History of Colorado

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Main article: State of Colorado

The first inhabitants of what was to become Colorado were Native Americans, including Folsom man who were skilled hunters. During the last few hundred years, especially on the plains, tribes have come and gone, with the Apache moving through from north to south on their journey from the Northwest Territories to the American Southwest, and the Comanche moving off southeast to the panhandle country after a military defeat suffered at the hands of the Spanish in 1776, while being supplanted on the southern plains by the Arapaho and Cheyenne, allies of the Sioux. After the establishment of the Indian Territory, its residents, especially the Kiowa and Delaware were frequent visitors to the mountains on hunting expeditions. Throughout recent history, the mountains, including the San Luis Valley were Ute territory. There were Shoshone, a tribe notable for friendly relations with American fur trappers, in northwestern Colorado where annual rendezvous were often held in Brown's Hole on the Green River.

The earliest European explorers were Spanish explorers such as Coronado, but French fur traders probably also penetrated eastern Colorado, as did American beaver trappers from the 1820s. During the period 1832 to 1856 a number of traders, former trappers, and settlers established trading posts and small settlements along the Arkansas River, and on the South Platte near the Front Range. Prominent trading posts were Bent's Fort and Fort Pueblo on the Arkansas and Fort St. Vrain on the South Platte. Bent's Fort, on the Santa Fe Trail, was notable for its friendly relationship with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Trade was generally for buffalo robes with unlicensed trading posts, such as Fort Pueblo, offering whiskey imported from Taos.^[1] Spanish settlement in northern New Mexico began in the 1500s but did not penetrate into Colorado until after the Mexican War with Taos being the most prominent northern town.

Contents 1 Territory of Colorado 2 Colorado becomes a state 3 Mining in Colorado 4 Old industry gives way to new: tourism and recreation 5 Colorado rejects the Olympics 6 Historic Native American tribes 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links 11.1 References

Territory of Colorado

Main article: Territory of Colorado

The organization of the Colorado Territory included land from the western portion of Kansas, the eastern portion of Utah Territory, the southwestern portion of Nebraska Territory, and a small portion of northeastern New Mexico Territory on February 28, 1861[1]. The Territory of Colorado was a historic, organized territory of the United States that existed between 1861 and 1876. Its boundaries were identical to the current State of Colorado. The territory ceased to exist when Colorado was admitted to the Union as a state on August 1, 1876. The territory was organized in the wake of the 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush, which had brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region. The organic act^[2] creating the territory was passed by Congress and signed by President James Buchanan on February 28, 1861, during the secessions by Southern states that precipitated the American Civil War. The organization of the territory helped solidify Union control over a mineral rich area of the Rocky Mountains. Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent, but territorial ambitions for statehood were thwarted at the end of 1865 by a veto by President Andrew Johnson. Statehood for the territory was a recurring issue during the Ulysses Grant administration, with Grant advocating statehood against a less willing Congress during Reconstruction.

Colorado becomes a state

President Ulysses Grant declared Colorado a state on August 1, 1876. One century after the birth of the nation, Colorado became known as the "Centennial State." The borders of the new state coincided with the borders established for the Colorado Territory. Women won the right to vote in Colorado in 1893. Colorado was the first state in the union to grant this right to women through a popular election. (Wyoming approved the right of women to vote in 1869 through a vote of the territorial legislature.) Governor Davis H. Waite campaigned for the Constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote in Colorado. Governor Waite is also noted as one of the few elected officials ever to call out the national guard to protect miners from a force raised by mine owners. Governor Waite belonged to the Populist Party.

Mining in Colorado

Participants in the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1855 were called Fifty-Niners, and many of the new arrivals settled in the Denver area. Gold in paying quantities was also discovered in the Central City area, and by 1860 the population of Central City was 60,000. In 1879, silver was discovered in Leadville, resulting in the Colorado Silver Boom.

Many early mining efforts were cooperative ventures. However, as easy-to-reach surface deposits played out, miners increasingly turned to hard rock mining. Such industrial operations required greater capital, and the economic concept of mineral rights resulted in periodic conflicts between the mine owners, and the miners who increasingly sold their labor to work in the mines.

As the mines were dug deeper, they became more dangerous, and the work more arduous. In the 1890s many Colorado miners began to form unions in order to protect themselves. The mine operators often formed mine owners' associations in response, setting up the conditions for a conflict. Notable labor disputes between hard rock miners and the mine operators included the Cripple Creek strike of 1894 and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903-05.

Coal mining in Colorado began soon after the first settlers arrived! Although the discovery of coal did not cause boom cycles as did the precious metals, the early coal mining industry also established the conditions for violent confrontations between miners and mine owners. The usual issues were wages, hours, and working conditions. Early coal mining in Colorado was extremely dangerous, and the state had one of the highest death rates in the nation. Coal miners also resented having to pay for safety work such as timbering the mines, and they were sometimes paid in scrip that had value only in the company store.

A strike in 1913 resulted in the 1914 Ludlow massacre. Another coal strike in 1927 is best known for the first Columbine massacre. In 1933, federal legislation for the first time allowed all Colorado coal miners to join unions without fear of retaliation.

Like all resource extraction, mining is a boom or bust industry, and over the years many small towns were established, then abandoned when the ore ran out, the market collapsed, or another resource became available. There were once more than a hundred coal mines in the area north of Denver and east of Boulder. They began to close when natural gas lines arrived. Coal and precious metals are still mined in Colorado, but the mining industries have changed dramatically in recent decades.

Reports of the revival of molybdenum mining in 2007 resulted in ambivalent responses^[3] with Leadville welcoming the opening of the mine at climax,^[4][5] but strong opposition in Crested Butte over proposed operations at Mount Emmons.^[6] Opinion in Rico, where the Silver Creek stockwork Molybdenum deposit was produced by the Rico paleothermal anomaly,^[7] is more divided. There, land slated for development is being bought up by a mining company.^[8]

Old industry gives way to new: tourism and recreation

Some hard rock mining communities such as Aspen, Telluride, and Cripple Creek have found new life as ski resorts, cultural centers, or gambling towns; others never recovered and became ghost towns.

Colorado rejects the Olympics

In 1972, Colorado became the only state to reject the award as the site of the Olympic Games after they had been granted. The International Olympic Committee relocated the 1976 Winter Olympics to Innsbruck, Austria after Colorado voters rejected a bond issue to raise money for expenses related to hosting the event. No venue had rejected the award before nor has any venue since.

Historic Native American tribes

• Apache — Inhabited the eastern plains in the 18th century, then migrated southward to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, leaving a void on the plains that was filled by the Arapaho and Cheyenne from the east.
• Arapaho — Algonquian-speaking tribe that migrated westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century and settled on the piedmont and the eastern plains. They were relocated entirely out of Colorado in 1865 following the Colorado War.
• Cheyenne — Closely related to the Arapaho, and spoke a similar language. Like the Arapaho, they migrated westward in the 18th century to the base of the Rockies. They often lived in bands interspersed among the Arapaho, and were also relocated out of Colorado in the 1860s.
• Shoshoni — they inhabited intermountain valleys along the north edge of the state, especially in the Yampa River valley, up through the late 19th century. Areas included North Park and Browns Park.
• Ute — an established tribe in the Rocky Mountains for many centuries. They often clashed with the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and resisted the encroachment of these tribes into the mountains. Until the 1880s, the Ute controlled nearly all of Colorado west of the continental divide, a situation that eroded after the silver boom of 1879. After clashing with white settlers in the 1880s in the Ute War, they were nearly entirely relocated out of the state into Utah, except for a small reservation in southwestern Colorado.

See also

• Territorial evolution of Colorado

Notes

1. ^ Janet Lecompte, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856, University of Oklahoma Press, 1977, hardcover, 354 pages, ISBN 0-8061-1462-2
2. ^ "An Act to provide a temporary Government for the Territory of Colorado" (PDF). Thirty-sixth United States Congress (February 28 1861). Retrieved on December 27, 2006.
3. ^ "Colorado mining divided over molybdenum" article by Jason Blevins in The Denver Post Last Updated: 12/09/2007 08:06:50 AM MST
4. ^ "Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Announces Plans to Restart Climax Molybdenum Mine" Press release by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. December 4, 2007
5. ^ "Many ready to again embrace old path to prosperity" article by Jason Blevins in The Denver Post Last Updated: 12/09/2007 02:07:37 AM MST
6. ^ "Coalitions build to again keep mining off beloved peak" article by Jason Blevins in The Denver Post Last Updated: 12/09/2007 02:09:08 AM MST
7. ^ "Hydrothermal alteration and mass exchange in the hornblende latite porphyry, Rico, Colorado" Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, ISSN: 0010-7999 (Print) 1432-0967 (Online), Volume 116, Numbers 1-2 / March, 1994, DOI 10.1007/BF00310700, Pages 199-215, Wednesday, December 01, 2004
8. ^ "Divided town weighs promise of jobs vs. peace and quiet" article by Nancy Lofholm in The Denver Post Last Updated: 12/09/2007 02:07:13 AM MST

References

Further reading

• Janet Lecompte, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856, University of Oklahoma Press, 1977, hardcover, 354 pages, ISBN 0-8061-1462-2
• Railroads of Colorado: Your Guide to Colorado's Historic Trains and Railway Sites, Claude Wiatrowski, Voyageur Press, 2002, hardcover, 160 pages, ISBN 0-89658-591-3
• Carl Abbott et al., "Colorado: A History of the Centennial State", 2005, softcover, 553 pages, ISBN 0-87081-800-7

External links

• Colorado Historical Society
• "Colorado only state ever to turn down Olympics" from Denver Rocky Mountain News Capitol Bureau

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References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "History_of_Colorado" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Colorado, used under the GNU Free Documentation License, updated September 28, 2007