Blank Colorado map

What the outline shows

The outline is a plain quadrilateral. All four borders are lines of latitude and longitude: 41°N against Wyoming and Nebraska, 37°N against Oklahoma and New Mexico, 102°W (approximately) against Nebraska and Kansas, and 109°W against Utah. On the ground the surveyed lines have hundreds of tiny kinks, and if you zoom far in you can see a few of them, but at print size the state is a rectangle. No cities, county borders, rivers or mountains are drawn. Capital adds a dot at Denver, a little east of centre; Abbreviation stamps "CO". Because the outline itself gives no clues, everything students add must come from memory or from the answer key.

Portrait or landscape

Colorado measures about 380 miles east to west and 280 miles north to south, a ratio of about 4:3. Print in landscape. In portrait the rectangle sits in the middle third of the page with big blank bands above and below it. Landscape fills the sheet and leaves just enough margin for a title line. If the worksheet needs a long list of answers, print in portrait and use the lower band for it; the map will still be readable, only smaller.

Five classroom exercises

1. Draw the Continental Divide as a north–south line through the western half of the state, entering from Wyoming and leaving into New Mexico; mark which side drains to the Pacific.
2. Place the sources of four rivers that rise in Colorado — the Colorado, the Arkansas, the Rio Grande and the South Platte — and draw each leaving the state on its correct side.
3. Mark the Four Corners point at the southwest corner and name the three other states that meet there.
4. Locate Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Fort Collins along the Front Range and note that they all sit on the line where mountains meet plains.
5. Shade the eastern third as Great Plains and the western two thirds as mountains and plateau, then mark Mount Elbert, the highest point in the Rocky Mountains.

How to recognise the Colorado outline

• A plain rectangle wider than tall, with no natural borders at all.
• One of only two states (with Wyoming) whose outline is entirely straight lines.
• Its southwest corner is the Four Corners point.
• The top edge is shared by two states, Wyoming and Nebraska, and the right edge by Nebraska and Kansas.

Answer key and related maps

• Colorado map — the labeled version with capital, cities and borders; use it as the answer key.
• Printable Colorado map — the same outline with cities, county lines and the capital printed on.
• Colorado county map — all 64 counties with their seats.
• Denver — capital and largest city, on the South Platte.
• Neighbours: Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah.
• Rocky Mountains, Continental Divide and Four Corners.
• All blank state maps and the printable US maps index.