Larimer County, Colorado - The whole text, 1911 (part 1 of 22)

The whole text

SOME books, it is said, need no explanation. This one does. I undertook the preparation of it with misgivings concerning my ability to tell the story of the rise and progress of Larimer County as it should be told. Now that it is done, I fain would ask the indulgence of those into whose hands the book may fall, especially the critically disposed, because of its imperfections. It would be presumptuous to claim that a book covering the County could be entirely free from errors, but I hope it will serve the purpose of preserving for the use of some future historian a comparatively correct record of the events, incidents and circumstances of the early days in this portion of the "Great American Desert." I can assure the reader that much care has been taken in its preparation and, as far as possible, dates, incidents and circumstances have been obtained from public reports, official records and other reliable sources. Until a few months ago I had had no thought of entering upon the undertaking myself, but had long harbored the hope that some one would take up the task of collating and compiling a history of Larimer County and carry it to completion. I knew it should be done before the Pioneers, those who had laid the foundations broad and deep, for the blessings we now enjoy, had all been numbered with those who have passed on to their eternal reward; for they would carry with them personal recollections of events and incidents that reports and records might be searched for in vain. My hopes failed of realization. No one came forward to do the work. At last I was persuaded to undertake the task, and this book is the result. Possibly it contains that which should have been left out, and omitted things that should have been inserted. There is nothing perfect in this world. There are two legitimate ways of writing history. One is to make a plain, simple statement of facts; the other, to clothe the statement in language fitted to appeal to the reader's imagination. I have endeavored to combine the two. I have conscientiously tried to present the facts, leaving, at the same time, plenty of room for the play of the imagination. The facts have been gathered from numerous sources, from historical works, from public reports and official records, from old magazines, files of newspapers and from personal interviews with surviving Pioneers or members of the families of those who have passed away. The illustrations have been picked up, here and there, wherever a picture could be found that had a bearing on the conditions of the early days. The book Is written for the people of Larimer County, and my sole desire is that it may awaken within their hearts a fresh interest in those who were the Pioneers in the redemption of this favored portion of the Great American Desert. If I have succeeded in doing that and shall have at the same time preserved the facts in a convenient form for the use of the future historian of the County, my labors will not have been in vain. Let him who next writes the history of Larimer County enlarge upon the theme and clothe the facts in literary raiment of enchanting beauty and indulge in philosophical comments to his heart's content; it is enough for me that I have furnished the basis for him to build upon.

IN THE preparation of this volume I have consulted and used as authorities Bancroft's "History of Colorado"; Hall's "History of Colorado"; Coutant's "History of Wyoming"; Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"; Fremont's "Second Expedition"; King's "Handbook of the United States" ; Chittenden's "History of the American Fur Trade"; Bowles' "Across the Continent"; Richardson's "Beyond the Mississippi"; Greeley's "Overland Journey"; Bird's "Life in the Rocky Mountains"; Parrish's "The Great Plains"; Mills' "Story of Estes Park"; Captain Drannan's "Thirtyone Years on the Plains"; the official records of Larimer County and of the City of Fort Collins; the files of the Courier and Express of Fort Collins, the Reporter of Loveland, and the Bulletin of Berthoud. I am also under obligations to Professors L. G. Carpenter, James W. Lawrence, and W. R. Thomas of the Colorado State Agricultural College; to Judge Jefferson McAnelly, Emmet C. McAnelly, County Surveyor, and Sheriff C. A. Carlton, as well as to scores of Pioneers and early settlers for favors shown, valuable information furnished and assistance rendered in compiling and arranging the matter herein contained.

THE publishers of this volume desire to make an acknowledgment of their debt to Mr. Ansel Watrous, the author of this history, not only for the untiring and painstaking service he has rendered in the gathering, compilation and writing of the book, but more especially to act as the voice of the people in expressing appreciation of his part in the actual making of history in Larimer county. This volume is the best possible monument that could stand as a mark of the author's years of usefulness in this community, and we feel that it is due Mr. Watrous to incorporate in the record something that will inform posterity concerning the part he played in making Fort Collins what the city is today.

A newspaper editor, if of strong personality, necessarily becomes more than a mere recorder of events. He often shapes and molds the destiny of a community by his editorial utterances. It is in this respect that Mr. Watrous has earned the gratitude of Fort Collins and Larimer county. As may be read in the very brief biographical record which he would allow of himself in these pages, he was the founder of the Courier, and he will remain the editor of that newspaper as long as he is able to push the pencil. Parenthetically, it may be remarked that, in spite of his seventy-five years - the age at which he completes this history - he is in the enjoyment of full physical and mental vigor, with a brain that acts as clearly as though the possessor were still in middle age. Looking back over the files of the Courier one finds the best index to the character of the man whose hand has guided the destinies of the paper for more than thirty years. In all that time, every line written concerning the future of city and county was in an optimistic tone. There was a never failing fountain of hope into which the editor dipped his pen. He has, in his own life, been a reflection of that spirit, for the years have rested lightly upon him, and he has lived to see the county of his adoption prosper and grow fat. He saw the oxteam go out and the automobile come in. He witnessed the transformation from desert to garden; saw the magnificent trees that now line the city's broad avenues when they were but tender saplings. He knew intimately the days when the cowman was supreme ; he saw the tiller of the soil supercede the cowman and he made his newspaper the organ of the new agriculture. He advocated the introduction of the sugar beet and witnessed the birth and growth of that now stupendous industry, with its millions of investment. He fought for a town of commercial and moral greatness. Many years ago he took up the cudgel for morality in Fort Collins. He fought for a clean town - and fought Is used advisedly, for he held out for the right against direct threats of death and attempted destruction of his newspaper plant by dynamite. He seldom speaks of his own experiences, but those of the older generation readily recall the stormy days when Ansel Watrous, through the Courier, conducted the first campaign for better moral conditions In Fort Collins. He won the fight and laid the foundation for the clean city of today by making lawlessness unpopular and by enthroning good government. And that course he has always maintained, preferring always to stand for a clean city and never taking stock In the theory that a dissolute town Is essential to prosperity.

He has been a consistent prophet of greatness for Fort Collins and has always held before the people an ideal worth striving for. It is good to note that the prophecies which he has made are now being fulfilled, for we now have a city that embodies all of the advantages of a metropolis, and each of Its public utilities and improvements has materialized only after the idea often had been first broached, and at any rate always fostered and furthered through the editorial assistance of Mr. Watrous.

There are few men in the West and perhaps none other in the State of Colorado, who have been so efficient and faithful in the service of the public through a newspaper, and none anywhere who so consistently held to high ideals in the conduct of a paper. We are certain that the subject of this tribute does not himself realize what a force he has been in this community. That, however, Is the best Indication of the unselfish character of the service rendered. He has labored for love of his profession and not in the hope of financial reward. Had he been less occupied with the affairs of the community at large, he might have taken advantage of the many opportunities that have offered themselves during his long residence here, for acquiring wealth. He does not, however, possess the business instinct, but is of decidedly literary bent, being content, when not engaged in editorial duties, with the companionship of his favorite authors. He Is exceedingly well read and the possessor of a remarkable memory for events, dates, names, and faces, being literally an encyclopedia of ever ready information concerning the affairs of Fort Collins, Larimer county and Colorado, as well as of the nation and world at large.

He and Mrs. Watrous have together grown to a beautiful and peaceful age. They have no children of their own, but the best years of their life have been given to the rearing of the children of others, who now have gone out Into the world. They live alone, yet not as old people, but following the daily routine common to most people in the prime of active life. And this activity is a continuation of that service which has not only recorded, but made history. Scores of political campaigns, dozens of crises in municipal, county and state affairs, tragedy, disaster, births, deaths, marriages, drouth and flood, good fortune and ill - in short, life in all its phases, has passed in review before the editor, whose pen has faithfully chronicled the passing of these things and drawn from them for our perusal the lessons that have made Fort Collins a better city and Larimer a greater county. To this man, whose crowning effort is now put forth In this history, all honor! May he be with us yet many a year, to share In the further glory of industrial achievement and to enjoy to the utmost the beauties which Nature has so bountifully bestowed upon this region. Such is the earnest wish of the publishers of this, Ansel Watrous' History of Larimer county.

'Colorado, rare Colorado! Yonder she rests; her head of gold pillowed on the Rocky Mountains, her feet in the brown grass, the boundless plains for a playground; she is set on a hill before the world, and the air is very clear, so all may see her well. " - Joaquin Miller.

IN 1806, one hundred and four years ago, a military exploring party, led by Lieut. Zebu- Ion M. Pike, United States army, penetrated the western country from the Mississippi river to the Rocky Mountains. The region then explored, known as the Louisiana province, had, three years before, been acquired by the United States by purchase from France, and only a vague and indefinite knowledge of the extent, and character and resources was in possession of the Government. Lieut. Pike and his party in November of that year reached the base of the mountain which bears his name and which will forever perpetuate his memory, although he never scaled its summit. He is believed to have been the first American to enter Colorado. While on the return journey he was captured by Spanish troops and taken to Chihuahua. Long's Peak, forming the southwestern corner post of Larimer county, similarly honors Major Stephen H. Long, who explored parts of Colorado in 1820. About the year 1840 Mexico made a grant of a vast tract of land in the Las Animas region to Cols. Vigil, and St. Vrain ; a little later William Bent established a trading post on the Arkansas river.

Colorado west of the Continental Divide belonged to Mexico, and was ceded to the United States in 1848, and became part of the new Territory of Utah. Colorado east of the divide lay in the huge province of Louisana, a part of New France, ceded to Spain in 1763, restored to France in 1801, and sold to the United States in 1803, for $15,000,000. From that date until 1812 it lay in Louisana Territory; and after that in Missouri Territory; and from 1854 in Nebraska and Kansas Territories. The region south of the Arkansas river belonged to the Republic of Texas from its foundation until it became merged in the United States, when part of it was annexed to New Mexico and part to Kansas. As early as 1848, a wandering band of Cherokee Indians discovered gold in the vicinity of what is now the city of Denver; but it was not until 1858 that W. Green Russell's party of Georgians and a company from Kansas, began to wash gold from the sands of the South Platte river and its tributaries. In May, 1859, John H. Gregory discovered gold near Idaho Springs. When the news of these treasures of the mountains reached the East, a vast and tumultuous emigration began across the wild untrodden plains, and the serene and lonely Pike's Peak region becanje the magnet of thousands of brave adventurers.

The Territory of Colorado was created by act of Congress, approved February, 1861. The boundaries of Colorado, as described in the organic act, included all the territory between the thirty-seventh and forty-first parallels of north latitude, and the twenty-fifth and thirty-second meridians of longitude west of Washington, forming an oblong square containing 104,500 square miles, or 66,880,000 acres of land. The Territorial oflScers commissioned by President Lincoln were William Gilpin, Governor; Lewis L. Weld, Secretary; Benjamin F. Hall, Chief Justice ; S. Newton Pettis and Charles L. Armor, Associate Justices; Copeland Townsend, Marshal; James D. Daliba, Attorney-General, and F. M. Case, Surveyor-General. They arrived in Denver May 29th, and were cordially welcomed. The constitutions drafted in 1859 and 1863 were rejected by the people, but in 1865 they adopted one, and congress passed an act admitting the Territory to the Union. President Johnson vetoed this document, and for eleven years longer the people remained under a Territorial government.

When the Civil war broke out in 1861, Colorado sent into the Union army two regiments of cavalry, a regiment of infantry and a battery, besides raising troops for home defense. Threatened by Confederates on one side and Indians on the other, many pioneers returned to the East to remain until the trouble was over. Sibley's Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1861 had for its chief object an advance to the Platte valley and the occupation of the country as far north as Fort Laramie. Thus the Pacific coast states would be cut away from the Republic, and the overland route closed. This deadly peril was averted by the Colorado volunteers, who did not wait for the invaders to reach their country,

Following the close of the war in 1865, a new tide of immigrants flowed into Colorado and the development of its resources became more rapid and life more secure. The Ute Indians, formerly sole owners of the western part of the Territory, sold their lands to the Government, and were concentrated upon the White river, Uncompahgre and Southern reservations, whence most of them have since been removed to Utah.

The name "Colorado" is the past participle of the Spanish verb "Colorar," "to color," with a secondary meaning of "ruddy" or "blushing;" and was originally applied by the Spaniards to the Colorado river, whose water is red in hue when swollen by the heavy rains from the disintegration of the reddish soils through which it flows. A popular nickname for Colorado is the Centennial State, because it was admitted to the Union in the hundredth year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Later it was called the Silver State, because of the predominance of that metal in the mines then worked. The older title of the Buffalo-Plain State is now meaningless and has been for more than three decades, since the extinction of the bison. The people living here used to be called Pike's Peakers.

Colorado's coat-of-arms includes a shield, with a miner's pick and mallet crossed, and a range of snowy mountains. The motto is "Nil Sine Numine'' Latin words meaning "Nothing without God."

Colorado covers an area equal to New England and Ohio combined. Its chief divisions are the Plains, the Foothills, and the Rocky Mountains. The Great Plains ascend from Kansas to the Foot- hills, a vast open region of low ridges and valleys with an elevation of from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea. Everywhere, in their season, the face of the country is covered with gorgeous wild flowers, and modern irrigation processes, wherever water can be applied, are converting the plains into a rich garden of agriculture. The Divide is a ridge 7,500 feet above the sea, running eastward from the front range, and separating the waters of the Platte and Arkansas rivers. The Plains were originally treeless, save where belts of cottonwood and aspen followed the courses of the streams ; but since the advance of population hitherward and the development of irrigating systems, myriads of trees have been planted on the uplands and in the valleys. The Foothills run north and south, from thirty to fifty miles wide, with an elevation of from 6,500 to 8,000 feet, diversified and broken in their outline, and generally abounding in timber and water. They contain many fertile valleys and grazing districts, and thousands of beautiful homes have been established among them. They are also rich in minerals, clays and building stones, including granite and marble.

The Rocky Mountains form the Continental Divide, or water shed, and traverse Colorado from north to south and southwest, with many tributary ranges. This magnificent labyrinth has two-score peaks of above 14,000 feet, and nearly 200 exceeding 13,000 in height. For 150 miles north and south, from Gunnison to the northern boundary of the state the mountain mass is 120 miles wide and includes the Front, Park and Saguache ranges. The Medicine Bow range, which forms the western boundary of Larimer county, is a spur of the main range. The front range is the eastern line of peaks, visible for scores of miles over the lonely plains toward the Missouri, and forming a vast and impressive line of mountains, broken by several summits which overtower the great wall. It is 120 miles long, beginning on the south of the famous Pike's Peak, 14,147 feet high, which for many years gave its name to all Colorado. Its summit is reached by a long carriage road, and also a mountain cog-wheel railway, built in 1890. The view from this point, and from the oft-ascended Gray's and Long's and other peaks, is of immense extent and amazing grandeur.

The parks of Colorado are ancient lake basins walled in by stupendous mountain ranges, and composed of beautiful, undulating regions of vales and hillsides, with bright lakes and, streams, shadowy forests, and a varied and abundant vegetation of timber, flowers and grasses. They extend nearly the whole length of the state from north to south, just west of the Front range, with an average width of about fifty miles, and are separated from each other by high mountains. North Park, with its 2,500 square miles of wooded hillsides and meadows, formerly a part of Larimer county, but created, organized and established in 1909 as Jackson county, lays on the northern border of the state, between the Continental Divide on the west, the Medicine Bow mountains on the east and the Rabbit Ear range on the south. The North Platte river takes its rise in the park and flows into Wyoming. North Park has an elevation of 8,500 feet above the sea and is the stockman's paradise, its rich pastures and extensive meadows providing forage for tens of thousands of cattle and horses. It is almost entirely underlaid with a fine quality of lignite coal, some of whose measures are sixty-five feet in thickness. Walden, situated near the junction of the Michigan and Illinois rivers, tributaries of the North Platte, is the principal town and county seat of Jackson county. It has a population of about 600, and practically all lines of business are represented there. During the present year it will probably be connected up with the outside world by the Laramie, Hahn's Peak Pacific railroad, which is building into North Park from Laramie, Wyoming. Southward, across the narrow and lofty Rabbit Ear range, which forms a part of the Continental Divide, lies Middle Park. Middle Park covers 3,000 square miles of pleasant valleys and wooded hills, 9,000 feet above the sea, and environed on three sides by magnificent snowy ranges, with Long's Peak, Gray's Peak, and their lofty brethren overlooking its grassy hills. It forms a part of Grand county, whose shire town is Hot Sulphur Springs. Middle Park is now crossed by the Moffat road in course of construction from Denver to Salt Lake. South Park, the most attractive of the series, is a lovely vale forty miles long, walled in by the Rampart range on the east and the Snowy Park range in the west, and watered by the South Platte and its silvery confluents. This mountaingirt amphitheater, with its wonderful variety of richness of scenery, is traversed by several railways and dotted with villages, mines and ranches. Its average elevation is 9,000 feet above the sea level.

The San Luis Park covers 9,400 square miles and is the largest of Colorado's inter-mountain parks. It is walled in by the Sangre-de-Cristo and Culebra ranges on the east, and by the Sierra San Juan on the west. Here the Rio Grande river takes its rise amid noble forests.

in 1880. Since then this vast area has developed rapidly and numerous villages, towns and cities exist now where only the red men made their homes prior to that date. In these valleys are found inexhaustible fields of coal, iron, lead, copper and silver, and large areas of rich soil specially adapted to fruit culture. Thousands of carloads of peaches, apricots, pears, plums and apples are shipped out of these valleys every year.

The rivers of Colorado are unnavigable torrents, flowing down out of the mountains with flashing cascades, quiet pools and foaming rapids. Here the Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande and Colorado are born. The Republican and the Smoky Hill Fork of the Kansas rise from the Plains in the eastern part of the state. East of the front range the waters of the mountain-born streams are skillfully availed of for the irrigation of thousands of productive farms. The North Platte gathers its waters from the Medi- .cine. Bow range and the Continental Divide in North Park. The South Platte is born at Montgomery, on Buckskin mountain, 11,176 feet high, and crosses South Park, descending 6,000 feet before reaching Denver. The sources of the Arkansas are in Tennessee pass, and for scores of miles it flows like a silver thread at the bottom of a caiion over a thousand feet deep, culminating in the Royal Gorge, near Canon City. The Arkansas flows across the Plains, southeast, 500 miles in Colorado, receiving the waters of the Greenhorn, Huerfano, Apishapa, Purgatoire, Cimmaron, Fountaine qui Bouille and numerous other streams. The Purgatoire river traverses a wonderful canon fifty miles long, with walls 800 to 1,000 feet high, around whose gloomy shadows (if tradition may be believed) an entire Spanish regiment was lost. The Rio Grande river rises in the Sierra San Juan and flows east and south through San Luis Park and into New Mexico. The northwestern part of the state is watered by the Grand, Bear (Yampah) and White rivers, and their numerous affluents. The Animas, Mancos and other tributaries of the San Juan drain the chaotic mountains of Southwestern Colorado into the Colorado river. In this region, along the Hovenweep and McElmo, are found the ruined houses and watch towers of the long-extinct Cliff Dwellers, driven ages ago to their holes in the precipice walls by deadly enemies, Aztecs or Apaches. Some of the ruins are 700 feet long, constructed of massive blocks of stone, or carved with great labor from the live rock.

and convulsions of Nature have hewn in the sides of the mountains with perpendicular granite or sandstone walls. Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson, Boulder, Cheyenne, Clear Creek, Grape Creek and other canons are famous for their remarkable scenery, and the Grand Canon of the Arkansas is even more impressive and wonderful. West of the main range the streams flow in the bottoms of yet more prodigious canons, with rock walls half a mile or more high, generally mostly precipitous, and sometimes even overhanging their bases. The Black and Grand canons of the Gunnison, the long gorge of the Uncompahgre, and the deep chasms in which the Dolores flows are remarkable for their extent and grandeur.

High up among the sunlit peaks many crystalline lakes reflect the clear sky and the granite spires above them, and send their bright waters plunging and murmuring down through rugged canons to join other streams making for either the Atlantic or the Pacific oceans. Near Georgetown is the deep emerald expanse of Green Lake, with Clear Lake above it and Elk Lake at the edge of the timber line. The Twin Lakes, fourteen miles from Leadville, lie at the base of the lofty Mount Elbert, 9,357 feet above the sea, and their unusual beauty has attracted a settlement of summer hotels and cottages on their shores. The five Evergreen lakes mirror the huge sides of Mount Massive; and the crag-bound Chicago lakes spread their transparent waters high up near the summits of Mount Evans, the uppermost of them being 11,434 feet above sea level, and perpetually frozen. Palmer lake, on the Divide, midway between Denver and Pueblo (7,238 feet high), has on its shore a pleasant health resort, villages and sanitariums. Nestled high up on the pine-clad slopes of Mount Cameron, in the Medicine Bow range, lies Chambers lake, one of Larimer county's boasted beauty spots. This lake is at an elevation of 9,000 feet above sea level, and is fed by Joe Wright, Trap and other small streams which head still higher up in the mountains, and its outlet is one of the sources of the Cache la Poudre river. It was named for a bold trapper and hunter named Chambers, who in the early part of the nineteenth century penetrated the wilderness at the headwaters of the Cache la Poudre in search of beaver and other furbearing animals. Joe Wright creek also owes its name to a trapper who spent a winter on the stream gathering peltries.

Large areas of white and yellow pine and cedar still remain on the mountains of Colorado. The ridges and mountains are covered with noble ever- green trees, up to 9,000 feet, and thin and windblown trees for 3,000 feet higher, or up to timber line, above which the peaks are bleak rocks, with slight patches of grass and alpine flowers. The wild animals of the highlands include bears, wolves, pumas, wild cats, deer, elk, beaver and others. On the plains millions of prairie dogs dwell, with deer, antelopes, wolves, coyotes, hares and other game, yearly dwindling away.

The climate of this great mountain realm naturally has a wide diversity; from the high summer heat of the plains to the perpetual snows of the mountain ranges. The east and south winds are damp and cold; the west winds, though blowing across hundreds of miles of snowy ranges, are warm and dry. As a rule the nights are cool, even when the days reach 90 degrees. The foothills have hot summers, with cool nights, and mild winters, with snow seldom abiding long. The average mean temperature in winter is 30.3 degrees ; spring, 48.7 degrees; summer, 69.7 degrees, and autumn, 50.7 degrees. Changes are frequent and sometimes sharp, but the dryness of the atmosphere mitigates their severity. From November to April snow may come, but it very seldom remains for more than a few days at a time; and thence till the close of summer short rain showers refresh the country. More than 300 days in each year are either clear or partly clear. From July to November the sky is bright and cloudless, and the air is pure, sweet and exhilarating. "An air more delicious to breathe cannot anywhere be found," says Bayard Taylor. This climate is favorable to health and vigor; and the pleasant region of the foothills is a great and beneficient sanitarium, especially for those who suffer from bronchial and pulmonary affections. These diseases are arrested in the dry, highland air, and many Eastern people now enjoy good health in Colorado who would have died had they remained in their old homes. It is important that invalids avoid high altitudes, and remain at the health resorts below the line of 7,500 feet. The electric air excites the nervous system of newcomers especially to a high tension, producing a sort of intoxication of good health, with keen appetites, perfect digestion and sound, refreshing sleep.

Colorado is generously favored with health-promoting medicated mineral and thermal springs, nearly all of which are provided with hotels and bath houses. Five miles west of Colorado Springs lies the famous health resort of Manitou, with its soda, iron, seltzer, and sulphur springs, attracting thousands of persons a year to the adjacent hotels.

Idaho springs rush from the base of Santa Fe mountain, near the headwaters of Clear creek. There are both hot and cold waters, used in various forms of baths, and the analysis show ingredients like those of Carlsbad springs. This locality is much visited by consumptives and those suffering from rheumatism, who find healing in the medicinal fountains. Canon City, near the picturesque Grape Creek Canon and the Royal Gorge, has soda springs and hot springs. The Boulder saline water enjoys a large sale throughout America and Europe. Springdale, ten miles northwest of Boulder, has tonic iron waters. There are valuable springs at Morrison, a fashionable mountain resort twenty miles from Denver, and near Bear Canon and the Garden of the Angels. The Haywood and Cottonwood springs, near Buena Vista, are visited by thousands of health-seekers. In the narrow Wagon Wheel Gap, where the Upper Rio Grande roars down through a palisaded cleft in the mountains, are hot and cold soda and sulphur springs, with large hotels and bath houses. The soda springs near Leadville are under the shadow of the Saguache range. Poncha hot springs, near Salida, form a group of fifty-five sources of clear, odorless and tasteless water, with hotels and bath houses and great numbers of yearly visitors. Pagosa springs, between the Sierra San Juan and the grassy plains of New Mexico, bubble up in a great rocky basin, and supply purgative alkaline waters of high medicinal value. They have a temperature of 140 degrees, and the steam from the basin can be seen for miles in cool weather. Glenwood springs are ten in number, pouring out every minute 8,000 gallons of warm water, powerfully medicated, alkaline, saline, sulphurous and chalybeate, some of them in hot, vaporous caves near the Grand river, and others provided with swimming pools and bath houses. Shaw's magnetic springs are near Del Norte, in the San Luis valley. Trimble's hot springs and the Pinkerton springs are near Durango. The hot sulphur springs, six in number, boil out from the base of a cliif at the head of Troublesome canon, in Middle Park, and are provided with baths. South Park contains a group of saline and alkaline springs, and also Hartzell's hot sulphur springs. Steamboat springs, in Routt county, form a group of eighty hot fountains at the foot of the Park range.

Prior to 1870 agriculture had not assumed commanding proportions in Colorado, but since then it has advanced by leaps and bounds until at the present time, through the construction of vast irrigation systems, supplemented by water storage and the bringing under cultivation of extensive areas of productive land, tilling of the soil has become the dominating industry of the state. At this time the value of the products of the farms, orchards and gardens is more than double the value of the mineral productions of the state, so that agriculture is now far in the lead of mining so far as net financial results are concerned. Though there is a steady increase year by year in the value of mineral products, agriculture has taken the lead and bids fair to hold it for all time to come. The aridity of the soil has been overcome by artificial irrigation, by whose aid nearly 4,000,000 acres have been brought under profitable cultivation, with the area increasing every year. It is estimated by the State Engineer that there are 10,000,000 acres of land in the state which can be brought under cultivation through irrigation. The irrigating canals which have their heads in the perennial mountain streams, are tapped by smaller lateral ditches leading to the higher slopes of the farms, and minor ditches reach the fields, which are in turn gridironed by plow furrows. When the crops need water, the head-gates of the laterals are opened and crystal streams flow down the field ditches, and are admitted into the furrows by taking away a shovelful of earth from each one. In a brief space of time the land is thoroughly moistened and the growing crops refreshed as from a prolonged rain. The moisture is controlled absolutely by the farmer and he can apply it to those fields and crops which most need it, and at the same time withhold in from fields and crops that have already been supplied with all they need. The state is divided into five irrigation divisions, each in charge of an experienced engineer, and the divisions are sub-divided into water districts, each supervised by a water commissioner. These officials, under the supervision of the State Engineer, distribute the waters according to priority rights.

Stock-raising and stock-feeding have long been important industries in the state. The grasses are nutritive and abundant, and horses, cattle and sheep thrive on dry alfalfa and native hay. The occupation of the great plains by farmers has forced the large herds of cattle to new pastures elsewhere, and two-thirds of the live stock of the state are now on the farms, where agricultural and stock-raising interests are blended, as in the older states, and the animals are more carefully fed and looked after during the winter, thus minimizing the losses. Some of the finest cattle in the world are raised in Colorado - prize-winners at the international stock shows in Chicago. Wool growing is successfully carried on in Colorado and yields handsome returns to the flock-masters. There are about 3,000,000 sheep in the state and from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 pounds of wool are marketed in the East each year. About one million lambs are fed in the state every year for the Eastern markets. This industry, besides yielding the feeders a good profit one year after another, aids materially in preserving the fertility and promoting the productiveness of the soil.

The early settlers of Colorado devoted almost their entire time and attention to mining, and enormous profits have since been realized from that industry. The mountains west of the 105th meridian are branded with mineral veins of incalculable value, and the total bullion production of the state has reached the enormous sum of nearly $400,000,000. During the golden age of Colorado, silver mining was not much heeded, but between the years 1880 and 1893 it turned out annually four times as much silver as gold. Now, however, more than twice as much gold as silver is produced annually by the mines of Colorado.

The coal fields of the state cover 40,000 square miles, the measures running all the way from two to sixty feet in thickness. The output of coal rose from 8,000 tons in 1869 to nearly 12,000,000 tons in 1909. Much of the Colorado coal is bituminous, but large areas of pure anthracite have been opened at Crested Butte, New Castle and in Routt county. Lignite beds follow the eastern base of the mountains for 250 miles. Since the early '80s petroleum has been one of the important productions of the state, and the volume is steadily increasing.

Extensive quarrying industries have been built up in recent years and immense quantities of building and paving material and flagging for sidewalks and basement floors are annually wrenched from their resting places in the hills and made to perform service in advancing the onward march of civilization. Sandstones, granite and marble are found in great variety in the foothills. Marble occurs in white, black, pink and variegated colors in various portions of the state. Larimer county has inexhaustible quarries of red and gray sandstone ; also of marble and granite. The walls of some of the finest buildings in Denver are constructed of Larimer county granite.

The State capitol in Denver is a handsome modern building, of Colorado granite, erected at a cost of more than $2,000,000. The state institutions include the Insane Asylum at Pueblo; the School for the Education of the Mute and Blind at Colorado Springs; the Penitentiary at Canon City; the State Reformatory at Buena Vista; the State Industrial

The public schools of Colorado are of high grade, comparing favorably with those of the most advanced of the older states. More than 3,000,000 acres of land have been set apart as an endowment for the public schools, and the State school income fund is yearly increasing in amount. One State Normal School has been in operation in Greeley for fifteen years, and another one, located on the Western slope, has been authorized by the Legislature. The University of Colorado, located at Boulder, was opened in 1877. The State School of Mines has a home at Golden, and the State Agricultural College at Fort Collins. These are all large, well equipped and flourishing institutions with a steadily increasing enrollment of students. In addition to these State educational institutions, there are the Presbyterian College of the Southwest at Del Norte, Westminster College at Denver (also a Presbyterian school), the Denver University, a Methodist institution; the Baptist Woman's College at Montclair, near Denver; Colorado College at Colorado Springs, and the Jesuit College, north of Denver, all of them well supported. Wolf Hall is a flourishing Episcopal school at Denver. The National Government maintains an Indian School at Grand Junction. Two United States military posts are maintained in Colorado, the chief of which is Fort Logan, near Denver. The other is Fort Lewis, near Durango, and guards the Ignacio Ute Reservation. The old frontier stronghold. Fort Lyons, in the Arkansas valley, was abandoned in 1890.

The railways of Colorado are famous for their bold engineering and their wonderful achievements in the passage of lofty mountains and unparalleled gorges. They were for the most part built in advance of population, and the rapid growth of the state is in part due to their agency. Six great railway transportation lines cross the Plains and enter the state from the east, and they are the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, the Missouri Pacific, the Rock Island & Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, the Burlington and the Union Pacific. In addition to these the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul and the Chicago & Northwestern operate through passenger car service from Chicago to Denver over the Union Pacific tracks, so that in reality one has the choice of eight lines in going east from Denver or in com.ing west. The first railroad built in Colorado was the Denver Pacific, extending from Denver north to Cheyenne, Wyoming, a distance of 106 miles. It was opened for traffic June 22nd, 1870. The Kansas Pacific was completed to Denver in August of that year. At the present time the total railway mileage of Colorado is 5,360.31. A telegraph line was established from Omaha to Julesburg, on its way across the continent, in 1861. Two years later, in October, 1863, a branch line was completed to Denver, thus putting the capital city of Colorado in direct communication by wire with the East. In 1865 the line was extended from Denver to Salt Lake, via Fort Collins and Virginia Dale, and Denver became the repeating station for California dispatches.

The cities of Colorado having a population of 3,000 and over are Aspen, Boulder, Canon City, Central City, Colorado Springs, Cripple Creek, Denver, Durango, Florence, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Greeley, Leadville, Loveland, Pueblo, Salida, Trinidad and Victor. Denver, founded in 1858, has a population rising 213,000. The United States census, taken this year (1910), will probably show a number of cities other than these given herewith that have populations exceeding 3,000. The population of Colorado in 1861 was 25,329, four-fifths of which were men. It is expected that the federal census for this year (1910) will show a population in Colorado of nearly, if not quite, one million.

The first Territorial Legislature, which met in Denver September 9th, 1861, divided the Territory into seventeen counties and three judicial districts. The names of the counties created at that time were Costilla, Conejos, Huerfano, Pueblo, Fremont, El Paso, Douglas, Arapahoe, Weld, Larimer, Boulder, Jefferson, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Park, Lake, Summit. Laporte was named in the act as the county seat of Larimer county, and the county was assigned to the First judicial district, with Benjamin F. Hall as Judge. At present there are sixty counties in the state and nineteen judicial districts.

The geological history of Colorado is concerned mainly with the gradual upheaval of the great continental mountain range from beneath the sea. Beginning with the emergence of the Sierra Madre from the waste of waves, this uplifting of land advanced northward ; and the Sierra San Juan of Colorado is probably the most ancient section of firm ground on this side of the Republic. Later the other ranges slowly appeared above the sea, the Sangre de Cristo and Sierra Mojada, and finally the front range. For ages the waves of the ocean beat against the steep western declivities; and the more gradual eastern slopes^were formed from the deposits washed down from the peaks into the shallow water on that side. The mountain walls enclosed many lakes of salt water, which finally drained off through the canons, leaving the broad basins of the parks for the homes of the coming empire.

"Colorado is the flower of a peculiarly Western civilization, in which is mingled the best blood of the North and the South, the virile sap of New England and the CaroHnas - a truly American state."

The physical features of Colorado, which, of course, includes Larimer County, are tersely presented in the history of Colorado, written by Hubert Howe Bancroft, the eminent historian. He- says :

"In the gradual upheaval of the continent from a deep sea submersion, the great Sierra Madre, or Northern range, of Old Mexico first divided the waters, and presented a wall to the ocean on the west side. The San Juan range of Colorado is an extension of the Sierra Madre, and the oldest land in this part of the continent. Then at intervals far apart rose the Sangre de Cristo range, the Mojada or Greenhorn range, and lastly the Colorado, called the Front range because it is first seen from the east; and northeast from this the shorter upheavals of Wind River and the Black Hills, each, as it lies nearer or farther from the main Rocky range, being more or less recent.

"The longer slope and greater accessibility of the mountains on the eastern acclivity has come from the gradual wash and spreading out of the detrition of these elevations in comparatively shallow water, while yet the ocean thundered at the western base of the northern range. The salt water enclosed by the barrier of the Rocky Mountains, and subdivided afterward by the later upheavals into lesser seas, were carried off through the canons which their own mighty force, aided by other activities of Nature, and by some of her weaknesses, opened for them. For uncounted ages the fresh water of the land flowed into these inland seas, and purged them of their saline flavor, washing the salts and alkalies into the bed of the ocean on the west, where after the emergence of the Sierra Nevada, and the elevation of the intervening mountains of the great basin, they largely remained, having no outlet. Gradual elevation and evaporation, with glacial action, com- pleted the general shaping of the country. Subsequent elemental and volcanic action has left it with four parallel mountain ranges, from which shoot 132 peaks, ranging from 12,000 to 14,500 feet above the sea level, and from 9,000 to 10,000 feet above the general level of the State, with many lesser ones ; with large elevated valleys, called parks, walled about with majestic heights, covered with luxuriant grasses, threaded by streams of the purest water, beautified by lakes and dotted with groups of trees, with narrow, fertile valleys skirting numerous small rivers, fringed with cottonwood and willows; with nobler rivers rushing through rents in the solid mountains thousands of feet in depth, and decorated by time and weather, with carvings such as no human agency could ever have designed, their wild imagery softened by blended tones of color in harmony with the blue sky, the purple gray shadows and the clinging moss and herbage; with forests of pine, fir, spruce, aspen and other trees, covering the mountain sides up to a height of 10,000 or 12,000 feet; with wastes of sand at the western base of the Snovyy range, or main chain, and arid mesas in the southeast, where everything is stunted except enormous cacti, with grassy plains sloping to the east, made gay with an indigenous flower, and other grassy slopes extending to the mountains toward the west, each with its own distinctive features. It is, above all, a mountainous country, and with all its streams, which are numerous, it is a dry one. In the summer many of its seeming water courses are merely arroyas - dry creek beds; others contain some water flowing in channels cut twenty or more feet down through yellow clay to a bed of shale, and still others run through canons with narrow bottoms supporting rich grass, willow, thorn, cherry, currant and plum trees. Sloping up from these may be a stretch of rolling country covered sparsely with low, spreading cedars, or a tableland with colonies of prairie dogs scattered over it, and moving upon it (in the early days) herds of wild horses, buffaloes, deer and antelope. Up in the mountains are meadows, having in their midst beaver dams, overgrown with aspens and little brooks trickling from them. Several other fur-bearing animals are here also. In still other localities are fine trout streams, and game about them is abundant, elk, mountain sheep, bears, lynxes, wolves, panthers, pumas, wildcats, grouse, pheasants, ptarmigans and birds of various kinds having their habitat there."

of which are the canons of the Big Thompson and' Cache la Poudre rivers, which were cut through the hills for the waters to flow in the early infancy of this world. So many aspects have these canons that any mood may be satisfied in regarding their varied features. Their walls have a width between them ranging from one to two hundred feet, the rock being stratified, and continuing for miles. In places they rise one, two and three thousand feet, with level summits, surmounted by second walls of prodigious height. But then figures represent only height and depth; they convey no impression of the gorges themselves, which sometimes narrow down to the width of the stream, and all is gloom and grandeur, and again they broaden out into beautiful parks and meadows with waterfalls dashing down between inclosing walls, trees growing out of the clefts, huge rocks grouped fantastically about, curious plants sheltering in their shadows, and the brilliant, strong current of the stream darting down in swift green chutes between the spume-flecked boulders, dancing in creamy eddies, struggling to tumble headlong down some sparkling cataract, making the prismatic air resound with the soft tinkle as of merry laughter. Again, they surge along in half shadows, rushing as if blinded against massive abutments of rock, to be dashed into spray, gliding thereafter more smoothly, as if rebuked for their previous haste, but always full of light, life and motion. The grandeur, beauty and variety of the views these canons make doubly interesting the reflection that through these gorges poured the waters of that great primal sea which spread over Eastern. Colorado. No pen can fully describe and no brush adequately picture the sublimity and exquisite charm of these great rents in the mountains. Every turn of the stream presents a new view until the eye tires and the brain wearies beholding them. Up through these narrow gorges roads have been blasted out of the solid rock in many places, over which carriages and automobiles pass to and fro, giving sight-seers an opportunity at the smallest expenditure of physical exercise to penetrate their sublime recesses and feast their eyes on the grandeurs and beauties there presented.

On the east side of the great divide, the South Platte river, with about forty tributaries, including the Cache la Poudre and Big Thompson rivers, rises well up among the peaks of the Front, or Colorado range, all flowing north, northeast and easterly, drains a large extent of country, while the North Platte, rising in the Park range, drains the whole of the North Park toward the north. The Arkan- sas river, with its sixty or more tributaries, some of which are of considerable volume, drains a large portion of the territory south of the divide between the South Platte and Arkansas valleys. It heads in the high region of the Saguache range, interlacing with springs of the Grand river, quite as the Columbia and Missouri rise near each other farther north. Republican river, an affluent of the Kansas, itself having four tributaries, flows northeast down the long descent to its union with the main stream, near its junction with the Missouri ; and in the south the Rio Grande del Norte, starting from the summit of the same range which feeds the Gunnison branch of Grand river on the opposite side, flows towards the Gulf of Mexico. These streams form the river system of the eastern slope of Colorado. With all of its numerous streams, Colorado is a dry country. Her air has little humidity in it. The summer heat of the Plains is excessive by day, but owing to the altitude the nights, even in midsummer, are cool. The summer mean temperature ranges from 64.6 degrees to 69.2 degrees, and the winter mean from 31.3 degrees to 32.8 degrees. The maximum heat of summer ranges from 93 degrees to 99 degrees, with from six to thirty days above 90 degrees, and the minimum of winter from 3 degrees to 12 degrees, with from six to ten days when the mercury is below zero, which gives an extreme range for the year from 96 degrees to 110 degrees. The annual rainfall in Larimer County, as measured at the State Agricultural College in Fort Collins, averages about 14 inches.

Previous to the occupation of Colorado by the whites, the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians held almost complete dominion over the Plains country for many miles to the east of the mountains, especially that section watered by the Platte and its tributaries. The Arapahoes made their home near the present site of the City of Denver. Here they conducted a sort of a fair, exchanging articles procured from the Spanish on the south for furs from the north. The word Arapahoe is said to mean "he who buys or trades." As the Cache la Poudre valley seems to have been their favorite hunting grounds they spent a good part of the hunting season along the river and their tepees were familiar sights to the early explorers and emigrants. Their camping grounds were mainly on both sides of the river near the mouth of the Boxelder creek and at or near Laporte. Antoine Janis says he found 150 lodges of them at Laporte when he located there in 1844. A brief sketch of the history of these tribes, so far as it is known, is herewith given. It is taken mainly from Randall Parrish's story of the Great Plains. The writer says :

"Leaving the valley of the Missouri and moving westward to the eastern and southern base of the Black Hills, the traveler entered the country of the Cheyennes, who were of Algonquin stock. How long this people occupied that district, or from whence they came, is uncertain. That they were kindred to the Arapahoes seems probable, and as early as 1820 many of the tribe seceded and joined the other. By 1840 all the remainder had moved south, whence they also became affiliated with their kindred. Misfortune had made of them wanderers, but they were always a virile race, magnificent horsemen and superb warriors. While ever at war with the Utes who were known as mountain Indians, with the whites they were usually at peace, although when they took the war-path they proved dangerous enemies. Their principal traffic was in horses, and their trade led them to become great travelers across the prairies. Closely associated with them in the earliest days of white exploration were the Kiowas, who were also a Plains tribe. For many years the Kiowa warriors roamed freely over the entire Arapahoe and Comanche country, extending from the South Platte to the Brazos. Their favorite rendezvous seems to have been the valley of the Arkansas near the mouth of the Purgatoire river. The Kiowas were little known by name in the early fur trade, but probably many an atrocity charged to the Comanches or Arapahoes was really committed by these wanderers. A late authority refers to them as being 'the most predatory and blood-thirsty' of all the prairie tribes. They have probably killed more white men in proportion to their numbers than any of the others."

I have not been able to learn that the Arapahoes ever committed any serious depredations or cruel atrocities upon the white settlers of Larimer County beyond the stealing of horses and running them off when they thought they would not be found out. They seemed disposed to be friendly and peaceable toward the whites. Their Chief, Friday, was an educated man, having been taken to St. Louis when a boy and sent to school, where he acquired a knowledge of books and a wholesome appreciation of the numbers, strength and power of the white race. He could read and write and converse quite intelligently upon most subjects. He had a kindly regard for the white people, being wise enough to know that they belonged to a superior race who would eventually possess and control his country. He gravely accepted the situation and his denneanor toward the whites had a marked influence over his tribe.

"There was a report," says Maj. Frank Hall in his excellent history of Colorado, "that the Arapahoes were descended from the Blackfeet; that a hunting party accompanied by their families came down from the north to the Platte about eighty-five years ago, and being cut off by a severe snow storm, wintered near the present site of Denver. The season in this latitude being mild and pleasant, the country abounding in game, and generally a better region to live in than the one they had left, they decided to remain. How much truth there may be in the story, if any, we are unable to say. We found them here and know that they roamed the Plains in large numbers from the country of the Pawnees to the base of the mountains and down into the valley of the Arkansas river."

In 1861 the Cheyennes and Arapahoes ceded to the Government all their lands east of the mountains, which included the eastern part of Larimer County. The Indians soon afterwards repudiated the treaty and combining with other Plains tribes, entered upon and waged a vicious war against the whites which continued for several years. In the summer of 1864 mail communication with the East was cut off; mail bags containing letters, money, drafts, land patents, newspapers and other miscellaneous matter were cut open and their contents scattered over the prairie. But one station was left standing on the Overland stage route for a distance of 120 miles. Trains were robbed, emigrants killed and it was estimated that there was not more than six weeks' supply of food in the Territory. For thirty days there had been no mail from the East. No stages or emigrants or supply trains were allowed to move except under escort. The situation was really critical. Caravans conveying merchandise and food supplies from the Missouri river to Denver and other Colorado towns, all that were on the way for hundreds of miles, were seized, their conductors killed and the property appropriated. Early in September, the hundred days' regiment was completed and dispatched by Colonel Chivington to points on the Overland route to open communications; while a portion of the home-guard under Henry M. Teller, Major General of the militia, patroled the road between Denver and Julesburg, the First Colorado cavalry being employed chiefly on the Arkansas. These prompt and active movements on the part of the military authorities pro- duced two results, the opening of communications with the Missouri river late in October, and the surrender of a small portion of the Cheyenne and Aparahoe tribes, who had hitherto refused to make a permanent treaty with the Superintendent of Indian affairs. When the outbreak first occurred. Governor Evans issued a proclamation to the friendly Indians to repair to posts which he named, to be taken care of by the agents. In response to the invitation 175 Arapahoes, under Chief Friday, took up their residence at Fort Collins where they remained until the trouble was over. These Indians were camped part of the time on the Coy farm and part of the time on the Sherwood farm. F. W. Sherwood was commissioned by President Lincoln to supply Chief Friday and his band with food while they were here.

The following story of a tragedy which occurred between two quarrelsome Indians is told by Mrs. Varah A. Armstrong of this city, a daughter of the late Captain Geoorge E. Buss :

"In the early winter, closing the year 1866, Chief Friday's band of Arapahoes, consisting of a few lodges, lived a few rods up the river from the Sherwood ranch. A much larger band of Cheyennes camped on top of the bluff across the river, near the home of 'Ranger' Jones. They were led by a chief named Spotted Tail.

"Friday had a son whom he called Jake, a hotheaded, quarrelsome fellow, with a keen appetite for bad whiskey. He and some of the other young braves visited the Cheyenne camp, got into a quarrel and Jake killed Spotted Tail.

"Thus, for a brief time, the few settlers were menaced by the horrors of an Indian war, but Friday, knowing that he could not hope to win, told his son to go away, which he did, taking his three wives with him.

"A few days after the tragedy, my father was building a log barn and he borrowed a cross-cut saw, with which he and my mother were cutting out the doorway. Three or four Cheyennes came down and sat around watching operations. My father told my mother to stop and he signed for one of the Indians to take hold of the handle, and the Son of the Wilds made a very fair hand for the short time that it took to finish the job. When they stopped to rest, my father said, 'What did you do with Spotted Tail?' The Indian stooped, and with his hand scooped out a little hollow in the soil to show that they had buried him, and my mother said there were tears in his eyes.

"The next June, when the river was an impassable torrent, one day the Jones signaled for the boat that was kept for use by the two families. A little Crow Indian boy was frantically waving his blanket, and when he had been ferried across, and considered himself safe from pursuit, he told Friday's band how he had been held as a slave by Jake and his wives; how the party had started to return to the home camping grounds on the Poudre, of their seeing another band of Indians in the distance ; of Jake waving a white flag to which the advancing party paid no attention. When they were near enough to recognize their quarry, they began singing the death song. The little Crow knew what that meant. All started to flee. One of Jake's wives rode a lazy pony and begged the little Crow to run behind and whip the horse, but he was intent on saving himself, which he succeeded in doing. It is quite possible the Cheyennes did not try to capture him after taking vengeance on Jake and his family. As no other word ever came to the Poudre country, it is not known in what way they met their deaths. It must always be one of the secrets of 'The Lone Prairie.' "

The Cheyennes and Arapahoes hated the Utes with bitter hatred, and the latter just as intensely hated the former tribes. The Cheyennes and Arapahoes were Plains tribes and the Utes a Mountain tribe. The Plains Indians could do nothing except on horseback; the Utes, though owning and valuing ponies, was essentially a foot tribe. A single Indian of either tribe on his own ground counted himself equal to three of his enemies. The Utes sometimes wandered on the Plains raiding the camps of their enemies and driving off their ponies when they thought the situation and condition favorable, but it was with fear and trembling. The Plains Indians seldom ventured at all into any country so broken as to prevent them operating to advantage on horseback. Though constantly at war with each other, few were killed in their battles, because neither would venture far into the domain of the other.

Speaking of the Indian trouble of 1864-5, General Frank Hall in his history of Colorado says: "On one occasion a merchandise train was attacked on the Cache la Poudre emigrant road near the Colorado line, the men attending it killed, and the train destroyed. One of the attaches was captured alive, and after being cruelly tortured was bound with chains to a wagon wheel, his arms and legs stretched out, large quantities of brush piled up around him and fired. As the flames executed

Most of the operations of the organized fur companies were carried on in the West through traders and trappers located at central points in Western Wyoming and Eastern Idaho. They had extensive headquarters, depots and camps on Green, Snake and Yellowstone rivers at which they carried on an enormous trade with the Indians and from which these trappers were sent out into the mountain wilds to snare beaver and other fur-bearing animals. Yet there Is much in the records preserved, incomplete and defective as they are, in connection with other evidence, which go to prove that every important stream in Larimer County had been explored and worked by Independent trappers as early as in the first half of the nineteenth century. Remains of their camps and cabins were found on the borders of these streams by the early settlers, and Fremont declares in his report of his second expedition that he expected to find trappers who were known to have been In this region, to act as guides in conducting him through the passes of the mountains west of here, but that they had all disappeared, having probably been killed by the Indians. Referring to these trappers, Randall Parrish, in his Interesting work on the "Great Plains," says:

"While the Government was virtually neglecting this western region of the plains, private enterprise had been slowly prying open its secrets, and individuals were finding their uncertain way along its water-courses, or across Its sun-browned prairie. The fur trade was the powerful magnet which thus early drew westward hardy adventurers by the score. Very few of the names of those who first trod the plains have been preserved even upon the records of the great fur companies. They were generally obscure, illiterate men, possessing little except their rifles and traps, living for long years in the depths of the wilderness, only occasionally appearing amid the haunts of pioneer civilization with their packs of furs. Sometimes they traveled in independent parties for protection against Indian treachery; some were free trappers, others were enrolled upon the lists of organized fur companies and worked under orders. In either case they necessarily had hard, wild lives, continually filled with adventure and personal peril. These men, roughly clothed, living on game, their safety constantly menaced, were the true western pathfinders, digging continuously deeper year by year into the vast wilderness, and from their ranks came those competent guides who were later to lead organized expeditions to the Western ocean. During the forty years following the purchase of Louisiana by the United States the people of the East possessed hardly the slightest conception of its immense value. The one considerable commercial attraction it offered during this period was its wealth of furs, and during nearly half a century this was its sole business of importance. In the language of Chittenden, introducing his history of the American fur trade:

"The nature of the business determined the character of the early white population. It was the roving trader and the solitary white trapper who first sought out these inhospitable wilds, traced their streams to their sources, scaled the mountain passes, and explored a boundless expanse of territory where the foot of white man had never trodden before. The far west became a field of romantic adventure, and developed a class of men who loved the wandering career of the native inhabitant rather than the toilsome lot of the industrious colonists. The type of life thus developed, though essentially evanescent and not representing any profound national movement, was nevertheless a distinct and necessary phase in the growth of this new country. Abounding in incidents picturesque and heroic, its annals inspire an interest akin to that which belongs to the age of knight-errantry, for the fur hunter of the west was, in his rough way, a good deal of a knight-errant. Caparisoned in the wild attire of the Indian and armed cap-a-pie for instant combat, he roamed far and wide over deserts and mountains, gathering the scattered wealth of those regions, slaying ferocious beasts and savage men, and leading a life in which every footstep was beset with enemies and every moment pregnant with peril. The great proportion of these intrepid spirits who laid down their lives in that far country is impressive proof of the jeopardy of their existence. All in all, the period of this adventurous business may justly be considered the romantic era of the west.

"So valuable was this preliminary work in exploration that the historian of the movement is fully justified in the statement that these often unknown men were the true pathfinders, and not the official explorers who came later, yet have been accorded the proud title. Nothing in western geography was ever discovered by government explorations after 1840. It was every mile of it known previously to trader and trapper. Brlgham Young was led to the valley of the Great Salt Lake by information furnished by men like Jim Baker, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and their colleagues; in the war with Mexico the military forces were guided by those who knew every trail and mountain pass; they were veterans of the fur trade who pointed Fremont the way to the Pacific, and when the rush of emigration finally set in toward Oregon and California the very earliest of these travelers found already made for them a highway across the continent."

The first American (Anglo-Saxon) who ventured into the wilds of Colorado, then a part of Louisiana Territory, was James Pursley (or Purcell), a Kentuckian, who spent some time on the Plains and in the mountains in 1804 or about that time.

The first United States officer to lead an expedition to Colorado was Captain Pike. They traveled up the Arkansas valley and penetrated the Rockies in 1806-7.

The first white men (American citizens) who traversed the site of Denver, in 1820, were Dr. Edwin James and other members of Long's expedition.

The first men to scale the summit of Pike's Peak were James and two companions, who tramped to the top July 14, 1820. The first woman to ascend the peak was Mrs. Julia A. Holmes, in July, 1858.

The first permanent white settler in Colorado was William Bent, who, in 1824, had temporary quarters about twenty miles west of the present site of Pueblo; he founded a trading post there in 1826.

The first fort was built, in 1828-32, by the Bent brothers and Ceran St. Vrain on the Arkansas river. It was called Bent's fort, and stood about half way between the present towns of Las Animas and La Junta. In 1852 it was destroyed by its owner. Col. William Bent.

The first settlement or trading post at the forks where Pueblo stands was made in 1842 by James P. Beckworth (a noted frontiersman) and a number of trappers and hunters - Americans, French and Mexicans - who built a rude adobe structure, sometimes called "Fort Napeste" and the "The Pueblo." The place had a floating population for a dozen years.

The first American settler in Northwestern Colorado was Jim Baker, of Illinois, who came to the Rocky Mountain country about 1836 and erected a log cabin, in the early '40s, near the north border of Routt county.

The first military post for United States troops in Colorado was Fort Massachusetts, a log affair at the base of Sierra Blanca, established in 1852. Fort Garland was built nearby in 1858.

The first party of gold seekers who prospected Colorado within the memory of men was that of the Cherokees, who are said to have looked for placer gold along the Cache la Poudre, near the foot of the mountains, in August, 1849. To these Cherokees belongs the credit of originating the socalled Green-Russell expedition that discovered float gold near the site of Denver in the month of July, 1858.

The first important discovery of gold was made by a party of Georgians led by Russell, in July, 1858. They prospected Fountain creek. Cherry creek, the South Platte river and other streams. They obtained about $500 worth of gold dust in the sands of the Platte and Dry creek, a little distance south of Denver. The camp of prospectors and miners that grew up near the confluence of Cherry creek and the Platte was the beginning of Denver.

The first discovery of silver by Americans, in 1860, was made in Clear Creek County. The first paying silver mine was the Piquot Belmont lode on Mount McClellan, discovered and opened in September, 1864, by Robert W. Steele, James Huif and Robert Layton.

The first hostelry, called the "Denver House," was put up early in 1859. It was constructed of Cottonwood logs, and had at the start a canvas roof.

The first stage reached Denver May 7, 1859. It was a big Concord coach, drawn by a six-mule team. It came from Leavenworth via Fort Riley, across the heads of Beaver, Bijou and Kiowa creeks. The length of the stage route then was 687 miles; fare $100, meals included.

The first attempt at political organization was the provisional government of the "Territory of Jefferson," called into being in November, 1859.

The first seventeen counties of Colorado Territory were Arapahoe, Boulder, Clear Creek, Conejos, Costilla, Douglas, El Paso, Fremont, Gilpin, Huerfano, Jefferson, Lake, Larimer, Park, Pueblo, Summit and Weld. These counties were created by act of the First Territorial Legislature, approved Nov. 1, 1861.

The first private school was opened by Prof. O. J. Goldrick, Oct. 3, 1859, with thirteen children. The pupils, two of them half-breeds, gathered in a little log cabin on the west bank of Cherry creek. Miss Indiana Sopris was Denver's first "schoolmarm."

The first schoolhouse proper was a one-room frame building erected at Boulder in 1860. The organized public school system of Colorado had its beginning in 1861.

The first Denver jail was a log cabin on the west side of Cherry creek. It was rented by the Sheriff for the purpose, and prisoners were first confined in it about Jan. 1, 1862.

The first railroad, the Denver Pacific, was built from Cheyenne to Denver, in 1870. The first train of the Kansas Pacific entered the Queen City of the Plains on Aug. 15, 1870.

The first specimens of the purple columbine were gathered on the Divide by soldiers of Long's expedition in July, 1820. It became the State flower in 1890.

The first Catholic church in what is now Colorado was built on the Conejos river, in 1858. The first Catholic school was opened at Denver in 1863.

The first sermon preached in Denver was delivered by George Fisher some Sunday in the winter of 1858-59. The first service conducted by Rev. Jacob Adriance was held at Auraria, July 5, 1859.

The first Methodist Episcopal church in Colorado was started at Central City in July, 1859. The first church society organized by the Methodists in Denver dates back to August, 1859; it afterward became Trinity M. E. church. The first service in Trinity church was held July 5, 1888.

The first Protestant Episcopal church in Colorado was founded in Denver, Jan. 21, 1860. The first rector of the congregation was Rev. J. H. Kehler, of Virginia, who conducted the first service on Jan. 23, 1860, in the Union school-house at Cherry creek and McGaa street.

The first meeting of Jews was held in Denver on a summer evening of 1860. The first synagogue was built in 1873 by the society now worshiping in Temple Emanuel.

The first meeting of Unitarians was held in Denver, May 31, 1871; the first Unitarian church was dedicated Dec. 28, 1873; the second church (the new Unity church) was dedicated Sept. 4, 1889.

The population of Colorado by counties, as shown by the United States census of 1910, compared with the census returns for 1890 and 1900, follows :

(This gross revenue per acre, including beet tops, ranges from $50 to $135, depending upon the energy and ability of the grower, the quality of the soil and the amount of water.)

Probably the first time that ever Larimer county was traversed by white men was in 1720, when a Spanish military force crossed the county, all the way from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Yellowstone river, and which was destroyed by the Indians. This expedition followed the base of the mountains and therefore crossed the county from south to north. It went in search of gold to enrich the coffers of the Spanish throne, and there is evidence that mining had been extensively carried on near the head waters of the Yellowstone. Traces of iron tools, partly devoured by rust, were found as late as 1874; the line of a former ditch to convey water upon the bars and some other indications which lead to the conclusion that the Spanish adventurers had gained a foothold in the region, but had perished there while in the realization of their dreams.

On their way northward through this county, the Spaniards probably prospected for gold in the streams that came out of the mountains which crossed their trail, though there is no positive evidence that they did.

In November, 1828, Gen. William H. Ashley, of St. Louis, founder of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, with a party of men ascended the South Platte until he reached the mountains. He then made his way north along the base of the mountains through Larimer county and across the country to the Laramie Plains, thence on to Green river where he went into winter quarters. The late Phillip Covington, father of H. C. Covington, of Laporte, and a former well-known resident of this county, was a member of General Ashley's party, and has often talked with the writer about his experiences on the trip.

In the spring of 1836, Richard Wooten, with a party of thirteen men left Fort Bent on the Arkansas river, and proceeded northwest on a trading expedition. The party had ten wagons loaded with goods for the Indian trade and crossed Larimer county, trading with the natives on the way, finally reaching Fort Laramie. Pushing thence to the Sweetwater country and then north to the Wind River valley, where they spent the winter. In the spring they made their way back to Fort Bent. All their goods had been disposed of and their wagons were loaded with furs worth many thousand dollars. This was Richard Wooten's first venture with a trading outfit. In after years he became famous as a trader, trapper, freighter and Indian fighter. He was associated with such men as Kit Carson, Colonel St. Vrain, Charles Bent, George Simpson, Lucien B. Maxwell, Joseph Doyle and many other noted men of the mountains. In later years he was known as "Uncle Dick Wooten."

That independent fur trappers operated on the Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson and St. Vrain, and their tributaries, during the early years of the nineteenth century is altogether probable, as beaver abounded in those streams, and buffalo, bear, deer and antelope were plentiful on the adjacent plains. That these trappers had practically disappeared when Fremont passed through the county on his second expedition in 1843, is evident from what appears in his report.

Fremont's second expedition was undertaken early in the spring of 1843. Experience had taught the chief of the expedition the necessity of a complete outfit, consequently everything thought to be needed was provided. Maj. Thomas Fitzpatrick had been selecfed as guide. Charles Preuss was again chosen as assistant topographical engineer. Lucien Maxwell was engaged as hunter. Among other members of his party were Theodore Talbot, of Washington, D. C. ; Frederick Dwight, of

Springfield, Massachusetts, who was on his way to the Sandwich Islands; William Gilpin, of Missouri, who afterwards became the first Territorial Governor of Colorado, journeyed with Fremont to Oregon. The men who enlisted in the enterprise were largely chosen from the members of the first expedition. They were Alexis Ayot, Francis Badeau, Oliver Beaulien, Baptiste Bernier, John A. Campbell, John G. Campbell, Manuel Chapman, Raisoni Clark, Philibert Courteau, Michel Crelis, William Creuss, Clinton De Forest, Baptiste Derosier, Basil Lajeunesse, Francis Lajeunesse, Henry Lee, Louis Menard, Louis Montreil, Samuel Neal, Alexis Pera, Francis Fera, James Power, Raphael Proue, Oscar Sarpy, Baptiste Tabeau, Charles Taplin, Baptiste Tesson, Auguste Vasquez, Joseph Venot, Patrick White, Tiery Wright, Louis Zindel and Jacob Dodson. The party was armed with Hall's carbines and also a twelve-pound brass howitzer. The camp equipage, provisions and instruments were carried in twelve carts, drawn by two mules each. It left Kansas City on the 29th of May. On arriving at a place called Big Timber, the force was divided. Leaving twenty-five men in charge of Major Fitzpatrick to follow on with the heavy baggage, Fremont took fifteen men, the mountain howitzer, the cart containing the instruments, and pushed forward, reaching the South Platte on June 30th, and followed up the stream to St. Vrain's fort, which point he reached on the 4th of July. On the 6th, the journey up the Platte was continued ; in a day or two later camp was made on the site of the city of Denver. Fremont extended his explorations as far south as Pueblo, where he met Kit Carson, who had been with him on his expedition the year before. This noted frontiersman and guide was added to the command. The party soon after retraced its steps to Fort St. Vrain, arriving there on the 23 rd of July, where was found the detachment under Fitzpatrick awaiting them. On the 26th the party was again divided, Fremont taking thirteen men for his own company and Fitzpatrick the remainder with instructions to proceed by way of Fort Laramie, North Platte, Sweetwater and South Pass to Fort Hall and there await the detachment under the personal charge of the explorer. Before leaving St. Vrain, Fremont made the following comment in his report, regarding the country over which he expected to travel and the object of his explorations from St. Vrain west : tion of the Rocky Mountain range, which had always been represented as impracticable for carriages, but the exploration of which was incidentally contemplated by my instructions, with the view of finding some convenient points of passage for the road of emigration, which would enable it to reach, on a more direct line, the usual ford of the Great Colorado, a place considered as determined by the nature of the country beyond that river. It is singular, that immediately at the foot of the mountains, I could find no one sufficiently acquainted with them to guide us to the plains at their western base; but the race of trappers who formerly lived in their recesses has almost entirely disappeared, dwindled to a few scattered individuals, some one or two of whom are regularly killed in the course of the year by the Indians. You will remember that in the previous year, I brought with me to their village near this post, and hospitably treated on the way, several Cheyenne Indians, whom I had met on the lower Platte. Shortly after their arrival here, they were out with a party of Indians (themselves the principal men) which discovered a few trappers in the neighboring mountains, whom they immediately murdered, although one of them had been nearly thirty years in the country, and was perfectly well known, as he had grown gray among them.

"Through this portion of the mountains, also, are the customary roads of the war parties going out against the Utah and Shoshone Indians, and occasionally parties from the Crow natives make their way down to the southward along the chain, in the expectation of surprising some straggling lodge of their enemies. Shortly before our arrival, one of these parties had attacked an Arapahoe village in the vicinity, which they found unexpectedly strong, and their assault was turned into a rapid flight and a hot pursuit in which they had been compelled to abandon the animals they had ridden, and escape on their war horses. Into this uncertain and dangerous region, small parties of three or four trappers who now could collect together, rarely ventured, and consequently it was seldom visited and little known. Having determined to try the passage through a spur of the mountains made by the Cache la Poudre river which rises in the high bed of mountains around Long's Peak, I thought it desirable to avoid any incumbrances which would occasion detention."

"A French engagee, at Lupton's fort, had been shot in the back on the 4th of July, and died during our absence to the Arkansas. The wife of the murdered man, an Indian woman of the Snake nation, desirous, like Naomi of old, to return to her people, requested and obtained permission to travel with my party to the neighborhood of Bear river, where she expected to meet with some of their villages. Happier than the Jewish widow, she carried with her two children, pretty little halfbreeds, who added much to the liveliness of the camp. Her baggage was carried on five or six pack horses, and I gave her a small tent for which I no longer had any use, as I had procured a lodge at the fort."

For his own party, Fremont had selected the following men, a number of whom old associations rendered agreeable to him: Charles Preuss, Christopher Carson, Basil Lajeunesse, Francis Badeau, J. B. Bernier, Louis Menard, Raphael Proue, Jacob Dodson, Louis Zindell, Harry Lee, J. B. Dirosier, Francis Lajeunesse, and Auguste Vasquez.

After giving the latitude of St. Vrain fort as 40 degrees, 16 minutes, 33 seconds, its longitude as 105 degrees, 12 minutes, 23 seconds, and its altitude at 4,930 feet, Fremont continues: "At the end of two days, which was allowed to my animals for necessary repose, all the arrangements had been completed, and on the afternoon of July 26th, we resumed our respective routes. Some little trouble was experienced in crossing the Platte, the waters of which were still kept up by rains and melting snow, and having traveled only about four miles, we encamped in the evening on Thompson's creek, where we were very much disturbed by mosquitoes." (This camp was about where the present town of Milliken is.) From this point it is difficult to trace the route followed by the description given, but from the map accompanying the report on which the route is marked, it appears that the party followed up the Big Thompson to about the present city of Loveland, thence across the divide to the Cache la Poudre river, fording that stream July 28th, a short distance above the mouth of Boxelder creek; thence along the north bank of the river to the canon where they went into camp for noon. The map indicates that they penetrated the canon to the mouth of the North Fork, up which they ascended to its canon. Being unable to get through the canon, they made a detour to the east, returning to the river at a point near the Halligan dam, where they went into camp. The next day they followed up the North Fork, coming out on Boulder ridge, where they got their first glimpse of the Laramie plains, camping that night at a spring of cold water near the summit of the divide. The following day they crossed Sand Creek pass and dropped down on to the Laramie river at about Gleneyre, where they camped for the night. From this point they followed the trend of the Medicine Bow mountains to the North Platte, which they forded and then turned north to intersect the overland emigrant trail along the Sweetwater river. There is a tradition to the effect that Fremont and his party entered North Park on this expedition and discovered and named Independence mountain, but both the map and the report are silent on this point, from which we conclude the tradition is founded on a myth. There is also a tradition that Fremont sent an exploring party up through the canon of the Cache la Poudre to what is now known as Cameron pass and that they returned and reported the route impracticable. Some color is lent to the truth of the tradition by the finding in 1885, by John Zimmerman under a big pine tree in his own yard, of a steel case-knife bearing the letters U. S. A. stamped on the blade. The knife is supposed to have been lost by Fremont's men when they camped under the tree. The story is hardly credible, however, as at no time after Fremont left St. Vrain did he stop long enough on the road for men to make the trip to Cameron pass and back. His report shows that he kept moving every day from the time he left St. Vrain until he reached the North Platte. Thirteen years after Captain Fremont had completed the exploration covered by this expedition, he was nominated, in 1856, as the first candidate of the newly organized Republican party for the office of President of the United States, but was defeated at the election in November of that year by James Buchanan. He was called the "Great Pathfinder" in the campaign of that year.

A part of the Mormon battalion of 1846, pursuing their way to Salt Lake, spent the winter of 1846-7 in Pueblo. They are said to have been the first American families in Colorado, In the spring and summer of 1847 they continued their journey to Salt Lake, coming north from Pueblo and passing through this county, entering the mountains west of Laporte. There were thirty-four married women and between sixty and seventy children in the detachment, besides some ten or dozen single men. They followed the Cherokee trail through Virginia Dale, and thence on to the Laramie Plains and to Salt Lake, via Fort Bridger. The first white child born in Colorado was Malinda Catherine Kelley, and she was born at Pueblo in November, 1846, her parents being Mormons.

In 1857 President Buchanan appointed A. Cumming Governor of Utah to succeed Brigham Young, who had held that office, and also made some changes in other Territorial offices. Governor Young refused to vacate his office or to recognize the President's appointments, whereupon a military force was dispatched to Utah to seat the newly appointed officials and to enforce the laws of the United States. The command of the expedition was given to Brigadier General Harney, but he being detained by the political trouble in Kansas, Colonel E. B. Alexander of the Tenth Infantry went out in command. The troops started west by the North Platte route over the Overland trail, passing South pass and reaching Henry's fork of Green river, thirty miles east of Fort Bridger, then going into camp to await instructions from Washington. In November, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston arrived and took command, having been subsituated for General Harney. The greater part of the supplies for General Johnston's force was captured and destroyed on Green river and on the Big Sandy by the Mormons and the command had to be placed on short rations. Captain R. B. Marcy was at once dispatched across the mountains to Fort Massachusetts, New Mexico, to obtain supplies. It was a terrible trip in dead of winter and there was much suffering among the men on the journey. Jim Baker, the noted frontiersman, who died in 1898, accompanied Captain Marcy, and that officer testified that he rendered valuable service as assistant guide and interpreter, saying that if it had not been for Jim Baker his little company would never have been able to reach its destination. Captain Marcy's command proceeded from Fort Bridger to the foot of the mountains between Green and Grand rivers, up a canon to the top of the range to Grand river, near the mouth of the Uncompahgre, up Eagle river to Cochetopa pass, and to Fort Massachusetts, where he obtained what was required. The return journey was not undertaken until' the following June, the party being obliged by the severity of the winter to go into camp in the pine woods on Squirrel creek. Here he lost several men and a large number of sheep by the cold and snow encountered. In June, 1858, as soon as the grass became good enough to sustain the lives of his animals, including several thousand sheep, Captain Marcy started to rejoin his command, following the Cherokee trail from his winter camp through Laporte to the Laramie plains and thence on by way of South Pass to General Johnston's encampment at Fort Bridger. Captain Marcy's expedition, all things considered, is one of the most remarkable known to the Rocky Mountain region, and his success is proof of the courage and endurance of the men connected with it.

In July, 1907, the venerable J. R. Todd, a former resident of Fort Collins, but now living in Iowa, related the following story describing his experiences while crossing the continent in 1852, to Judge Jefferson McAnelly, to whom I am indebted for the privilege of using the greater part of it in this volume. In the story as told by Mr. Todd, he said the Cache la Poudre river had not been named in 1852. In this he was mistaken. The stream received its name in 1836, and the name originated from an incident similar to the one described by Mr. Todd. The name Cache la Poudre appeared in print in public reports and documents fifteen or more years before Mr. Todd traversed the banks of the stream, and I have, therefore, eliminated so much of the story as relates to that matter, for the reason that it is incorrect. Mr. Todd's story follows:

"Doubtless, the trip up the Cache la Poudre valley by George Pinkerton and others in the year 1852, will be interesting to the present citizens of Larimer county, as well as to others elsewhere. The waters of the river were as clear as crystal all the way down to its confluence with the Platte. Its banks were fringed with timber not as large as now, consisting of cottonwood, boxelder, and some willow.

Its waters were full of trout of the speckled or mountain variety. The undulating bluffs sloped gently to the valley which was carpeted with the most luxuriant grasses. It was in June, the mildest and most beautiful part of the summer in the western country, when the days were pleasant, the nights cool and mornings crisp and bracing. The sky was scarcely ever obscured by clouds, and its vaulted blue, golden tinted in the morning and evening, was like a dream of beauty. Not an ax had marred the symmetry of the groves of trees that lined the banks. Not a plow, or spade, or hoe had ever broken its virgin soil. Wild flowers of the richest hue beautified the landscape, while above all towered the majestic Rocky Mountains to the westward of the valley, like the grim sentinels they are, ever watching, watching and noting this advancing vanguard of civilization.

"We, of the present day, call it the beautiful valley, and it is so, with its fine farms, its green fields, its growing cities, towns and villages and its beautiful homes, but with all the touches of this civilization, it is no more beautiful now, it never can appear as beautiful to anyone as it appeared to this band of young adventurers on the June mornings in 1852, clothed in that garb that Nature placed there.

"In the spring of 1852, George Pinkerton, Valentine Hartsock, Thomas Gates, and J. R. Todd organized a party of young men and emigrants in the State of Iowa, which had for its objective point the new formed Territory of Oregon, on the Pacific coast. The party was organized in Sigourney, Iowa, and started on the journey on April 12th, 1852.