History of Colorado
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Prior to the Colorado Gold Rush and organization of Colorado Territory 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] (http://usgenmap.rootsweb.com/us1860.htm), a number of French, Spanish and American explorers and military expeditions as well as fur traders and trappers and early settlers had penetrated the land that would later become the State of Colorado.
During the period 1832 to 1856 a number of trading posts and small settlements were established along the Arkansas River as well as on the South Platte near the Front Range. Prominent trading posts were Bent's Fort and Fort Pueblo on the Arkansas and Ft. St. Vrain on the South Platte.
The Colorado Gold Rush of 1859 (see also Fifty-Niner) brought large numbers of settlers to the Denver area. Gold in paying quantities was soon discovered in the Central City area. By 1860 the population of Central City was 60,000. Like all resource extraction, mining is a boom or bust situation and over the years many small towns were established then abandoned when the paying ore ran out or the market collapsed. Some like Aspen, Telluride, and Cripple Creek have found new life as ski resorts, cultural centers, or gambling towns; others never recovered and became ghost towns.
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 intermontaine 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 Utes 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.
References and further reading
- Janet Lecompte, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856, University of Oklahoma Press (http://www.oupress.com/), 1977, hardcover, 354 pages, ISBN 0-8061-1462-2
- Adapted from the Internet-Encyclopedia article, History of Colorado http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=History_of_Colorado