Namaqua

The bronze spells him Modena; the family's cemetery and most histories since write Medina. Mariano Medina, born in Taos in 1812, trapped and guided for two decades before settling at this crossing of the Big Thompson in 1858 with his Salish wife, Tacanecy, and the son of her first marriage, whom he raised as his own. He ran a ferry, then a toll bridge, and brought families up from Taos to build a settlement around his post. Tacanecy died in 1874 and Medina in 1878, and in 1960 part of the family burial ground was moved to Namaqua Park.

What the plaque says

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado Namaqua Home, trading post and fort of Mariano Modena, early trapper, scout and pioneer. First settlement in the Big Thompson Valley. Station on Overland Stage route to California in 1862. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the Namaqua Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution 1931

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stanley Hotel — 21 mi
  Built by a steam-car maker who came west to die of tuberculosis and lived thirty-seven more years, then rescued by one night in Room 217.
• Poudre Canyon — 24 mi
  Colorado's only wild and scenic river, named for buried gunpowder in a story nobody can date, and burned along its length in 2020.

More markers nearby

• Fort Junction — 18 mi
• Fort Vasquez — 21 mi
• Evans — 23 mi
• Fort Lupton — 27 mi