Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
From the record
“Calhan Paint Mines is an archeological district located on the eastern plains of Colorado in El Paso County, one mile south of Calhan. The Paint Mines Interpretive Park is "a unique blending of geological, archaeological, historical and ecological resources".”
Wikipedia article Calhan Paint Mines Archeological District, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 98 National Register listings published here for El Paso County · listed in 2000 · category: District.
National Register reference number.00000783- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
53 since 2004
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 53 fires within 5 miles of Calhan Paint Mines Archeological District
between 2004 and 2020, burning about 381 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
35
Equipment and vehicle use
7
Power generation/transmission/distribution
6
Smoking
2
Natural
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
Debris and open burning
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
36 workings within 5 miles of Calhan Paint Mines Archeological District: 24 producers, 10 past producers, 2 occurrences.
24 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Calhan, the town this property stands in, in 103 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 84 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind, 5 flash flood, 3 heavy rain.
The reports record 3 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A very severe thunderstorm dumped giant hail from the Elbert-El Paso county line into Calhan. The hail swath was around 2 miles wide. Damage estimates were still preliminary at the time of submission.
Very heavy rain from a line of slow moving thunderstorms produced up to 4 inches of rain in one hour caused an irrigation dam to overflow in northeastern EL Paso county. Brackett Creek went out of it's banks running at times 8 to 12 feet deep and 30 feet wide...with the average levels at Brackett Creek 6 inches deep and 3 feet wide. Around 25 county roads were washed out by the flash flooding in a large portion of the county north of Highway 94. Highway 110 and Falcon Highway were severely damaged from flood waters of Brackett Creek. A bridge on Slocum Road...two miles north of Highway 94 was destroyed.
Roof peeled off a trailer home near the El Paso County fairgrounds. Time estimated per Doppler radar signatures. Doppler radar estimates 70-75 mph winds.
Heavy rain in 2 1/2 hours caused several road closures, generally east and southeast of Ramah. Brackett Creek, about 3 miles southwest of Calhan, overflowed its banks and spilled over a flood control dam, causing additional flooding mainly south of highway 24.
Severe thunderstorms rumbled across El Paso County, dumping hail over much of the area. A spotter reported golf-ball size hail fell in Calhan (32 miles northeast of Colorado Springs).
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
1 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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