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Patty Limerick has been named the new Colorado State Historian. Limerick is the director of the Center of the American West in CU Boulder. She is a lecturer, author and teacher, as well as a columnist whose writing can regularly be seen in the Denver Post. She is known for her vivid accounts on the American West history.

Limerick undertakes the post through the partnership between History Colorado, an agency running all the major museums and the archives in the state, and the University of Colorado. She will continue working as a teacher and researcher, while organizing public events for her new job.

Limerick will have to balance even more duties than this. President Obama appointed her to the National Council on the Humanities last year. The Senate confirmed her nomination last fall, meaning that she will begin her duties at that position sooner rather than later.

Patty Limerick Brings Expertise

The new State Historian is known for her practical approach to the history that can be seen in her book called “Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West”. Limerick has received the McArthur Fellowship.

Limerick grew up in California and went to school there until leaving to get her Ph. D. at Yale University. There, she served as a graduate teaching assistant for an esteemed class. She taught as an assistant professor at Harvard University for four years. After that, she joined the University of Colorado at Boulder. She became a full professor there in 1991, and remains a professor there to this day.

As the state historian, Dr. Limerick will attend to duties related to helping Coloradans understand the history of the place they love. Colorado has a long, expansive history that stretches back through time long before Europeans ever arrived there. Limerick and her team now face the task of making Coloradans understand that history a little more thoroughly.