Welcome to the Wild West - Part#2: Before Colorado became Colorado

Colorado has a fascinating cultural heritage; a confluence of Native American, Spanish, French and ultimately US influence. The Native Americans inhabited the region for more than 13 millennia before the first Spanish explorers arrived. The Ancient Pueblo Peoples built settlements right into the rock of the valleys and mesas of the Colorado Plateau, the Ute Indians inhabited the mountain valleys of the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Western Rocky Mountains, and the Arapaho people and the Cheyenne people moved west to hunt across the High Plains.


Mesa Verde: ancient Pueblo settlement in southern Colorado
Picture: Wikipedia.org

[Insight Guides: Colorado]

"Spaniards and other strangers barged right in, reconfiguring the social landscape and rewriting a whole region's history."

As far as modern history goes, Colorado's is quite short. While the Spanish were the first foreigners to traverse the area, it was the French who first claimed the region east of the Rockies in 1682 as part of the Louisiana Territory. The Indians lived in relative harmony with the French who hunted and traded fur with the natives, but overall, their influence was minimal. Fearing a French advancement, the Spanish claimed the western portion of the region in 1706. They never established permanent settlements here but Spanish explorers broke a lot of ground and coined a number of place names, including that of "Colorado," which is a term to describe the red earth they beheld. They also introduced horses to buffalo hunters on the plains which revolutionised the enterprise.
 

Formal boundaries were never demarcated between the lands of French Louisiana and Spanish New Mexico since the areas only real inhabitants were "mountain men": the fur traders and trappers that roamed the countryside. Fur was big business at the time, and it was the trade which played a major role in opening up the American West.

Eventually, France sold their portion of the land to America in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, yet eastern Colorado still remained a wilderness for the next few decades. Legends were made of the American traders and scouts such as Charles and William Bent, Kit Carson, Jim Baker and Jim Bridger who ventured into the still largely uncharted territory and inhospitable land, establishing trading posts and building friendly relations with the Indians.

Trading posts were established to exchange goods and gather supplies in central locations, as well as provide protection from Indian attacks. Many Colorado towns were created as a result of these trading posts. The first trading-post was established at the mouth of Clear Creek, a tributary of the South Platter River, near present day Denver in 1832, by Louis Vasquez, and named Fort Vasquez, after its proprietor, but never grew into much importance and was soon abandoned. The most famous is Bent's Fort built by the Bent brothers in south-east Colorado near present day La Junta and now a National Historic Site and Landmark.

America's western frontier grew by more than 500,000 square miles when the U.S. won the Mexican-American War in 1848 (Mexico having gained its independence from Spain in 1821). As the victor, the U.S. was ceded territory extending west from the Rio Grande River (which originates in southwest Colorado) to the Pacific Ocean. Americans were now free to settle the southern Rocky Mountain region and American explorers began surveying the area.   

The first American to formally explore the Colorado area was Lt. Zebulon M. Pike in 1806, who was commissioned to document the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase and to find the headwaters of the Red River. With a party of 22 men he pushed into the mountains west of Pueblo and Colorado Springs and amongst other things discovered what would later be called Pikes Peak, although he did not manage to make the summit.  The next major expedition was by an Army force commanded by Major Stephen H. Long in 1820. His mission was to explore the southwest boundary of the territory and his report basically wrote off the plains as a "Great American Dessert" unfit for exploration. In 1853, Captain John W. Gunnison led an exploring party across southern and western Colorado territory searching for a railroad route westward through the Colorado Rockies before being slain in Utah in an Indian attack.

John Charles Fremont, an American military officer, explorer and politician played a major role in bringing the west to the nation's attention. His flamboyant personality and lively reports stimulated public interest in the American West but also managed to offend a few people. His reports countered a kind of badlands view of Colorado that had taken hold in the public imagination from the early explorers and the the stories of frontiersmen. It was also Fremont's memoirs that served to fix Kit Carson's place as an American Legend.

He's efforts in Colorado are largely forgotten as his two expeditions were never completed and considered failures. His fourth expedition, his first in Colorado, was to find a railroad route through the Rockies and demonstrate that a 38th parallel railroad would be practical year-round. However this expedition took a fearful toll in human life when he and his men became snowbound. His fifth and final expedition was also in Colorado and retraced some steps from Gunnison's expedition through the Gunnison River country and San Luis Valley. He travelled across Kansas, southern Colorado and Utah in search of another railroad route over the Central Rockies. The trip remained inconclusive when the group reached, and was saved by, a Mormon settlement in Utah. But his other accomplishments throughout the west, his lively egotistic nature and his drastic swings from poverty to wealth and back to poverty again make him one of the best known explorers of the 19th Century.

When the Fur Trade collapsed in the late 1830s, trading posts were generally abandoned while some became military forts along isolated frontier settlements and trading routes as relations with the native Indians were growing ever more hostile. It seemed that this land was about to fade into oblivion, and remain a wild wilderness only for the fearless. But some significant events were about to take place that would advance Colorado into the 38th State and accelerate its quick development.

Welcome to the Wild West - Pt #1: Move Over Cowboys

Colorado is much more than mountains and rugged land, which is all I knew it to be before I went there. But if I thought Vieques was the 'wild west' so to speak, I'm really in for it moving to Colorado! This is true Wild West territory; it was the last frontier for American exploration and settlement (of the contiguous states, that is). Wild animals with precious fur and mountains rich in minerals is why hardy men entered this unforbidding territoy to begin with, but I'm sure it is the beauty of the mountains and the serenity of this landscape that has kept people coming ever since.

"The Old West, often referred to as the Wild West, encompasses the period after the Civil War, the rest of the 1800's, and the early part of the 20th century. During this time, thousands of pioneers pushed their way westward in search of land, better lives, gold and silver, and sometimes, to escape the law. Geographically, the "Old West" applies to those states west of the Mississippi River." [1]

Colorado's history is a heady mix of mountain men, cowboys, Indians, gunslingers and miners, and despite the metropolitan 21st century cities of Denver and Colorado Springs, much of the state still retains a good deal of its old west charm. The buildings and abandoned mines and mills stand as mementos to this era and the vast railroad network that crisscrosses this land is a legacy of the hardships and progress these men (and women) made.

This is conveniently all coming alive for me in the new TV show here in the States on AMC (I think it's playing in Australia too but perhaps on cable) called Hell on Wheels. It centres on the settlement of a camp adjacent to the construction of the first transcontinental railroad in 1865 (specifically, the Union Pacific Railroad). It showcases the company men, surveyors, support workers, labourers, prostitutes, mercenaries and others who populate such settlements and the dramas that arise in a lawless, hostile society such as that. The tensions between the former black slaves and the white men, and also with local Indian population play a major role. From what I've been reading of Colorado's history, it's a great to be able to visualise and personalise the stories, even though this particular railroad never went through Colorado.

I've gotten to know a little about Colorado from the stories and people I've met who currently live here. It's a great outdoors state; much of the countryside remains undeveloped and as it was centuries ago. This breeds a conscious society. Many people go hiking, farmers are environmentally conscious and recycling has long been fashionable. A slogan I've seen about captures these ideals: "cows not condos." But this is all dubiously misleading. On the outset, one would think the state is predominantly liberal, and maybe it's turning that way with the newer generations and the new arrivals that flock here for this reason, but underneath, this place maintains its country roots. For one, hunting is a huge past-time.

But with the lawless days of the Wild West a fond memory, the state is emerging as an interesting mix of hash-cooking hippies and hard-core Republicans, and this clash of ideals is clearly evident in the current political climate of Coloradoans and its emergence as a swing state [2].

A Wide, Wild Landscape:

But let's start with Colorado's geography, because it does play a large role in defining the state and its people. Colorado is considered part of the Western United States and creates the division between east and west with the Continental Divide that runs north to south along the Rocky Mountains which stretch from Canada down to the state of New Mexico. It is the highest state in the US, with an average altitude of 6,800 ft. The State itself contains three distinct landscapes: The Great Plains, The Rocky Mountains, and The Colorado Plateau.

Colorado is best known for its Rocky Mountains but over one third of the state is very flat. East of the Rockies the High Plains (part of the Great Plains) unfold flush to Kansas and beyond. 

If you thought Australia was flat, well this is flat - pancake flat; and predominantly bare, as a result of the semi-arid climate. We drove through this countryside in 2008 towards Denver on Interstate 70, a very uninteresting drive; the only deviation in the monotonous scenery were the oil derricks scattered here and there and a wind farm, all the way across Kansas! But though it appears flat to the naked eye, the landscape rises subtly from approximately 3,500 feet at the eastern border of Colorado to 6,000 feet east of the Denver Basin.

Continuing west across the plains, the slopes of the Rocky Mountains rise magnificently behind Denver, the capital, as if from nowhere. Coming from Kansas you start to see them as little ridges on the horizon and slowly and surreally they form as you continue closer, and then suddenly there they are, in all their glory.

Driving across the High plains towards Denver, the Rockies beginning to rise in the distance

The Rocky Mountains of are a magnificent mountain range and the Colorado Rockies contain approximately 54 peaks14,000 feet (4,267 m) or higher in elevation above sea level (known as fourteeners). These are 'mountains' in the pure sense of the word; mountains that stay snow-covered all year round and who's peaks are bald and jagged like their namesake (tree-line stops at about 12,140 feet (3,700 m) in southern Colorado and about 10,500 feet (3,200 m) in the north). 

The Rockies form the backbone of the continent. Over 30 million years old, their peaks have been carved by glacial ice into "cirques", "hanging valleys" and knife-edged "arêtes." [Insight Guides: Colorado]



The Switzerland of America: Maroon Bells near Aspen. Source

The Canadian Rockies get all the attention in Australia, but although I haven't seen the Canadian Rockies, I can't imagine they are any better than what I have seen of the Colorado Rockies, especially since the 30 highest major summits of the range all lie within the state. However:

"The Canadian Rockies are more jagged than the American Rockies, because the Canadian Rockies have been very heavily glaciated, resulting in sharply pointed mountains separated by wide, U-shaped valleys gouged by glaciers, whereas the American Rockies are more rounded, with river-carved V-shaped valleys between them. The Canadian Rockies are cooler and wetter, giving them moister soil, bigger rivers, and more glaciers [and] the tree line is much lower in the Canadian Rockies than in the American Rockies." [4]

West of the Rocky Mountains is the Colorado Plateau which flows into Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. It is largely dessert with scattered forest characterised by valleys, deep canyons and mesas (this is where the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and the other wonderful formations in Utah, such as Bryce Canyon and Zion, are found). This north to south area west of the Rockies in Colorado is commonly known as the Western Slope. It is sparsely populated with only 2 major centres, Grand Junction and Durango, though there are many ski towns along this region, such as Telluride, Vail and Aspen. To the southeast of Grand Junction is the Grand Mesa, said to be the world's largest flat-topped mountain.