases and installations (two Army, four Air Force) with a total of over 50,000 personnel. However, service sectors — ranging from financial services to software development – now account for the majority of Colorado’s gross domestic product, as they do in the rest of the country.

Colorado was listed in the top ten states for employment growth in 2015, thanks to a thriving population and a robust services-based economy. One major aspect is a well-educated workforce, as the state ranks second in the US in terms of inhabitants with college degrees (35.9 percent ). Not unexpectedly, the infusion of highly talented employees is driving up the real estate market, with a 26 percent increase in statewide valuation between 2011 and 2015. As of the latter, Colorado’s median house value was $295,460, and the typical rental price was $1,228.