Colorado Territory
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The Colorado Territory 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 to the Union as a state on August 1, 1876. The territory was organized in the wake of the 1859 Colorado Gold Rush, which had brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region. The organic act was passed by Congress and signed by lame-duck president James Buchanan in the spring of 1861 during the thick of the secessions by the Southern states that precipitated the American Civil War. The organization of the territory helped solidy Union control over a mineral rich area of the Rocky Mountains. Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent, but territorial ambitions for statehood was thwarted at the end of in 1865 by a veto by Andrew Johnson. Statehood for the territory was a recurring issue during the Ulysses Grant administration, with Grant advocated statehood against a less willing Congress during Reconstruction.
Description
The territory was organized out of lands in the Rockies on both sides of the continental divide and incorporating the area of the Pikes Peak gold rush that had begun two years previously. East of the divide, the new territory included the western portion of the Kansas Territory, as well as much of the southwestern Nebraska Territory, and an irregular parcel of the northern New Mexico Territory at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. On the western side of the divide, the territory included much of the eastern Utah Territory, all of which was strongly controlled by the Ute and Shoshoni. The Eastern Plains were held much more loosely by the intermixed Cheyenne and Arapaho, as well as by the Pawnee, Comanche and Kiowa. In 1861, in the first year of the territory, the Arapaho and Cheyenne agreed to give up most their areas of the plains to white settlement but were allowed to live in their larger traditional areas, so long as they could tolerate homesteaders near their camps. By 1865, following the Colorado War, the Native American presence had been eliminated entirely from the Eastern Plains.
History
The land which ultimately became the Colorado Territory had first come under the jurisdiction of the United States under the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the 1848 Mexican Cession. The area of the territory had been explored by the Spanish in the 18th century, and by Americans such as Zebulon Pike, Stephen H. Long, and John C. Fremont in the first half of the 19th century. At the time, it was inhabited primarily by the Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Eastern Plains, and the Ute in the Rocky Mountains. In the early 18th century, the upper South Platte River valley had been infiltrated by fur traders, but had not been the site of permanent settlement. A group of Cherokee crossed the South Platte and Cache la Poudre River valleys on their way to California in 1848 during the California Gold Rush. They reported finding trace amounts of gold in the South Platte and its tributaries as they passed along the mountains. In the south, in the Rio Grande valley, early Mexican families established themselves in large land grants (later contested by the U.S.) from the Mexican government.
The first movement of permanent U.S. settlers in the area began with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed homestead land claims to be filed. Among the first settlers to establish claims were former fur traders who returned to the lands they once trapped, including Antoine Janis and other trappers from Fort Laramie who established a townsite near Laporte along the Cache la Poudre in 1858.
In 1858, William Green Russell and a party of Georgians, having heard the story of the gold in the South Platte from Cherokee after they returned from California, set out to mine the area they described. That summer they founded a mining camp Auraria (named for a gold mining camp in Georgia) at the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek. The Georgians left for thier home state the following winter. At Bent's Fort along the Arkansas River, Russel told William Larimer, Jr., a Kansas land speculator, about the placer gold they had found. Larimer, realizing the opportunity to capitalize on it, hurried to Auraria and in November 1858, he laid claim to an area across Cherry Creek from Auraria and named it "Denver City" in honor of James W. Denver, the current governor of the Kansas Territory. Larimer did not intend to mine gold himself, but rather he wanted to promote the new town and sell real estate to eager miners.
Larimer's plan to promote his new town worked almost immediately, and by the following spring the western Kansas Territory along the South Platte was swarming with miners digging in river bottoms in what became known as the Colorado Gold Rush. Early arrivals moved upstream into the mountains quickly, seeking the lode souce of the placer gold, and founded mining camps at Black Hawk and Central City. A rival group of civic individuals, including William A.H. Loveland, established the town of Golden at the base of the mountains west of Denver, with the intention of supply the increasing tide of miners with necessary goods.
The movement to create a territory within the present boundaries of Colorado followed nearly immediately. Citizens of Denver and Golden pushed for territorial status of the newly settled region within a year of the founding of the towns. The movement was promoted by William Byers, publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, and by Larimer, who aspired to be the first territorial governnor. In 1859, an informal movement to establish the Territory of Jefferson was launched, with entreaties sent to the United States Congress for its official organization.
Congress did not wait long in granting the request of the citizens, partly encouraged by the promise of vast mineral wealth in the region. The territory was officiall organized by Act of Congress on February 28, 1861, out of lands previously part of the Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and New Mexico territories. Technically the territory was open to slavery under the Dred Scott of 1857, but the question was rendered moot by the impending American Civil War and the majority pro-Union sentiment in the territory. The name "Colorado" was chosen for the territory. It had been previously suggested in 1850 by Senator Henry S. Foote as a name for a state to have been created out of present-day California south of 36° 30' To the dismay of Denverites, the town of Golden became the territorial capital, a situation that was rectified to the advantage of Denver as it grew at the expense of Golden.
During the Civil War, the tide of new miners into the territory slowed to a trickle, and many left for the East to fight. The Coloradoans who stayed formed two volunteer regiments, as well as home guard. Although seemingly stationed at the periphery of the war theaters, the Colorado regiments found themselves in a crucial position in 1862 by the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory by General Henry Sibley and force of Texans. Sibley's New Mexico campaign was intended as a prelude to an invasion of the Colorado Territory northward to Fort Laramie, cutting the supply lines between California and the rest of the Union. The Coloradoans, led by General Edward Canby and John M. Chivington, defeated Sibley's force at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, thwarted the Confederate strategy.
Despite the retreat of the Confederate, the territorial regiments found themselves in the midst of action on the Eastern Plains during the Colorado War of 1864, a component of the Indian Wars led by Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kiowa bands that sought to expel settlers and turn back the encroachment on their hunting grounds. The war culminated in the defeat of the Native Americans in 1865. The most infamous incident of the war was the Sand Creek Massacre, in the southeastern part of the territory, a brutal slaughter of Arapaho led by Chivington, a hero of Glorietta Pass.
Following the end of the American Civil War, a movement was made for statehood, and the United State Congress passed the Admission Act for the territory in late 1865, but it was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. For the next eleven years, the movement for territorial admission was stalled, with several close calls. President Grant advocated statehood for the territory in 1870, but the Congress did not act.
In the meantime, the territory found itself threatened by lack of railroads. By the late 1860s, many in Denver had sold their businesses and moved northward to the Dakota Territory communities of Laramie and Cheyenne, which had sprung up along the transcontinental railroad. Faced with the possible dwindling of the town and its eclipse by the new towns to the north, Denverites pooled their capital and built the Denver Pacific Railroad northward to Cheyenne to bring the rail network to the Denver. The Kansas Pacific Railway was completed to Denver two months later. The move cemented the role of Denver as the future regional metropolis. The territory was finally admitted to the Union in 1876.