late in that year, organized the "Colorado Springs Company", of which he
was elected Pi-esidciit, with Henry McAllister as Executive Director, to locate
and bring into existence the projected city. The company acquired tracts
of land containing about 10,000 acres, the greater part of which lay along
ilonument Creek and east of Colorado Cit}-, and the lesser to the west of
that town and including the soda springs, which already had come into wide
and good repute. Most of the land around these, as well as some parts
of the tract on Monument Creek, had been "taken up" by pioneers of
1858-50, but no important improvement had been made in either of the
localities, while Colorado City, situated between tliem, liad in the mean-
time dwindled to a village which, in the spring of 1870, was harboring a
pojJulation numbering only four score.
456 HISTORY OF COLORADO
The first stake set in tlie site of the new city was driven on July 31,
!I871. In that summer a subordinate organization styled the "Fountain
Colony of Colorado"' was formed, with General Robert A. Cameron, who
had taken part in establishing the Greeley Colony, as the active executive of
this adjunct to the proprietary corporation. The Fountain Colony organ-
ization was not incorporated, but served as an agency through which a part
of the business — that of inducing a population — of the Colorado Springs
Company was transacted. The plat of the city contained seventy blocks,
each 400 by 400 feet in dimensions ; but the Colorado Springs of the present
time extends much beyond these. Erection of buildings immediately fol-
lowed the work of the surveyors, and by the end of 1871 one hundred and
fifty-nine structures, dwellings and business buildings, had been completed,
at a cost of about $160,000, the first dwelling having been commenced on
August 15th. At the close of the first year, the new city contained a popula-
tion that counted nearly eight hundred. In the next year, the construction
of a broad driveway to the soda springs and tlie improvement of their local-
ity was begun. A good hotel was erected there, and a suburban village was
laid out, to which the name "La Font" was given. But this appellation
soon was dropped and that of "Manitou", the present name, substituted.
These improvements in connection with the soda springs were in accord-
ance with an unusual policy that had been adopted by the Colorado Springs
Company, under which all net proceeds from the sale of its land, whether in
the form of town lots or adjacent larger tracts, were to be applied to public
improvements. In consequence of this, the rawness of a new town did not
long continue to exist in Colorado Springs. The company followed the
example of the founders of Greeley as to the manufacture and sale of in-
toxicating liquors, and in its deeds to lots in the city inserted the "Greeley
clause". Violation of this restriction presently resulted in bringing the ques-
tion of its validity before the Colorado courts, and eventually the highest of
these decided that such conditional deeds were valid contracts, and declared
the title thus derived to the land involved in the case to have been forfeited
by violation of the restrictive terms. Appeal from this judgment was taken
to the Supreme Court of the United States, and in 1879 that tribunal af-
firmed the Colorado decision.
It would be difBcult to find, or even to imagine, a situation for a city
more beautiful than that occupied by Colorado Springs, and of which ad-
vantage has been taken by its people by adding embellishments that Nature
so generously invited in the locality. The city's growth has been steady and
substantial from the day of its founding. After the rise of Leadville, late
in the '70s, it became the principal source of supplies for that district, and
so continued imtil railway communications were opened to the famous
silver-camp, the freight being forwarded by wagon-trains going by way of
the Ute Pass. The development of the Cripple Creek gold-district largely
was the work of citizens of Colorado Springs, in some of whom the owner-
ship of a number of its mines still.is lodged.
The first step toward founding South Pueblo, which had only the Ar-
kansas River between it and the pioneer town of Pueblo, was taken in
1872, when the "Central Colorado Improvement Company", another of Gen-
eral William J. Palmer's organizations auxiliai'v to the Denver & Rio Grande
Railway Company, purchased a large tract of land bordering upon the Ar-
kansas River, opposite the old town, and that was a part of the Nolan land-
HISTORY OF COLORADO 45T
grant, title to which was of Mexican origin. The Denver & Rio Grande
Railway having been completed to Pueblo proper by the beginning of the
summer of 1872, South Pueblo was laid out and made ready for occupation
early in the next year, the plat covering about one thousand acres. Shortly
afterward, the terminus of the railway was shifted from the northward side
of the river to the southward side, for the benefit of the new town, but much
to the disgust of the citizens of the older, as well as in breach of a previous
understanding, if not a contract, with them. South Pueblo was established
with a view of making it a manufacturing city. While no important ad-
vance toward that end was accomplished before Colorado became a State,
the original purpose has been fulfilled since that time. But from the birth
of South Pueblo the old town and the new, although for thirteen years they
were separate municipal corporations, practically were one community, and
now, together with other additions, constitute the city of Pueblo.
A new town, that is now a flourishing city, was established in Northern
Colorado coincident in time with the founding of South Pueblo, but de-
pendent mainly on the pastoral and agricultural resources of the section in
which its site lay. Early in the great Indian War in the -"60s, a military
post was built on the Cache a la Poudre River, at a point some four miles
southeast of the village of La Porte, which dates from the pioneer years
of 1858-59. This outpost was named "Fort Collins", sometimes called
"Camp Collins", in honor of Lieutenant-Colonel William 0. Collins, of the
Eleventh Ohio Regiment of Volunteer Cavalry, an organization of which a
part was among the troops that had been sent into the West to battle with
the Indians, about the time when the Southern Confederacy collapsed. A
large tract of fine land around the post was set apart as a military reserva-
tion, and so remained until the year 1873, when, by an act of Congress that
was approved on May loth, it was thrown open to entry. But other lands
here and there' in that part of Larimer County already had been occupied
and put under cultivation, and of which some, that were fairly improved,
were held in 1871 to be worth from thirty to forty dollars per acre. After
Congress had released the reservation, Cleneral Robert A. Cameron, who
seems to have been a colonizer by instinct, and, as proved by the results of
his work elsewhere in the Territory, was provided with judgment to match
his energetic ability, organized a company, of which he was elected President
as well as general manager of its affairs, to colonize the Fort Collins locality
and to found a town in it, upon a combination of the plans that had been
applied at Greeley and Colorado Springs. Within a year thereafter, the
beginning of the present city of Fort Collins, which stands on a portion
of the old reservation, had been made and a large number of immigrants,
together with previous residents in the Territory, had settled upon lands
that were tributary to the embryo city. Since that time the Fort Collins
District has been developed into a condition of productivity and prosperity
that is comparable with that of the other agricultural sections of northern
Colorado.
A considerable number of the Colorado immigrants of 1874 had suf-
fered from the efliects of the monetary panic of the previous year. But,
aside from checking the construction of railways in the Territory, as I have
already remarked, and as they did in all parts of the Union, and retarding
some other large enterprises that required outside capital, the consequences
of the financial breakdown in 1873, the direct causes of which were the over-
458 HISTOEY OF COLORADO
building of railways and a disordered currency-system, did not seriously af-
fect Colorado. There were a few "failures" in trade, but the banks were not
strained. The commercial interests as a whole were in good condition, the
lode-mines were doing better than ever before, and the continued develop-
ment of agi-iculture and stock-raising was extending its stimulating influ-
ences. However, there was a noticeable shrinkage in the values in which
real estate had been held, especially in some of the towns, and which in
many instances were unduly high. Nevertheless, the valuation of such
property in the Territory for purposes of taxation, that had been about
$35,000,000 in 1873, was increased to nearly $M,500,000 in 1874.
The year 1875 was made memorable in Colorado by the appearance in
the Territory of inestimable myriads of the Eocky Mountain Locust, or
"Hateful Grasshopper", that took possession of the plains section and liter-
ally devastated it. There had been two visitations of the kind in previous
years, but in neither of these instances were the insects present in hosts so
great as in 1875. The first of these occurred in the summer of 1864, and
held over into the next year. The creatures were in numbers sufficiently
great to work the destruction of most of such crops as then were cultivated,
as well as some of the wild pasturage on the plains. Their ravages upon
farms and in gardens not only deprived the local markets of important food-
supplies, but otherwise had a depressing effect, as it was feared that the re-
currence of such a misfortune might be frequent. The second advent, more
serious than the first, was made in 1867, and with consequences that were
impoverishing to the tillers of the soil. Disappearing as mysteriously as
they liad come, they did not again afflict the Territory until eight years had
passed. Forerunning swarms of the pests, arrived, or were developed, in
1874, but not in numbers large enough to inflict very gi'eat damage. Early
in the next summer, these bodies of scouts and skirmishers were followed
by clouds and shoals of their kindred, the individuals of which baffled all
computation. Growing vegetation vanished as they advanced, and the
country was stripped of everything they could devour. They even invaded
the towns, in which the streets and sidewalks were made alive with them.
The destruction of millions of the insects by various methods employed
for that purpose in the agricultural districts seemed to leave their aggregate
undiminished and practically was inefEeetive in staying the destruction they
were causing. The movements of railway trains upon the plains were im-
peded bj- them as they crossed the tracks, the rails being made so slippery by
their crushed bodies that the locomotives whirled their driving-wheels in
vain. The burden of the direct losses fell upon the agricultural interests,
and were so ruinous that many of the farmers who had come into the Ter-
ritory within the previous two or three years were reduced to bankraptcy.
The "rear guard" of the enormous coveys that had converted verdurous
fields into barren land withdrew in 1876, and since that time Colorado has
not had another return of such an affliction, which, at the same time, had
befallen Kansas and Nebraska with even worse consequences.
The "dull times" in Colorado in 1875 and '76 were due in the main to
the losses inflicted by the gi-asshopper plague, and not to "effects of the
panic of '73", as some writers have told. However, there was no falling
back during those years. Colorado increased in population and the devel-
opment of her resources was continued undismayed.
At the beginning of that decade the natural wild conditions in the part
HISTORY OF COLORADO 459
of Colorado that we call the "Western Slope", as well as in the San Juan
section, had been disturbed but little by the doings of the restless white
man. As the reader has seen, some of our pioneer prospectors had entered
the eastward borders of these parts in 1859 and in the early '60s, and those
who escaped death from prowling squads of Ute Indians returned empty-
handed. Further prospecting explorations were made beyond tlie divide dur-
ing the next several years, but practically with no better results. By a
treaty between the Federal Government and the Ute Indians effected in
1868, all that part of Colorado lying west of the 107th meridian and south
of latitude 40 degrees and 15 minutes was set apart as a reservation for the
exclusive use and benefit of the bands of that tribe. These boundaries em-
braced more than 26,000 square miles — nearly three-fourths of the Western
Slope and the San Juan combined, and one-fourth of the entire domain of
the Territory; or an area equal to three-fifths that of the State of Ohio.
This exceedingly generous land-allowance to a comparatively small number
of Indians left west of the Continental Divide only the Middle Park and
what now is Routt Count)', together with that part of the eastern border of
the Western Slope lying southward of these and east of the 107th meridian,
open to occupation by the white people of the Territory; and therefore, in
the face of such restrictions, but few of the latter had attempted to establish
themselves upon the farther side of the main range. As late as 1872
there were but three postofBees upon the Western Slope, all of which were
in the Breckenridge mining-district, while the San Juan section had none.
Although everybody was familiar with the fact that the 37th parallel
was the southern boundary of Colorado, its location had not yet been marked
out satisfactorily. As I have said in a previous chapter, the uncertainty as
to the situation of the southern boundary line had led to the conclusion in
Colorado's early years that it laid upon a course that passed a short dis-
tance north of Trinidad, thus leaving that town within the limits of New
Mexico. Yet, at the same time, parts -of the Rio Grande A^alley that were
in and even several miles below the latitude of Trinidad were included in
maps of Colorado prepared by the Territory's Surveyor-General. These
errors, which appear to have been due in the main to inaccurate as-
tronomical-observations by the surveyors, and which were not amended until
about the end of that decade (and then not with precision), persuaded the
authorities of New Mexico formally to assert, in 1868, that their Territory
included a larger part of the San Juan c(juntry than now was conceded to it.
In the autumn of 1869, a company of eight prospectors, who had
made the long and risky journey from Prescott, Arizona, entered the
southwestern corner of the Ute Reservation. Among these daring men
was Adnah French, who had been the President of Denver City's pioneer
St. Charles Town Company, and also had been one of the Colorado pros-
pectors and miners who went into the San Juan section in 1860 and '61.
It is probable that knowledge of the presence of gold in that part of
Colorado that French had gained at that time had prompted the under-
taking of this expedition. Passing into the valley of the Animas River
late in October, the Arizonians halted at the site of old "Animas City"',
some cabins of which still were standing, in fair condition. After a short
stay here, the adventurers decided to go to Santa Fe for the winter, and,
with a full supply of provisions, together with a better outfit, to return
in the next spring.
460 HISTORY OF COLORADO
Having been encouraged and assisted by the Governor of Xew Mex-
ico, who believed the southern boundar}' of the Ute Reservation to be
located too far south, and with the consent of several Ute chieftains who
had followed them into Xew Mexico, the Arizonians retraced their way to
the Animas Valley, in April, 1870, in company with four other pros-
jiectors who had been taken into the party during the sojourn in Xew
Mexico. In the following summer, French and two others discovered in
the Baker's Park district some exceptionally rich ore in what later be-
came known as the "Little Giant"' and "Mountaineer" gold-lodes; while
the rest of their associates, who had gone in a diiferent direction, found in
the valley of the Dolores River some silver-bearing mineral. The pros-
jjectors went back to Santa Fe in the autumn of that year, there to re-
main through the coming winter, and to prepare for returning in the
next spring to develop their discoveries.
Exaggerated reports of the results of tlris expedition, that reached
the cities, towns, and mining-districts of Colorado before the end of
1870, caused hundreds of prospectors to hurry into the San Juan section
in the spring of 1871, regardless of the intended exclusiveness of the Ute
Reservation. The Indians now protested against such flagrant violation
of their treaty of 1868, but, restrained by the counsel of their great and
intelligent chief, Ouray, did not attempt to expel the invaders by physical
means. Instead of this, they appealed to the powers at Washington,
which, in 1872, in response to a request from the Interior Department,
sent into the San Juan a company of Regular troops to drive the prospec-
tors and miners out of the reservation and to prevent their return. But
as it was soon realized that something like an army would be required for
this purpose, commissioners were appointed to treat with the Utes for
their sale of a portion of their mineral lands in the southern part of
their reservation. The Indians not only objected to the terms and con-
ditions proposed by the commissioners, but were strongly disinclined fur-
ther to yield to the white people, and after several fruitless councils with
them the negotiations were terminated and the situation left unchanged.
In consequence of this failure, the Secretary of the Interior again inter-
vened in behalf of the Utes, and in the spring of 1873 an order was issued
directing all miners, prospectors, and other white trespassers, to withdraw
from the reservation before the coming of the next June. As the intrud-
ers paid no attention to the command, anotJier body of troops was started
toward the San Juan to enforce the decree. But when these were about
half-way to their destination the warlike proceedings were suspended by
President Grant, and members of a new commission to negotiate an
amendatory treaty with the Utes were appointed. Through the influence
and sagacity of Ouray, the commissioners succeeded in efl'ecting a treaty
in September, of that year, and which was ratified by the Federal Senate
in the following April. The Indians relinquished about 3,000,000 acres
- — a wonderfully rough tract — of their territory, which cession was thrown
open to the prospectors and miners in 1874 and soon was overrun by
them. So began the mineral development of Colorado's section of the
San Juan region.
During the early •70s there was also a revival of interest in the
mineral probabilities of the section of the Western Slope which then
was commonly known as the "Gunnison Country", in memorj' of Captain
HISTORY OF COLORADO 461
J. W. Giinuisou, who, as the reader may recall, had traversed the valley,
some twenty years before, when engaged in his survey for a transcon-
tinental railway. It is drained by the middle and upper reaches of the
Gunnison River and their tributaries, and nearly the whole of it lies
within the boundaries of the present Gunnison County. As in the case
of the San Juan, this part of Colorado had been visited by prospectors,
and by a greater number, in pioneer times. Some of these found gold in
encouraging cjuantitiies in what are now known as "Taylor" and "Union"
parks, and also at the site of our village of Tin Cup. A little mining
was done in Union Park for that period, but the hostility of the Utes
prevented the beginning of any general development of the section's
natural resources until after their treaty of 1868, and then only that part
of it lying east of the 107th meridian was open to occupation by white
men.
In 1870, a party of seven prospectors, led by Benjamin Graham,
went into the northern part of the Gunnison drainage basin, and in their
search in the vicinity of the Elk Mountains, an irregular range lying
in that section, they found some galena-lodes. Having concluded to re-
main in that locality, which was a part of the Ute Reservation, they
built a cabin and protected it with a light stockade — an establishment
that in some narratives of the expedition has been magnified into a "fort".
Graham and his companions occupied this station and continued their
prospecting 'round about it, but without iin])i)rtant results, in the open
seasons of the next three or four years, when a party of Utes evicted
them, burned their cabin and drove them out of the reservation.
In the meantime, in 1872, some prospectors who had come from the
San Juan and had crossed the Gunnison Valley found silver-bearing min-
eral in several places around the head of Rock Creek, a left-hand branch
of the Roaring Fork of Grand River, and just beyond the summit of the
divide between the drainages of the Gunnison and that Fork. Their
accounts of these, as given in Denver, led to the organization in that
city in the spring of 1873 of a small party for the purpose of investigat-
ing the reported discoveries, under the leadership of John Parsons. Go-
ing by way of the South Park and the Twin Lakes in Lake County, this
committee returned, by the same course, to Denver, after an absence of
several weeks, with satisfactory confirmation of the story that had been
told by the San Juan men.
A larger company, consisting of thirty members, now was formed
in Denver further to develop the discoveries. To the leadership of Par-
sons, that of Dr. Sylvester Richardson, who was a geologist as well as a
physician, was added, with Richard Cook enlisted as metallurgist. As
the company had a train of eight wagons, beside pack-animals, laden
with provisions and other elements of the outfit, and also desired to
obtain immunity from molestation by the Utes, a 'round about course by
way of the South Park and the Poncha and Coochetopa passes was taken,
and which led them into the Gunnison section through a southern gate-
way. At the Los Piiios Indian Agency of that time, on Los Pifios
Creek, a southern upper water of the Gunnison drainage, the Indians who
were there at first objected to the expedition, but through the influence of
Ouray they were persuaded to consent. The party now proceeded to the
site of the present town of Gunnison, and with which Richardson was so
iC^2 HISTOEY OF COLORADO
greatly pleased that he resolved later to organize a colon}- to occupy it
and its neighborhood, as he found it to be, by an astronomical observation
he made, several miles east of the eastern boundary of the Ute Reserva-
tion. The company passed on to the head of Rock Creek and encamped
at a point that was about five miles inside the reservation. Here a small
smelting-furnace was set up, in whicli the ores of the locality were tested
and found to carry very profitable values.
After a stay of about two months, the party returned to Denver,
where Dr. Richardson, having been promised sufficient capital, mostly by
acquaintances in Chicago, began making, together with some of liis asso-
ciates in the expedition, preparations for systematic mining at the head
of Rock Creek, and for smelting the ore upon the ground. But the con-
sequences of the panic in the autumn of that year (1873) defeated these
plans. In later times, the mining-town of Schofield arose at the Rock
Creek mines.
During the winter of 1873-T-4, Dr. Richardson turned his attention
to his other project — that of establishing a colony on the Gunnison
River: and at about the end of that season those whom he had enlisted
in the enterprise, who, with himself, numbered thirty, and in the main
were Denver 23eople, organized as an incorporated body, of whicli the
Doctor was elected President. The first group of these colonists, includ-
ing the Doctor, arrived upon the ground on April 21st. The land, upon
a part of which the present city of Gunnison stands, was surveyed into
sections and quarter sections in the regular manner, each member of the
company being entitled to one of tlje latter (containing 160 acres), the
apportionment of which was determined by lot. Upon the tract that fell