In May we reported that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Enviroment had removed marriage and divorce indexes from their Web site. This week there is good news for Colorado researchers who have been feeling the loss of that divorce index.

Because of the efforts of a Colorado State Archives volunteer, Gerald Sherard, a new divorce index is now becoming available on the Archives Web site as part of the Colorado Historical Records Index. The cases range from the 1870s to 1939. As of today, the database includes only the plaintiff entries, but the defendant entries will be added soon, making a total of 160,000 entries.

According to the Records Description, researchers will often be able to follow up by ordering or viewing original case files at the Archives:

The case files normally have the complaint, the decree, names of children and other documentation in them. The State Archives has a large portion of the divorce cases from throughout the state during the time span of the index. It is likely that we can find divorce court case files in Adams, Boulder, Chaffee, Clear Creek (to 1927), Conejos, Costilla, Custer, Denver, Dolores, Douglas, Eagle, Elbert, El Paso, Fremont, Garfield, Gilpin, Grand, Jefferson, Kit Carson (1904-1910 with many missing), Lake, LaPlata, Larimer, Lincoln, Mesa, Mineral, Moffat, Montezuma (to 1923), Montrose (to 1934), Morgan (to 1922), Otero, Ouray (to 1935), Pitkin, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Routt, Saguache, Summit, Teller, Weld, and Yuma counties.