Colorado is home to many agencies of the US federal government, the largest employer in the state. The Denver-Aurora metropolitan area has more federal employees than any other US city except Washington, DC.
Only in the Denver Federal Center are units of twenty-six different federal agencies, including the US Department of the Interior (USGS, US Bureau of Reclamation, US Bureau of Lands Management), the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and many others. It is also home to the US National Ice Laboratory, which stores and studies thousands of ice samples, mostly from Greenland and Antarctica.
Also in the state of Colorado there are divisions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others.
The Denver Mint, founded back in 1862, is the largest mint manufacturer in the world.
Many private corporations in the state of Colorado also work on orders from US federal agencies. Among the best known is Ball Aerospace & Technologies, whose divisions in Boulder, Broomfield and Westminster design and manufacture various vehicles for space exploration and for military purposes. Among the company’s products are the equipment of the famous Hubble Space Telescope, the Orbital Solar Observatory, the Deep Impact spacecraft designed to study comets, and many others.
