The reader will see that the increase in population since 1866 had
been confined to the agricultural and stock-raising counties and to their
towns. In Clear Creek, Gilpin, Park, Lake, and Summit there had
been a net decrease of more than 1,600. Aside from the nearly depopu-
lated mining-districts on the headwaters of the Blue Ttiver, the great
Western Slope, a large part of which now had been set off as a reserva-
tion for the northern Ute Indians, still was a wilderness.
The census-retiirns for the cities and towns of Colorado, in 1870, and
in which the names of some new urban communities appear, were as fol-
lows:
Black Hawk (Gilpin County) 1,068
Boulder City (Boulder County) 343
Bi'eckenridge (Summit County) 51
Canon City (Fremont County) 352
Central City (Gilpin County) 2,.360
Colorado City (El Paso County) 81
Denver (Arapahoe County) 4,759
Evans (Weld County) 189
Georgetown (Clear Creek County) 802
Golden City (Jefferson County) 587
Greeley (Weld County) 480
Idaho (Clear Creek County) 229
Kit Carson (Greenwood County) 473
Montezuma (Summit County) 22
Mount Vernon (Jefferson County) 31
Nevada (Gilpin County) 973
Pueblo (Pueblo County) 666
Sherwood (Larimer County) 160
St. Johns (Summit County) 71
Trinidad (Las Animas County) 562
HISTORY OF COLORADO 449
These are all the Colorado nnmieipalities that figure in the reports of
that census. Several of the pioneer "cities" had disappeared. A number
of the old towns that now had been reduced to the grade of villages, together
with sundry hamlets, had been treated as parts of "districts," and therefore
were not enumerated separately.
AMrile the mining industry had been reviving slowly since 1867, the
population of the counties in which it was practically the only dependence
during the '60s had, as we have seen above, continued to fall off. As devel-
opment of the resources in precious metals of that part of Colorado which
is familiarly termed "the San Juan country" was not begun until early in
the '70s, mining for gold and silver still was confined almost wholly to old
districts, in which the results of placer work had become comparatively
insignificant, and where the production of silver yet was in its infancy.
Of the total value of precious metals mined in Colorado between the
years 1860 and 1870 there was no accurate data, nor were there any means
by which such information could have been procured. The Director of
the Federal mints estimated the production of gold in the eleven years
next before 1870 to have been, in round figures, $27,813,000 ; and that of
silver in the same period $330,000. As I have said in an earlier chapter, it
is highly probable that the value of the gold that was taken from Colorado
placers in the years 18-59 and '60 was not less than $10,000,000. Assuming
this to be somewhere near to the facts, and accepting the estimate of the
Director of the mints in gross, the production of gold during the succeeding
nine years — 1861-69, inclusive — was to the value of about $17,000,000; an
average of less than $3,000,000 for each of those years. But it is also
highly probable that the average for the five years between 1861 and 1867
— the period of the greatest depression — was considerably below $3,000,000,
as the yield in 1861 doubtless was some fifty per cent, above the average
for the nine years covered by the figures here under discussion. The silver
values produced before 1870 were so small that they do not materially affect
the calculations. As we have seen, Colorado's population in the years
between 1860 and 1870 ranged from a minimum of about 30,000 to a
maximum of less than 40,000, with annual average that approximated 37,-
000. Therefore the value of the precious metals mined in the Territory in
those years average about seventy-one dollars per capita.
However, the main interest that the depression in general economic
conditions, the census-figures, and the mining-statistics of that period
now possess lies in the service they render in enabling us better to appre-
ciate the faith, fortitude and determination of those who laid and guarded
the foundations of our Commonwealth.
Vol. I-
CHAPTER XXI.
SOME COXSEQUEXCES OF THE ADVEXT OF RAILWAYS IXTO COLOKADO. — TEE-
MIXATIOX OF THE TEEEITOKIAL PERIOD. FORMER RETARDIXG COXDI-
TIONS. ^NEW TIDE OF IMMIGRATION. — COLOXIES OF XEWCOMERS. GER-
MAN COLOXIZATIOX SOCIETY. — ITS SETTLEMENT IX THE WET MOUNTAIN
VALLEY. ORGANIZATION AND COMING OF THE UNION COLONY. FOUND-
ING OF GEEELEY AXD DEVELOPMEXT OF THE GREELEY DISTRICT. — CHICA-
GO-COLORADO COLOXY. ITS LOCATIOX IX BOCLDEE COUXTY AND FOUX'D-
ING OF LOXGMOXT. — ST. LOUIS WESTEEN COLONY, THE UPBUILDEES OF
EVANS. — SOUTHWESTEEX COLOXY. — GREEN CITY. INDEPENDENT IMMI-
GRATION. COLORADO BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION. — EVIL EFFECTS OF ITS
METHODS. BIRTH OF COLORADO SPRINGS. — BROAD PLANS OF ITS PEO-
MOTEES. STEADY AND SUBSTANTIAL GEOWTH OF THE CITY. SOUTH
PUEBLO. CIECUMSTANCES OF ITS BEGINXIXG. — MILITARY POST OF FORT
COLLINS. — RISE OF THE CITY OF FORT COLLIXS. — COLORADO AXD THE
PAXIC OF 1873. — VISITATIOXS BY ROCKY MOUXTAIN LOCUSTS. — DESTRUC-
TIVE RESULTS OF THEIE RAVAGES. — COXDITIOXS UPON THE WESTERN
SLOPE AND IN THE SAX JUAN COUNTRY. — GEEAT EESERVATION FOR THE
UTE INDIANS. UXCERTAIXTIES AS TO LOCATIOX OF COLORADO'S SOUTH-
EEN BOUNDARY. — DISCOVERIES OF GOLD AXD SILVER IX THE SAX JUAX IX
1870. INRUSH OF MINERS. — CESSION AXD OPEXING OF A PART OF THE
UTE RESERVATIOX. THE GUXXISpX COUNTRY. REVIVAL OF IXTEBEST
IX ITS RESOURCES. PROSPECTIXG EXPEDITIOXS. — DR. SYLVESTER RICH-
AEDSOX'S COLOXY OX THE GUXXISOX RIVER. — COXDITIOXS IX THE MID-
DLE AXD NOETH PARKS. — THEIR THIN POPULATION. GROWTH OF THE
OLDER TOWNS IN THE TERRITORY. — FORMATION OF NEW COUNTIES. —
IMPENDING STATEHOOD.
The completion of railways into Colorado and to its capital city, in the
summer of 1870, an account of which appears in Chapter XXIII, distinctly
marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Territory, and ter-
minated the pioneer period. Although the latter had not been long in com-
parison with that of most other divisions of the Union, it had been attended,
as we have seen, by unusual difficulties and many trying conditions. In all
previous movements in the settlement of the Mississippi Valley by Ameri-
cans, the pioneers thereof advanced the line of the "frontier" farther and
farther west as the country became occupied by their compatriots. But
those of Colorado left the frontier, as it was situated in their time, six hun-
dred miles behind them. The retardation of the Territory's development
largely had been due to causes arising from its isolation. Cnnspicuou?
among the consequences of this were the tediousness and high cost of trans-
portation over the gi-eat plains, and which, even in passenger travel, were
serious hindrances. Throughout the longer part of the pioneer period the
duration of nearly a week was consumed in the expensive stage-coach jour-
ney, that also was wearisome to the limit of endurance, from or to the Mis-
souri River, a distance that now may be covered in luxurious ease and at
less than one-fifth the expense between the dawn and the dusk of a summer
day. Freighting was, of course, much slower, requiring for the passage as
many weeks as there were days in the stage-journey, and the charges there-
for were correspondingly great. In times when the plains Indians were
450
HISTORY OF COLORADO 451
wreaking deiith ami destruction along the routes of travel, rates as high as
$20.00 and $25.00 per hundred pounds were paid in Colorado.
Among the important immediate results of the advent of railways were
the stimulatiou it gave to immigration and the change it caused in the trend
of economic affairs in the TeiTitor}-. Theretofore the interests and influ-
ences of mining for the precious metals had predominated over all others,
but now a larger share of attention and preparation was given to further
development of agricultural resources, as well as of the livestock industry.
Moreover, a change was wrought in the character of the immigration. Since
the Civil "War it had been a straggling movement, some of the newcomers
traveling b)- stage-coach, while the greater number came with their own
transportation, in families and in small parties, though in the latter case
they were associated only for the journey. The great majority had no pre-
determined local destination or fixed purpose, but intended to decide these
after "looking around", and in a state of mind that was open to any prom-
ising opportunity that might "turn up", either in a town or in the country
parts. Xow, however, a fair part of the immigration was in bodies organized
with a measure of community of interests, with settled plans and definite
purposes, and to locate in places previously selected with a view to their
adaptability to successful agriculture.
Another immediate and important consequence of the completion of
communications w/th the East by rail was the initiation of the construction
of local lines of railways, as related in the succeeding chapter of this volume
referred to above. While the extension of such roads was checked and
for a few years held in abeyance by the effects produced in the money-
markets of the East by the monetary panic of the autumn of 1873, the com-
pletion of a considerable mileage before the intervention of those causes of
delay greatly stimulated activities in the Territory during the interval from
the beginning of the new era. ^
The first body of Colorado's immigrants organized solely for the pur-
pose of establishing an agricultural community in the Territory was the
"German Colonization Society", or, as more commonly known, the "Chi-
cago Colony", which was organized in the city of Chicago on August 24,
1869, with Carl Wulsten as President. A committee of its members was
sent to Colorado later in that year to select a location for the colony, and
which arranged for the acquisition of a tract of about 40,000 acres of land
lying in that part of the Wet ilountain Valley now embraced by the
boundaries of Custer County, but over which Fremont County then ex-
tended. A party of the society's members, numbering eighty-six, and
having with them their families, entered the locality on March 21, 1870;
and later in that year these were joined by about one hundred other fam-
ilies. The colony began the cultivation of land in that year, and also
laid out a town, which was named "Colfax", in compliment to the Indiana
statesman of that name. Although the locality was not unfavorable for
the purposes of the undertaking, the colony, as an organization, was not
successful; and among the reasons therefor were mismanagement, dis-
sension and homesickness. While some of the settlers held and developed
their allotments, otliers abandoned the colony, and the town of Colfax
subsequently sank into oblivion.
The next organization of immigrants that entered Colorado in 1870
4.5-2 HISTORY OF COLORADO
with agriculture as the objective of a large majority of its members was
the "Union Colon}^', which was born in the city of Xew York. The
movement that had resulted in its formation was instituted by Xathan C.
Meeker, agricultural editor of the Neiv Yoii- Tribune, at the instance of
Horace Greeley, then the editor-in-chief and controlling owner of that
newspaper. Mr. Greeley had visited Denver and the Gregory Mining-
camp in the summer of 18.59. when on a journey to the Pacific Coast; and
while at that time he appreciated the significance of the discoveries of
gold that had been made, he was even more deeply impressed by the other
natural resources of the Pike's Peak counti'y.
In company with several others whom he had interested in the project,
Mr. Meeker had gone to Colorado in the summer of 1869 to spy out the
land for the purposes he had in view. When he was taken into the South
Park he jumped to the conclusion that the contemplated colony should
occupy a part of that Mountain-basin. But he was soon dissuaded from
this by citizens of Denver, who advised him to seek a location in the low-
land, and not far from the foot-hills, which counsel he followed. After he
had seen several such localities. Meeker returned to New Y'ork well satis-
fied with the results of his later observations. Through the autumn of that
year, he and Mr. Greeley used tlie columns of the Tribune to give wide
publicity to the enterprise, and by the end of that season some hundreds of
the paper's readers had expressed their desire to take part in the proposed
migration. At a meeting of a large number of these, held in the Cooper
Institute, in New Y'ork City, on December 23d, of that year, the organiza-
tion of the "Union Colony" was effected, with Meeker as President, Gen-
eral Robert A. Cameron Vice President, and with Mr. Greeley as Treas-
urer. Meeker, Cameron, and A. C. Fisk were appointed to go to Colorado
and determine a location for the organization. This committee came into
the Territory in March, 1870, ^d early in April agreed upon the vicinity
of the confluence of the Cache a la Poudre and South Platte rivers, in Weld
County, as the better place in which to establish the community. Some
Colorado men previously had acquired land in that locality and were farm-
ing it; and near the mouth of the Poudre stood the hamlet of Latham — a
collection of few dwellings. About 12,000 acres of land were purchased
for the colony from the Denver Pacific Railway Company and from indi-
viduals, and provisional title was obtained to 60,000 acres of public land,
the immediate outlay on account of the whole being nearly -$60,000. The
form of the colony's organization practically was that of a joint-stock com-
pany, with equitable provisions for the assignments of subdivisions of the
land to its members.
The first party of the Union Colony's settlers, and which consisted of
about fifty families, arrived early in May (1870), and in that month work
was begun upon ditches for irrigation, and a site for a town, which was
named in honor of the editor-in-chief of the Tribune, was platted. Dur-
ing the ensuing two or three months several hundreds of other members
with their families came in and were settled. The colony consisted prin-
cipally of New England, New Y'ork, Ohio, and Indiana people, who were
resourceful and substantial ; and, while most of them were farmers who
intended to continue to be cultivators of the soil, there were mechanics, pro-
fessional men, and merchants among them. The colony prospered from
the start. The town of Greeley, which had been finely planned, grew into
HISTORY OF COLOEADO 453
an active business-center witliin a few montlis: and in June, 1871, it had,
according to an enumeration made in that month, a population of 1,155,
of which 325 were "children under twenty-one years of age". With its
bank, newspaper (the Greeley Tribune), business houses, hotels, and various
shops it was a thrifty young metropolis, and the country around it was pro-
portionally occupied and improved. At the present time the "Greeley Dis-
trict", as it is commonly called, and which extends man)' miles beyond its
original limits, is thickly populated, is noted for its fertility, its highly
developed agriculture, its beauty, and for its great prosperity.
The Greeley Colony was the first "dry" community in Colorado. In
deeds to real estate transferred by the organization to its members there
was inserted a clause forever prohibiting the manufacture of intoxicating
liquors, and also their sale as beverages, upon the premises so conveyed.
Three large colonial organizations — the "Chicago-Colorado", the "St.
Louis Western", and the "Southwestern" — with agriculture as the purpose
of most of their members, were planted in northern Colorado in the spring
of 1871. The first of these was the "Chicago-Colorado Colony", organized
in the city of Chicago on November 17, 1870, with Eobert Collyer, a widely-
known Protestant clerg}'man, as its temporary President, but who was suc-
ceeded in the permanent tenure of the office by Seth Terry. A committee
authorized to decide upon a location for the colony arrived in Colorado
about the close of that year, and late in January (1871) selected a district
in the northeastern part of Boulder County, and which is drained by St.
Train Creek and several other left-hand tributaries to the South Platte
Eiver. Fifty-five thousand acres of land were purchased in that district for
the uses of the colony, which had been organized upon the plan that the
Union Colony already had made successful, at Greeley.
Members of the Chicago-Colorado organization began to come in early
in the spring of 1871, and before the end of that season there were several
hundreds of men, women, and children upon the ground. A system of
irrigating ditches that aggregated more than thirty miles of mains and
laterals had been finished, and the colonists had platted and begun build-
ing the town of Longmont, the name of which was derived from "Long's
Mountain", otherwise Long's Peak. The colony flourished greatly. By
the coming of autumn there were more than a thousand people settled in its
district, and Longmont had become a busy town, with a population of about
four hundred, and having a full complement of commercial and other busi-
ness enterprises, including a newspaper (the Longmont Sentirml). In the
work of developing and improving their locality, which is now a part of a
great and garden-like cultivated section in northern Colorado, the Long-
mont colonists rivaled that of their eastward neighbors — the Union Colony.
The next to come was the "St. Louis Western Colony", which had been
organized at Oakdale, Illinois, on November 29, 1870, and of which A. C.
Todd, a Protestant clergyman, was President. In the following winter, an
organization, styled the "New England Colony, of Boston", arranged to
unite with the St. Louis Western. These immigrants, of which the first
group of families arrived early in the following April, occupied land around
the town of Evans, that had been platted in October, 1869, but which in
that year had acquired but forty inhabitants. Other families of the colony
continued to come in through the spring of 1870, and ere the season was
at its end there were about five hundred of the new people in the Evans lo-
â– ISi HISTOEY OF COLORADO
eality, and the town liad a newspaper (the Evans Journal). ^Vllile these set-
tlers were fewer in number than were their close neighbors of the Union
Colony, their community prospered, developing farms and bringing them
to a high state of cultivation, and also contributing largely to the upbuild-
ing of Evans. The locality now is considered as a part of the Greeley
District.
The "Southwestern Colony" was formed at Memphis, Tennessee, in
January, 1871, chiefly by the efforts of D. S. Green, of Denver, who was
elected its President, the original membership consisting in the main of
Tennessee and Kentucky people. The land selected for the location of this
organization is on the South Platte Eiver, in a district between twenty and
thirty miles below (to the eastward)of Evans. Nearly one hundred families
of these colonists arrived during the spring of 1871, and in the summer of
that year they were reenforced by nearly as many more. By this time a
main ditch and laterals with capacity for watering about 30,000 acres of
land had been completed, and the town of "Green City", so named in honor
of the colony's President, had been laid out. Although the town was de-
scribed in the autumn of that year as "a lively place," neither it nor the
colony prospered. Many of the settlers, abandoning their lands, located
elsewhere, and Green City did not long figure upon maps of Colorado. When
the town was founded the immediate building of a railway from Golden
City to Julesburg, along the course of the South Platte, was anticipated,
as surveys and other plans for it already had been made. But as results of
the panic of 1873 indefinitely postponed the construction of the expected
road, Evans and Greeley became in the meantime the market-towns and
shipping-points for what was left of the colony, and therefore Green City
fell into desuetude. Its site is in the vicinity of the station of Masters, on
the La Salle-Julesburg division of the present Union Paciiic Railroad
System.
Besides these colonies, many farmer-immigrants who had migrated in-
dependently, and many others, who came in small parties, but without
formal organization, entered Colorado in 1871 and '72, and settled either
in the older agricultural sections or adjacent to the districts occupied by
the organized new communities. Their total number greatly exceeded that
of the enlisted members of the banded companies; and, as these, they
"watched their hamlets, and grew strong".
Inspired by the laudable purpose of encouraging such and other de-
sirable emigration to Colorado, the Ninth Legislative Assembly, by an act
approved on February 9, 1872, made provisions for establishing a "Bureau
of Immigration", which was to be conducted bv a Board of Commissioners
consisting of five members. "It shall be the duty of said Board", says the
act, "to adopt and put in execution such means as will best promote and
encourage immigration to the Territory, and for this purpose shall ^blish
and disseminate such useful information as it can obtain concerning tlie
developed and undeveloped resources of the Territory, and may provide for
one of its number, or such other person as the Board may select, to attend
such Agricultural and Institute Fairs as may be deemed expedient for the
display of the Agiicultural and Mineral products of the Territory". The
act appropriated $G,000 to be expended by the Board for the purposes in-
tended, and directed the County Commissioners of each county of the Ter-
ritory to co-operate with the Bui-cau. The Board also was authorized to
HISTORY OF COLORADO *e5
designate "agents resident in any country in Europe" to act as representa-
tives of the Bureau "in disseminating information and encouraging emigra-
tion to the Territory".
Wliile the intentions of the Assembly were praiseworthy, the attempts
of the Bureau to put the purposes of the act into effect resulted in more
harm than good. Statements made in its "advertising literature", which
was sown broadcast over the older parts of the Union, were expressed in
terms of extravagance and exaggeration, and therefore were misleading,
as has been the case to some extent from similar representations put forth
in later times. Nearly all the avenues of activity in which men may gain
success and competence were implied to be wide open and easy ways for
everybody who should come into the Territory. As these recitals emanated
from a division of the executive branch of the Territorial Government,
thousands of men, among whom there were more or less of almost every
vocation, accepted them as trustworthy and removed to Colorado during
the next two years. While many of these found and utilized various op-
portunities that the Territory afforded for the exercise of their abilities and
profitable investment of their means, many others, most of whom had ex-
hausted practically all their resources in preparing for and making the
change of residence, were disappointed. The loud outcries and bitter denun-
ciations by the latter, after they had made their way back to the localities of
their former homes, were taken up and passed on by the newspapers of the
States; and, without a word in relation to any of the favorable conditions
in the Territory, Colorado thus was execrated as a land of deception and
fraud, and heralded throughout the Union as a part of the Great West that
all honest men should avoid.
Not all the new communites that wei'e established in Colorado early in
the '70s were identified with the further development of agriculture in
the Territory, the most conspicuous exceptions being those of Colorado
Springs and Soutli Pueblo. The former, in one sense the offspring of the
Denver & Rio Grande Railway, was born in the summer of ISTl, and the lat-
ter two years afterward.
When, in 1870, General William J. Palmer oi-ganized the Denver &
Rio Grande Railway Company, he had in mind several auxiliary organiza-
tions that were to be formed to cooperate with the railway company in de-
veloping the parts of Colorado through which the road was to pass; and
among these was one that was to found an attractive residence city near the
eastward base of Pike's Peak, to be named "Colorado Springs". For this
purpose he interested some of his associates in the railway enterprise, and,