Governor Denver. Most of those engaged in the enterprise were his ad-
mirers and partisans, and, as we have seen, three of them had come to
Cherry Creek with official commissions from him in their pockets. The
distinction of having proposed the Governor's surname as a fitting name for
236 HISTOEY OF COLORADO
the company and the new "city'" was claimed in after-times by perhaps a
dozen Cherry Creek pioneers of 1858. But tlie fact is that the individual
who suggested it never was, and can not now be, identified. Mr. E. P.
Stout, the company's first President, has said tliat it was adopted at the first
meeting of the promoters, on November 17th; that it seemed to be the
spontaneous choice of all present, none other being mentioned; and that
in his opinion no one more than another was entitled to credit for having
been chiefly instrumental in bestowing the name upon the town.
Although the Denver City Company's promoters never entirely freed
themselves from the reproach of having been -'jumpers" of the St. Charles
town site, they made the members of the St. Charles Town Association full
shareholders in the new organization, setting aside for each the same number
of town lots to which other original "stockholders" were entitled, and in
equaUy good locations. So, after all, it is probable that the St. Charles men
fared as well as they would have done had their own company succeeded
in establishing a town upon the site.
The Denver City minute-book contains no list of "Original Stock-
holders" such as we have in that of the Aurarians. But a good substitute
for it is found in the record of the first assessment made upon Denver City
shareholders, which is entered as the "Assessment of 22nd Nov 1858", of
$1.50 on each share, and was levied upon forty-one "stockholders".
While most of the members of the Leavenworth-Lecompton party were
forceful men and became leaders in Colorado's pioneer affairs, those who
constituted it have been accorded a place in the primitive history of the city
of Denver that is not warranted by the facts. They have been and still are
celebrated as the "founders of Denver", and it has been and continues to be
persistently asserted that one of them built "the first house in Denver". As
the reader has seen, the Aurarians, who had begun to build cabins about
three weeks before the appearance of tlie Leavenworth-Lecompton men at
Cherry Creek, were the actual founders of the city. While the coming of
the latter precipitated the "jumping" of the St. Charles town site and the
organization of a new town company to occupy it, they were not the origin-
ators of that programme, which would have been put into effect had they
remained in eastern Kansas. The Denver City President, E. P. Stout, who
was among the hundred "Original Stockholders" of Auraria City, already
had made a move toward taking possession of the St. Charles claim. With
relation to this, which has been confirmed by other pioneers of 1858, Mr.
Stout has written :
"I arrived in Denver, or at that time the mouth of Cherry Creek, from Omaha,
on October 26, 1858, and a few days after, with the use of a pocket compass taken
with me across the plains, laid out, or rather, staked off, the town site of Denver
[of the Denver City Company's 'Denver'] together with five or six other parties,
among whom were John S. Smith and William McGaa, Indian traders."
Upon reaching Auraria, the Leavenworth-Lecompton men allied them-
selves, as we have seen, with Mr. Stout and several others who had preceded
them at the mouth of Cherry Creek, the combination resulting in the
immediate organization of a town company to establish on the opposite side
of the creek a rival of Auraria City, which at that time consisted of some
eight or ten finished cabins and a dozen or more in course of construction.
The cabin built for Charles Nichols to strengthen his stewardship over
the St. Charles town site, and which was used for several days by Hank
HISTORY OF COLORADO 237
Way, the blacksmith, was the first house erected upon the land that was
platted by the Denver City Company. General Larimer left a memorandum
in which he says that he was occupying this building in the first week after
his arrival; presumably while awaiting the completion of the cabin he
constructed on what is now the southwest comer of Fifteenth and Larimer
streets, which building has been made perversely to figure as "the first house
in Denver". The General's record of the circumstance of his occupation of
the Nichols cabin occurs in the following, which is entered in his hand-
writing upon the first page of the Denver City Town Company's minute-
book:
"I left Leavenworth City on the 3d day of October 1858 and arrived at the
Head of Cherry Creek on the 12th day of November and on the 16th I landed at
what is now Denver City at the mouth of Cherry Creek on the South Platte River.
My son Wm H H accompanied me through the long and tedious Journey with a
4 yoke ox team I am now living in a house built for a blacksmith shop. Our
immediate Company consisted of Messrs Lawrence Dorsett Whitsitt Jewett and my
son William."
' ' Wm Larimer Jr ' '
"Denver City 24th Nov 1858"
The constancy of the erroneous beliefs, which appear in print occa-
sionally, as the part taken by the Denver City Town Company, and especially
by those of its members who were of the Leavenworth-Lecompton party,
in laying the foundations of Colorado's metropolis, is a good example of the
persistence with which popular impressions that are associated with a
familiar name sometimes obscure the facts of history. In this case, the
reason therefor evidently is due largely to the retention of "Denver City"
as the name of the consolidated towns at the mouth of Cherry Creek, the
merging of which into one municipality, under an "act" of the "Legislative
Assembly" of "Jefferson Territory", finally was consummated in April,
1860, at which time the former name of the Auraria section began to drop
out of use and the historical priority of that unit to be overshadowed by
the more aggressive division on the eastward side of the creek.
The rise of two "cities" at the mouth of Cherry Creek in the autumn
of 1858 proved fatal to Montana City. As mentioned a few pages back,
some of its citizens deserted it late in October and participated in the organ-
ization of the Auraria Town Company. During November, several others
of the Montanians, having lost faith as to the permanency of their hamlet,
removed to Cheriy Creek, taking with them the useful material of their
cabins, which they rebuilt in their new locations. In the next spring, the
rest of the Montanians followed the example of these; and so their "city"
ceased to exist, and its site reverted to a state of nature.
Late in December, Samuel S. Curtis, of the Denver City Town Com-
pany, laid out a "city" on Clear Creek, at a place about two miles east of the
site of the present town of Golden, and which he named "Arapahoe City".
This enterprise, which was Colonel Curtis" personal affair and therefore had
no town-company organization, did not get beyond the paper stage until
early in the spring of 1859, when a swarm from the leading columns of the
host of fortune-seekers who came to the mountains in the first half of
that year occupied its site.
The outfit for the first mercantile establishment in the settlements
made in the "Pike's Peak Gold Region" in 1858, put in an appearance upon
238 HISTOEY OP COLORADO
the site of Auraria City at the close of October. It was owned b}' Charles
H. Blake and Andrew J. Williams, who were partners under the firm-name
of Blake & Williams, and who took part in the organization of the historic
Auraria Town Compan}'. Coming from the Iowa village of Crescent City,
they reached the mouth of Cherry Creek on October 27th, with a train of
four wagons, each of which was drawn by four yoke of oxen, and loaded
with a stock of general merchandise adapted to the wants of miners and
other frontier customers. They began business on November 1st, in a large
tent, but soon afterward built and occupied a double cabin, the site of which
is on the north side of the present Wewatta Street, near what is now
Twelfth Street, in "West Denver''. A week after the arrival of Blake &
Williams, tlie business outfit of Kinna & Nye, having a small stock of hard-
ware, some sheet-iron and tinners goods, pulled into Auraria City. It was
in charge of Jolm Kinna, the practical man of the firm, whose partner in
and principal capitalist of the venture, John Nye, did not join him until
the following spring. Kinna was given a building site that was situated
on what is now Eleventh Street, and near the northeasterly corner of that
street and Market Street. Upon this ground he erected a cabin, which he
used for both domestic and business purposes. Early in December, J. D.
Eamage, a jeweller and a repairer of watches, became the third Cherry
Creek business man, and established himself in Auraria City, on the east
side of the present Eleventh Street, near the southeasterly corner of that
street and Larimer. In the forenoon of Christmas Day, another addition
to the business circle of Auraria City was made by the arrival of Eichens
L. Wooton, an old trader among the Indians, who had come from Fort
Union, New Mexico, with two wagons laden with trading-goods, a part of
which was contained in barrels. Having pitched his tent, Wooton resolved
to make at once a favorable impression and general acquaintance among
the people of the two "cities"' by a sweeping appeal. Unheading one of
his barrels and hanging a tin cup on it, he invited his callers freely to help
themselves to its contents. As the day was almost as genial as the best in
June, tills social "function" was turned into a popular celebration of
Christmas, the first at the mouth of Cherry Creek ; and before nightfall the
host was "Uncle Dick" to every man in both towTis.
Contrary to what was anticipated by our pioneer communities, the
winter season thus far had been of surprising mildness, the continuing
gentle conditions of autumn weather having been affected by nothing more
unpleasant than an occasional light snow-scjuall.
Through November, and even in the fore part of December, bands of
Argonauts, mostly of small numliers, had drifted into the new land of
promise, the majority of whom went to the "cities" of Auraria and Denver,
which were now beginning to be considered as constituting the "capital"
of the Pike's Peak country. The largest party of these belated incomers
consisted of thirty men from Lawrence, Kansas, and who arrived at the
Cherry Creek towns on December 1st. The accessions of population received
by these rival metropoles during several weeks before Christmas, together
with their increasing importance in public notice and esteem, convinced their
founders that they had been located wisely. Yet they were a sorry-looking
pair of hamlets, presenting in their appearance nothing that seemed to
warrant the ambitions which their respective partisans were nursing. By
the close of December there were about fifty cabins in Auraria City, and
HISTORY OF COLORADO 239
about half that number in Denver City. But, to the great chagrin of its
citizens, the latter was destitute of any kind of "mercantile establishment".
Therefore, when they had to buy goods, either wet or dry, they must humili-
ate themselves by crossing the creek to find a market, and so concede openly
the superiority of Auraria.
But not all the interest of our pioneers of the autumn of 18.58 was
centered upon the growth and prospects of future greatness of their settle-
ments. Among a large majority of them the purpose with which they had
come to the mountains had not been neglected. While those who were
squatted at El Paso and near the mouth of the Fontaine qui Bouille appear
to have done but little, if any, prosiDeeting, and probably had not seen so
much as a "color"', and while, also, the colonies at Eed Rock and on the
Cache a la Poudre remained comparatively inactive, the search for gold had
been kept up industriously since the middle of October by the dwellers at
the mouth of Cherry Creek. Yet the actual results in values had been dis-
couraging. Exaggerated understandings of what the Russell party had done
at Placer Camp had strong influence in exciting the imagination and sus-
taining the hopes of every fresh addition to the twin communities. Many
of these amateur miners had toiled day after day in that locality, sometimes
finding a little gold, but more often without seeing a trace of the metal.
The "ilexican Diggings", so named at that time, and which, as I have
already related, had been worked by Trader Smith and his Mexicafi partners
in the summer of the year before, also received attention, but yielded only
meager quantities of "dust". Other prospectors went elsewhere up the
South Platte, and some went down, digging and panning here and there,
with scant rewards. As Cherry Creek had become associated with previously
reported "discoveries of gold at Pike's Peak", some of the prospectors had
prowled in its bed from its union with the Platte to its upper stretches, but
the outcom.e of their work was more tantalizing than profitable- Clear
Creek, to its breaking-away from the mountains, and its lower affluents,
also, in the careful search to wliich their beds had been subjected, had given
up some scales and grains of the coveted metal; but no one who prospected
them found much more than the equivalent of the cost of the food he
consumed.
Such were the conditions that confronted our pioneers at the close of
the year 18.58. They had washed out some gold at each of many places, but
not, excepting the Russell party's first work at Placer Camp, in paying
quantities at any. No new diggings of encouraging significance had been
developed, and therefore belief in a radiant future for the country was
wholly a matter of confidence in what must yet come to pass. While all
the gold that had been mined in the "Pike's Peak Gold-fields" during that
year probably would not have equaled in value the cost of outfitting and
moving the smallest of their wagon-trains that had come from the Missouri
Eiver to Cherry Creek, they were convinced that somewhere in these moun-
tains rich sources of the widely and tliinly scattered vagrant gold they had
found soon would be discovered. Because of this conviction, letters, to be
dispatched however and whenever they might, written by some of them in
the course of that winter; described the eountr}- as being rich in gold, an
endowment that in the main then was visible only to the eye of Faith.
Our pioneers' first winter at the Rocky Mountains continued, with but
few interruptions, to be mild and sunny to its close; and by the coming
240 HISTORY OF COLOEADO
of spring several more town companies had planned and platted "cities"' in
the Pike's Peak country.
On February 10th (1859), the colony at Eed Eock, wliich meanwhile
had received a number of accessions to its population, organized the "Boulder
City Town Company", with fifty-six shareholders, and of which Alfred A.
Brookfield was elected President. As the promoters of the enterprise were
confident that their town would become the metropolis of the South Platte
district, if not of the entire "gold region'", they gave generous bounds to
the area it was expected to occupy. The site selected for it, embracing 1,240
acres, the equivalent of two square miles, extended from the mouth of
the canon two miles down the course of Boulder Creek. This tract was
divided into 337 blocks, each of which was subdivided into twelve lots,
according to a plan proposed by Henrj^ W. Chiles. Cabin-building was
begun in an early stage of the survey, the platting being completed and a
"splendid" map of the town site made in the middle of the following spring
by T. W. Fisher and George W. Gregg. At this time there were between
1,500 and 2,000 people assembled upon and in the near vicinity of the site.
But the speculative tendencies of a majority of the town's shareholders had
persuaded them to adopt a policy that retarded the growth of the settlement
for several years. Of this blunder and its consequences, E. Bixby, in Ms
historical sketch of Boulder County contained in a History of Clear Creek
and Boulder Valleys, published in 1880, says:
"Early in the affairs of the town company, two parties arose, one in favor of
holding the town lots high, in order to make a 'big thing' for themselves; the other
in favor of giving away alternate lots to those who would build on them, or do most
anything to induce population and capital. Unfortunately the high-priced party
prevailed, but the lots were not taken at $1,000 each, or any such figures, and the
grand scheme collapsed, only one quarter section being retained, on which to continue
the work of building up a city, under adverse circumstances. It was the hope, and
reasonable expectation, to have made Boulder what Denver afterward became — the
leading town of the Territory. ... It was to this end, that the Platte river
wa» bridged at a point [at Fort St. Vrain] designed to turn travel this way, and
great road «aterpria'"i undertaken to reach the Gregory mines."
About the time in which the Boulder company was formed, a town
company was organized among the dwellers on the Cache a la Poudre a short
distance above the location of our city of Fort Collins, for the purpose of
making their camping-place the site of a permanent settlement, to which the
name "Colona" was given. The organization consisted of Antoine and Nich-
olas Janise, who had obtained the consent of Bald Wolf's band of Arapahoes
to the project in hand; Elbridge Gerry, a frontierman; John Baptiste, B.
Goodwin, Antoine Lebeau, Oliver Morisette, Eandall,
Ravofire. Eaymond, Todd, and several others whose
names are not of record. Antoine Janise, in a brief account of the
undertaking, written in 1883, says "we had the site surveyed and mapped,
and built fifty houses, or cabins". A few years later, the tovm, which still
survives, was reorganized and given its present name, La Porte (the Gate).
The little community that had gathered on the Fontaine qui Bouille,
a short distance above the mouth of Monument Creek, organized the "El
Paso Town Company'" and in that locality laid out "El Paso City" during
that winter; so naming the rudimentary town Ijecause its site was in the
gateway to the Ute Pass, through which lay an old Indian trail into the
Soutli Park. Definite knowledge of the date and circumstances of the for-
HISTORY OF COLORADO 241
mation of the El Paso organization is lacking, as, unfortunatoly, no "official
record" of the company'# transactions has come into light. The area appro-
priated for the town site embraced a part of tlie land within tlie limits of the
present Colorado City, but did not extend into the site of Colorado Springs,
as appears in some accounts of El Paso's brief career. By the advent of
spring the town consisted of several cabins, and it lias been said that "some-
thing like $2,000 worth of lots in El Paso were sold before their position had
been decently platted on paper, or a street had lieen definitely surveyed".
But it is likeJy that if lot-sales to that amount were made so early in the
proceedings they were upon a "paper"' basis, which also proved to be the
case with the "city"' as a whole, for the latter was superseded in the following
summer and autumn by Colorado City.
In the meantime, the smaller band of Pike"s Peakers, who had located
on Monument Creek, two or three miles from its mouth, had given their
"settlement", which is said to have consisted of one log cabin and some tents
and covered wagons, the enticing name of "El Dorado City". But little is
known for certain concerning the citizens of El Dorado, whose makeshift
town did not prove to be permanent. No record of their organization of a
town company has been found, and it is probable that they did not go
through the motions of forming such a eoi-poration. In the political move-
ments that were instituted early in the spring of 18.59, El Dorado and El
Paso figured together in April and once or twice afterward as a "precinct"
for election purposes.
It appears that the group of pioneers squatted on the east bank of the
Fontaine qui Bouille. near its mouth, had begun to call their ragged little
hamlet "Fountain City" by the end of the year 18.58. Before the break of
that winter, they had organized a town company, and platted a town site
that included the ground whicli the first of them occupied in the previous
Xovember, the surveying having been done by J. M. Shafer and
Brown, who had had experience in platting frontier "cities". About thirty
cabins had been erected, some of which were built of logs and some of adobe,
a part of the last-named material having been taken from the crumbling
walls of the old Puebloj of fur-trading times. As in the case of El Paso, as
well as in that of some others of our pioneer town-founding organizations,
the records of the Fountain City Town Company are not known now to
exist. Delegates to the first convention in the movement started in the
spring of 1859 to organize home-made general government for the Pike's
region were elected in Fountain City early in April.
The people o^ this primitive town, which was less promising than the
double-barrelled community at the mouth of Cherry Creek, and which subse-
quently was swallowed up by the city of Pueblo, were disposed to depend
more on resources of the country other than mining, and which has been,
as it continues to be, rather characteristic of the city that now stands in
that locality. As the reader will recall, considerable areas of land in the
vicinity of the Fontaine's mouth were under cultivation during the fur-
trading period, which circumstance suggested to some of the citizens of
Fountain City that this land afforded a snre and ready-at-hand source of
profit. Early in the spring of 1859, they planted a large acreage to vege-
tables and Indian com, the produce of which they sold at hair-raising
prices to passing parties of the anny of fortune-seekers that entered the
V.ii. 1 — 1(3
243 HISTOKY OF COLORADO
"Pike's Peak Gold-fields" before midsummer of that year, the spring season
having been exceptionally favorable for such crops.
In the closing months of 1858, extravagant versions of what was going
on in the western confines of Kansas Territory appeared in newspapers
published in the Missouri River border. According to these stories, "mines
of great richness" had been discovered there, and several "cities" already
had "sprung up" and were "rapidly increasing in population". During the
ensuing winter, other journals took up the refrain and spread the "Pike's
Peak excitement" over the States. Newspapers issued in the frontier towns
on the Missouri River, which in that period was navigated by many steam-
boats, soon began to embellish their narratives with all the colors of the
rainbow, and obtrusively to present the alleged advantages of their re-
spective "cities" as outfitting points for Pike's Peakers. Each of these,
easily to be reached by river steamers, was represented to be far better pre-
pared than any other to supply yoke-cattle, horses, wagons, provisions and
tools to all who had the ambition and energy to go to the Rocky Mountains
and there shovel out a fortune.
CHAPTEK XII.
THE MEMORABLE SPRING OF 1859. — HEGIRA OF FORTUNE-SEEKERS TO THE
PIKES PEAK COUNTRY. DISCOVERIES OF GOLD IN THE MOUNTAIN
VALLEY OF BOULDER CREEK. PLACER MINING IN THE VICINITY OF THE
CHERRY CREEK TOWNS. ITS MEAGER RETURNS. ARRIVAL OF THE AD-
VANCE OF THE MIGRATING HOST. — AURARIA-DENVER THE FIRST OBJECT-
IVE POINT OF THE INCOMING MULTITUDE. — DEPRESSING CONDITIONS IN
THE "new land OF GOLD" AT THAT TIME. — AMAZEMENT AND INDIGNA-
TION OF DISAPPOINTED MEN. — BACKWARD MOVEMENT OF THE MALCON-
TENTS. PANIC-BREEDING EFFECTS OF THEIR REPORTS AMONG THE
THRONGS UPON THE PLAINS. PIONEER NEWSPAPERS. COMMENTS OF
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE "GOBACKS". —
CONTINUED INFLOW OF SANGUINE MEN. — VITAL DISCOVERIES OF GOLD IN
THE MOUNTAINS. RESULTS OF PROSPECTING ON UPPER CLEAR CREEK
BY GEORGE A. JACKSON AND JOHN H. GREGORY. DELAY IN GIVING
PUBLICITY TO THEIR SUCCESSES. HEADLONG RUSH OF EAGER ARGO-
NAUTS INTO THE MOUNTAINS. RETURN OF WILLIAM G. AND J. OLIVER
RUSSELL WITH A LARGE COMPANY OF GEORGIANS. THEIR WORK IN
RUSSELL GULCH. MINING OPERATIONS AT CHICAGO CREEK AND ON THE
NORTH FORK OF CLEAR CREEK. — FURTHER DISCOVERIES ON BOULDER
CREEK. CONGESTED CONDITIONS IN THE NEW MINING DISTRICTS. —