History of Colorado
[1][2] The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route that was important to the spread of early peoples throughout the Americas.
When explorers, early trappers, hunters, and gold miners visited and settled in Colorado, the state was populated by American Indian nations.
Westward expansion brought European settlers to the area and Colorado's recorded history began with treaties and wars with Mexico and American Indian nations to gain territorial lands to support the transcontinental migration.
In 1787 Juan Bautista de Anza established the settlement of San Carlos near present-day Pueblo, Colorado, but it quickly failed.
[6] In 1803 the United States acquired a territorial claim to the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains by the Louisiana Purchase from France.
In 1819, the United States ceded its claim to the land south and west of the Arkansas River to Spain with the Adams-Onís Treaty, at the same time purchasing Florida.
Mexico finally won its independence with the Treaty of Córdoba signed on August 24, 1821, and assumed the territorial claims of Spain.
During the period 1832 to 1856, traders, trappers, and settlers established trading posts and small settlements along the Arkansas River, and on the South Platte near the Front Range.
John Lowery Brown, who kept a diary of the party's journey from Georgia to California, wrote on that day: "Lay bye.
Members of this party founded Auraria (later absorbed into Denver City) in 1858 and touched off the gold rush to the Rockies.
In the summer of 1857, a party of Spanish-speaking gold seekers from the New Mexico Territory worked a placer deposit along the South Platte River about 5 miles (8 km) above Cherry Creek (in what is today the Overland Park neighborhood of Denver.
The territory was organized in the wake of the 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush, which had brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region.
The organic act[11] creating the territory was passed by Congress and signed by President James Buchanan on February 28, 1861, during the secessions by Southern states that precipitated the American Civil War.
The organization of the territory helped solidify Union control over a mineral rich area of the Rocky Mountains.
Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent, as during the run-up to the 1864 presidential election the Republican–controlled Congress was actually eager to get two more Republican senators and three more electoral votes for President Lincoln's re-election bid.
The Colorado War (1863–1865) was an armed conflict between the United States and a loose alliance among the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne nations of Native Americans (the last two were particularly closely allied, which is unusual since the various tribes were notorious for inciting violence against each other).
In 1868 the U.S. Army, led by George Armstrong Custer, renewed the conflict against the Arapaho and Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita River.
In 1880, Colorado Governor Pitkin, a Republican, declared martial law to suppress a violent mining strike at Leadville.
Early coal mining in Colorado was extremely dangerous, and the state had one of the highest death rates in the nation.
The Ludlow Massacre became the peak of the violence, when Colorado National Guard and militia fired into a tent colony of strikers, in which many children were killed.
In 1933, federal legislation for the first time allowed all Colorado coal miners to join unions without fear of retaliation by instituting penalties for mine owners who obstructed collective bargaining.
[24] Today there are many small mining towns scattered throughout Colorado, such as Leadville, Georgetown, Cripple Creek, Victor, and Central City.
Many former mining towns turned to gambling to draw visitors, with Blackhawk and Cripple Creek serving as good examples.
The 19th century ended with a difficult law-and-order situation in some places, most notably, Creede, Colorado, where gunmen like Robert Ford (the assassin of Jesse James) and con artist like Soapy Smith reigned.
Starting in the 1860s, when tuberculosis (TB) was a major deadly disease, physicians in the eastern United States recommended that their patients relocate to sunny, dry climates for their lungs.
As a result, the number of people with tuberculosis, called "lungers", in the state grew alarmingly and without the services or facilities to support their needs.
[31] During it, the Columbine Mine massacre and Walsenburg Hall killings occurred, where strikers were shot down by guards and policemen.
[34] The strike ended with a significant victory for the union in May 1928, with an increase in wages and the return of organized labor in the state's coal industry.
[37] In the 1940s, the Republican governor of Colorado, Ralph Carr, spoke out against racial discrimination and against the federal internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
