Colorado joined the union as the 38th state on August 1, 1876. It became America’s eight largest state in terms of landmass. Colorado’s size is about 104,094 square miles. Colorado is located in the Rocky Mountain region in the western United States. The United States Congress passed an enabling act on March 3, 1875, to allow the Territory of Colorado to become its own state. On August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting the state of Colorado to the Union as the 38th state and earning it the nickname "Centennial State". Once Colorado became its own state, women won the right to vote in 1893. Colorado was the first state to grant this right to women and Governor Davis H. Waite campaigned for the Constitutional amendment to grant this right.
American Indians
- Ancient Pueblo — lived in the valleys and mesas of the Colorado Plateau
- Apache Nation — An Athabascan-speaking nation that lived in the Great Plains in the 18th century, then moved southward to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
- Arapaho Nation — An Algonquian-speaking nation that moved westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. They were moved out of Colorado in 1865 following the Colorado War.
- Cheyenne Nation — An Algonquian-speaking nation related to the Arapaho. They migrated westward in the 18th century to the base of the Rockies. They lived among the Arapaho, and were relocated out of Colorado in the 1860s.
- Comanche Nation — A Numic-speaking nation that lived on the High Plains of southeastern Colorado. They are related to the Shoshone and were removed to Indian territory.
- Shoshone Nation — A Numic-speaking nation that inhabited intermountain valleys through the late 19th century.
- Ute Nation — A Numic-speaking nation that lived in the Southern and Western Rocky Mountains for centuries. They clashed with the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and resisted the encroachment of these nations into the mountains. Until the 1880s, the Ute controlled almost all of Colorado west. After conflict with white settlers in the 1880s, they were mostly relocated out of the state, besides two small reservations in southwestern Colorado.
European Settlement
The first Europeans to explore Colorado were Spanish conquistadors. Juan de Oñate founded what became the Spanish province of Santa Fé de Nuevo México on July 11, 1598. In 1706 Juan de Ulibarri declared the territory of Colorado. Colorado became part of the Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Spaniards traded with Native Americans who lived in Colorado and established the Comanche Trade among them. In 1803 the United States acquired a territorial claim to the eastern area of the Rocky Mountains by the Louisiana Purchase from the french. This claim conflicted with Spain's claim to sovereignty over the territory. Zebulon Pike led a U.S. Army on an exploration into the disputed region in 1806. Pike and his men were arrested by Spanish cavalry in the San Luis Valley and expelled from México. During the period between 1832 and 1856, traders, trappers, and settlers established trading posts and settlements along the Arkansas River, and the South Platte Near the Front Range. The main item of trade offered by the Indians was buffalo robes. In 1846 the United States went to war with Mexico, and whichever nation was defeated was forced to give up its northern territories by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. This opened the Southern Rocky Mountains to American settlement, including Colorado.
Pikes Peak Gold Rush
On June 22, 1850, a wagon train traveling to California crossed the South Platte River north of Clear Creek. A man named Lewis Ralston lowered his gold pan in a stream flowing into Clear Creek, and found gold in his first pan. John Lowery Brown, kept a diary of the journey from Georgia to California, and wrote on that day: "Lay bye. Gold found." The creek was soon named Ralston Creek after Lewis Ralston found gold. Ralston continued to travel to California, but returned to 'Ralston's Creek' eight years later with the Green Russell party. Members of this party founded Auraria (later made into Denver City) in 1858 and touched off the gold rush to the Rockies. The junction of Clear Creek and Ralston Creek became what is now Arvada, Colorado. In 1858, gold seekers bound for the California Gold Rush collected small amounts of gold from streams in the South Platte River Valley at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The gold nuggets failed to impress the gold seekers at first, but rumors of gold in the Rocky Mountains persisted. A man named William Greenberry Russell led a group of Cherokee gold seekers from the State of Georgia to search for gold along the South Platte River. In July 1857, Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near Little Dry Creek (present-day Englewood) that had about 20 ounces of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountains. News of this discovery spread and sparked the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. An estimated 100,000 gold seekers came to the region within the next three years. The gold deposits along the rivers and streams of the region rapidly played out, but miners discovered more valuable seams of hard rock gold, silver, and other minerals in the nearby mountains. This gold rush attracted people to the state and resulted in a population boom.
Territory of Colorado
The Territory of Colorado existed between 1861 and 1876. Its boundaries were identical to the current State of Colorado. The territory was organized in the beginning of 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush, which brought the first large amount of white settlers to the region. The act creating the territory was passed by Congress and signed by then President James Buchanan on February 28, 1861. This was during the separation of the Southern states that precipitated the American Civil War. The territory helped solidify Union control over a mineral rich area of the Rocky Mountains.
Statehood was regarded as imminent during the 1864 presidential election. The Republicans controlled Congress and were eager to get two more Republican senators and three more electoral votes for President Lincoln's re-election bid. Governor John Evans persuaded Congress to adopt an enabling act, but majority of the Coloradans who voted turned down the first attempt at a state constitution and the second attempt at statehood. In 1865, territorial ambitions for statehood were brought up again, but this time it was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. |
Colorado War
The Colorado War was a conflict between the United States and loose alliances with the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations of Native Americans. The war was centered on the Eastern Plains of the Colorado Territory and the war resulted in the removal of the Native American tribes. In 1868 the U.S. Army renewed the conflict against the Arapaho and Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita River. In the first Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Eastern Plains between the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers had been lands inhabited by the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Ignoring the territorial claims of the various tribes, the 1851 treaty acknowledged that the tribes did not abandon their territorial rights but gave US citizens a right of passage through their territories but gave the US citizens no right to settle there. Before 1859, the tribal areas had little use to the American colonists until the Colorado Gold Rush. The Gold Rush brought the large numbers of settlers to the Colorado Piedmont along the mountains, overrunning the Native American lands. The new settlers demanded that the US government extinguish the existing Native American title, and in the fall of 1860 federal agents reopened negotiations of the two tribes land at a council on the Arkansas River. At the council, in the Treaty of Fort Wise the Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to accept a small Indian reservation along the Arkansas River. The new reservation was surveyed and divided among tribal members, with each member receiving 40 acres of land. Federal agents promised that the tribes would receive a US $30,000 subsidy for 15 years, as well as a grist mill, saw mill, and schools. The treaty text, which the Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs could not read, said that the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations had to surrender all their lands except for the small reservation. The chiefs clarified that they could only speak for their small groups but not for their nations as a whole.
Mining in Colorado
Participants in the Pike's Peak Gold Rush were known as Fifty-Niners and many of the arrivals settled in the Denver area. Gold in large quantities was also discovered in the Central City area. In 1879, silver was found in Leadville, resulting in the Colorado Silver Boom. Early mining efforts were cooperative ventures. Easy-to-reach surface deposits had miners going towards hard rock mining. These industrial operations require a great capital, and the economic concept of mineral rights resulted in conflicts between mine owners miners who sell their labor to work in the mines. As mines were dug deeper, they became more dangerous and the work more difficult. In 1880, Colorado Governor Pitkin, declared martial law to suppress violent mining strikes at Leadville. In the 1890s Colorado miners began to form unions to protect themselves. Mine operators formed mine owners' associations in response. Labor disputes between hard rock miners and mine operators included the Cripple Creek strike of 1894 and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903-04. Coal mining in Colorado began soon after the first settlers arrived. The discovery of coal did not cause boom cycles as much as precious metals. The early coal mining industry established conditions for violent confrontations between miners and mine owners. The usual issues were wages, hours, and working conditions, but miners were concerned about issues of fairness, and company control over their personal lives. Coal mining in Colorado was extremely dangerous and Colorado had one of the highest death rates in the United States. From 1884 to 1914, over 1700 men died in Colorado's coal mines. Coal miners resented having to pay for safety work and were sometimes paid in scrip that had value only in the company store. In 1913 a strike occurred which resulted in the 1914 Ludlow massacre. There was another coal strike in 1927 that was best known as Colorado's first Columbine massacre. In 1933, federal legislation for the first time allowed Colorado coal miners to join unions without fear of retaliation. Mining was a boom or bust industry, and many small towns were established throughout this period. These towns were abandoned when the ore ran out, the market collapsed, or other resources became available. There were more than a hundred coal mines in the area north of Denver and east of Boulder. When the natural gas lines arrived, the mines started to close. Mining in Colorado is still a current practice today, but the mining industries have changed. In current times, there are still small mining towns scattered throughout Colorado, such as Leadville, Georgetown, Cripple Creek, Victor, and Central City. Many of the mines no longer operate, but the remnants of the operations can be seen in the form of mine shafts, outbuildings, and mounds of rock extracted from the hills.
The World's Sanitarium
Starting in the 1860s, tuberculosis became a major deadly disease. Physicians in the eastern United States, recommended that their patients relocate to sunny, dry climates for their lungs. As a result, the number of people with tuberculosis, in the state grew quickly and without the proper services or facilities to support their needs, they could not be treated correctly. At the time, not knowing how to manage the population of homeless and ill people, many were taken to jail. Because of the high number of people with tuberculosis and their families who came to Denver for their health, Colorado was nicknamed “World’s Sanitarium.
The Twentieth Century
In the 1930s Colorado saw the beginning of the ski industry. Resorts were established in many areas including Estes Park, Gunnison, and Loveland Pass. In 1967, Governor John A. Love signed the nation's first abortion law. The late 1960s saw violence in Denver, including college buildings being burned by radicals. In 1972, Colorado became the only state that rejected the award of hosting the Olympic Games. Representative Lamm led a movement to reject a bond issue for expenses related to hosting the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee relocated the 1976 Winter Olympics to Innsbruck, Austria. No venue had rejected hosting the Olympics before and no one has ever since. In 1999, the Columbine High School massacre became the most devastating high-school massacre in US history. When the two men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives as well, it became a the worst high school massacre.
Twenty-First Century
On July 20, 2012, not far from the area of the massacre at Columbine High School, 12 people were killed and 70 people were injured in the 2012 Aurora shooting. This shooting is when a man named James Eagan Holmes, a former neuroscience doctoral student, walked into an Aurora, Colorado Cinemark movie theater with firearms and tear gas grenades. He started shooting at random people who were trying to escape from him during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. It was the deadliest shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre. When considering the number of both the dead and wounded of this shooting, it became the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Colorado became 1 of 8 states in the United States to have legalized both medical and recreational marijuana while also allowing them to tax on the product. As of July 2014, the state of Colorado enjoyed a tax revenue of 45 million with 98 million expected by the end of the calendar year. This is in addition to increased economic revenues from "pot tourists."