HISTORY11 - Central Colorado

Pat and I will be touring central Colorado in September so as usual I wanted to know more about the history of the region beforehand.  This post will highlight the history of the places we will visit.

Colorado became a U.S. state on August 1, 1876 as the “Centennial State,” because it was admitted to the Union one century after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Rio Colorado for the red silt the river carried from the mountains.  Today Colorado is the eighth largest U.S. state by area and the 21^st most populous with almost six million people.  Colorado is known for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers, and deserts.  The Rocky Mountains slice north-south through the state, along the Continental Divide, with more than 1,100 mountain peaks higher than 10,000 feet - 53 of them rising higher than 14,000 feet.  Denver is the capital and most populace city with over 700,000 people.   The state has a strong western identity and is more socially liberal than its neighboring states in such progressive areas as same-sex marriage, recreational marijuana, abortion, and assisted suicide.

Central Colorado contains the cities of Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs - on the Great Plains, east of the Front Range of the southern Rocky Mountains, Colorado’s most famous mountain mining areas, popular ski resorts, and the spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park.  The map below shows central Colorado with our planned visit sites highlighted in yellow.  I’ll talk about the history of these areas in the order we plan to visit them:  Denver, Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, Leadville, Vail, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Boulder.

Central Colorado with our visit sites highlighted in yellow.

Denver

Gold was discovered in the area of present day Denver in 1858.  Newspapers referred to the ensuing gold rush as the “Pikes Peak Gold Rush” because prospectors coming across the plains from the east used Pikes Peak (100 miles to the south) as a direction finder. 

Denver was founded on November 17, 1858 by land speculators from eastern Kansas Territory who staked a gold claim on the bluff overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, about 12 miles east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  The town site was named Denver City in honor of Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver.  Denver City became a frontier town with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock, and goods trading.  Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861 with Denver City becoming the territorial capital in 1867 and shortening its name to Denver.  The city missed out on being on the route of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, in favor of Cheyenne, Wyoming (100 miles north), but by mid-1870 a link was completed north to the transcontinental railroad, enabling Denver to prosper as a service and supply center. 

The young city attracted millionaires as well as the poverty and crime of a rapidly growing city.  Horace Tabor, known as the “Leadville Silver King” built an impressive business block at 16^th and Larimer.  Stately mansions, including the home (1889) of Leadville gold mining millionaire James Joseph Brown and his wife Molly Brown, who in 1912 survived the sinking of the Titanic, were built.  Luxurious hotels, including the famous Brown Palace Hotel (1892), soon followed.  City leaders wooed industry and enticed laborers to work in the factories.  By 1890, Denver’s population exceeded 100,000 people.

A view down Denver's 16th Street ca. 1890s.  (Courtesy of Denver Publick Library)

Denver today, nicknamed “the mile high city” because its elevation is one mile above sea level, is economically diverse.  Major industries include air transportation, telecommunications, aerospace, and manufacturing. The city is also a major energy research center and a regional headquarters for government agencies. The financial and commercial capital of the Rocky Mountain region, Denver's downtown banking district - dubbed the "Wall Street of the Rockies" - consists of major national and international institutions. The city is the transportation hub for a large portion of the western United States; consumer and industrial goods are transported by air, rail, and truck through Denver.  Items and goods produced include computer storage and peripherals, beverages, mining and farming machinery, rubber goods, fabricated metals, chemicals and allied stone and clay products, western clothing, transportation equipment, scientific instruments, feed, flour, and luggage.  Projections indicate that Denver will become a high-technology research, development, and manufacturing hub for the entire Southwest.

As the Chamber of Commerce states, Denver is an outdoor city known for is world class cultural attractions, thriving craft breweries, chef-driven dining and red-hot music scene, all within easy reach of the Rocky Mountains.  Denver is also home to the Denver Broncos National Football League team and the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball team.

Pikes Peak

Pikes Peak is a 14,115-foot relatively smooth, dome-like mountain located 12 miles west of downtown Colorado Springs.  The mountain is composed of granite of a pink color due to a large amount of potassium feldspar and is the eastern-most of Colorado’s 14,000 foot-plus mountains.

Pikes Peak is named for American explorer Lt. Zebulon Pike who was dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the southern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase.  Pike sighted the peak in 1806, but was prevented from reaching the summit by a blizzard.  The first recorded ascent occurred in 1820 by Edwin James, a doctor and botanist who is also credited with first describing Colorado’s state flower, the blue columbine. 

A rough road was built up the mountain in 1888.  Horses pulled carriages of tourists toward the summit, and mules assisted for the final push.

In 1915 Spenser Penrose, an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, at a cost of $500,000, financed the widening and conversion of that primitive road into the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19-mile toll road that runs from Cascade, Colorado to the summit of Pikes Peak.  To publicize the road, Penrose created an annual automobile and motorcycle race to the summit.  The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was first run in 1916, and except for a hiatus during World War I, has been run every year since.  In recent years, winning drivers have completed the 12.42-mile, 156-turn, 4,750-feet elevation-gain race course in under (an astounding) ten minutes.

A tour bus starts the climb up Pikes Peak on Spencer Penrose's new road in 1915.  (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Not to outdone by powered vehicles, bicycle races have been held since 2010 in the annual Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb. 

By 2011, the road was completely paved and is today at least partially open to the public year-round, up to the altitude where snow removal becomes excessively difficult. 

A railroad provides an alternative transportation option to reach Pikes Peak’s summit from the town of Manitou Springs - an 8.9-mile trip with a round trip time over three hours.  Financed by Zalmon Simmons, inventor and founder of Simmons Beautyrest Mattress, the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway in 1891 started providing passenger service to the top of Pikes Peak on a cog railway (toothed central rail between the bearing rails that engages with a cogwheel under the locomotive, providing traction for ascending very steep slopes).  Initially steam powered, gasoline and diesel-powered locomotives were introduced in 1938 and rail cars were improved over the years.  Since October 2017, the railway has been closed for maintenance, including the replacement of all tracks, the remodeling of the Manitou Springs depot, and retirement of several train cars in favor of three new railcars with other cars refurbished.  The railroad is projected to reopen in 2021.  Meanwhile, temporary shuttle service is being provided from buses, jeeps, and Hummers.

You can also hike up the mountain to the summit on the Barr Trail, named for Fred Barr who built the path for his burro-train business in the early 1900s.  The trail starts in Manitou Springs and winds 13 miles to the top.  Burro trains were used to transport people along the trail until the 1960s.  In 1948 the U.S. Forest Service rebuilt the trail, following the original route.  The Barr Trail was designated a National Recreation Trail in 1979 and is one the most frequently used trails in Colorado.  The hike is very strenuous, with a 7,400-foot elevation gain and an average slope of about 11%.  The Pikes Peak Marathon is held in August with thousands of competitors racing on the Barr Trail round trip. The fastest time is 3 hours 16 minutes.

You can get to the summit of Pikes Peak by road, rail, or hiking trail.  (Courtesy of coloradodirectory.com)

Over time, Pikes Peak has grown in popularity with tourists.  The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet elevation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.  Today Pikes Peak is the most visited mountain in North America with nearly 700,000 people visiting the peak each year.

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods is a 1,364-acre public park of spectacular red sandstone formations located in northwest Colorado Springs.  The red rock formations, up to 300 feet high, were created millions of years ago during a geological upheaval along a natural fault line and then sculpted by millions of years of erosion from glaciers and weather.

The red rock area was named Garden of the Gods in 1859 by two surveyors helping to set up the nearby town that would become Colorado Springs.  In 1879 Charles Elliot Perkins purchased 480 acres of land that included a portion of the present Garden of the Gods.  Upon Perkin’s death in 1909, his family gave the land to the City of Colorado Springs with the provision that it would become a public park.  The city of Colorado Springs purchased additional surrounding land and the park grew to its present 1,364 acres.  The park was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971.  In 1995 the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center opened just outside the park.  Today, roughly two million people a year visit the Garden of the Gods Park.

Cathedral Spires, Garden of the Gods, ca. 1945.  (Courtesy of the Pikes Peak Library District)

Leadville

The old mining town of Leadville is situated deep in the Rocky Mountains, about 130 miles northwest of Colorado Springs, near the headwaters of the Arkansas River, at an elevation of 10,152 feet - the highest elevation incorporated city in the United States. 

Mining started in the Leadville area in 1859 with gold placers, at the same time as the Pikes Peak Gold Rush was occurring near Denver, but the boom was brief because the placer-mined gold soon ran out.  In 1874 it was determined that the heavy black sand that impeded gold recovery had a high silver-lead content and by 1876, prospectors had discovered several silver-lead lode deposits.  By 1880, Leadville was one of the world’s largest and richest silver camps.  Income from more than thirty mines and ten large smelting works produced gold, silver, and lead amounting to $15 million annually (almost $400 million in 2018 dollars).  Silver mining declined with the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase act in 1893, but there was another small gold boom.  Mining companies came to rely increasingly on income from lead and zinc. 

My grandfather Ambrose Ring spent a few months in Leadville in 1919 and 1920 as resident engineer for American Smelting & Refining Company, where he started an ore milling program for the Yak Mining, Milling, & Tunnel Company.

World War II created an increased demand for molybdenum, used to harden steel.  It was mined at the nearby Climax mine, at that time the largest underground mine in the world, producing about 75% of the world’s output.  The Climax mine closed in the early 1980s, but reopened in 2008 as the most efficient mine producing the metal in Colorado.

Mining of gold, silver, lead, and zinc has long been shut down.  Today, there is little industry other than the tourist trade in Leadville.

The development of the town of Leadville followed the mining development.  The first settlement in 1860, during the gold mining period, was called Oro City (“oro” is Spanish for gold) which reached a maximum population of 5,000 people.  With the transition to silver mining in 1877, the settlement moved about a mile from Oro and was refounded by mine owners Howard Tabor and August Meyer.  The new town was first named Slabtown, but residents petitioned for a post office and the name Leadville was chosen.  Tabor established the first post office and a telegraph office, became Leadville’s first mayor, made millions mining silver, and in 1879 opened the most costly structure in Colorado at the time, a massive three-story opera house, constructed of stone, brick, and iron.  By 1880 Leadville had grown to its maximum population of about 15,000 people and had gas lighting, water mains, and 28 miles of streets, five churches, three hospitals, six banks, and a school for 1,100 students.  Many business buildings were constructed with bricks hauled in by wagon. 

Besides the success of several early prospectors like Horace Tabor, many others struck it rich, including seamstress Margaret Tobin who came to Leadville in 1886 and married mining engineer James J. Brown, who became rich in 1893 when he was instrumental in the discovery of a substantial gold ore seam owned by his employers.  The Browns would later move to Denver where Margaret Brown would become famous as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” surviving the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Postcard of view down Chestnut Street in Leadville, ca. 1890.  (Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of the American West)

Withstanding the major changes in mining after 1893, Leadville was able to maintain a significant population (above 10,000 people) until the early 1900s, when a steady decline began.  Since 1990, the population of Leadville has stabilized at 2500-3000 people.

In 1961 Leadville’s National Historic Landmark District was designated, including 67 mines up to the 12,000 foot level and a defined portion of the village that contains more historic structures and sites than any other district, including the Tabor Opera House.  In 1987 the National Mining Museum and Hall of Fame opened in Leadville with a federal charter.  The town’s altitude and rugged terrain contributes to a number of challenging racing events, such as the Leadville Trail 100 series of races for runners and hosts a number of other events for runners and mountain bicyclists.

Vail

Vail is the largest ski area in North America, almost 9 square miles, located about 44 miles north of Leadville, on Vail Mountain at elevations between 8,120 feet to 11,570 feet.  The ski area was founded 1962 by Pete Seibert and local rancher Earl Eaton.  Seibert was familiar with the area because of his military training at nearby Camp Hale during World War II.

The small town of Vail encompasses about 4.5 square miles at the base of Vail Pass, at an average elevation of 8,150 feet, and a population of about 5,500 people.  The town was incorporated in 1966, four years after the opening of Vail Ski Resort. 

Both the town and ski resort were named for highway engineer Charles Vail who routed the first automobile highway through the area in 1940.  The town is surrounded by the White River National Forest and the Vail Ski Resort is leased from the United States Forest Service. 

Today, the area is known for its wonderful skiing, highlighted by numerous ski events, the Vail Film Festival, and its hotels and dining.  Vail is also a summer resort and golfing center, with the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, the world’s highest botanical garden, and offering guided hikes, mountain biking, horseback riding, carriage rides, gondola rides, river rafting, and fishing.  Vail is also developing as a cultural center, with various art and music venues active throughout the summer. 

Vail Colorado in summertime.  (Courtesy of Wikimedia)

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park is located about 100 miles northeast of Vail, about 100 miles northwest of Denver, between the towns of Grand Lake to the west and Estes Park to the east, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.  The Continental Divide runs directly north-south through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park’s northwest region.

The park encompasses 415 square miles of federal land with an additional 400 square miles of U.S. Forest Service wilderness adjoining the park.  Elevations in the park range from 7,860 to 14, 259 feet, with sixty mountain peaks over 12,000 feet.  The park contains approximately 450 miles of rivers and streams, 150 lakes, 350 miles of trails, and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra. 

Rocky Mountain National Park was established on January 26, 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson. From 1930-1932, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route across the park, 48-mile Trail Ridge Road, between Grand Lake and Estes Park.  (This road, built along old Indian trails, is the highest paved through-road in the U.S. with a peak elevation of 12,183 feet.) 

The Civilian Conservation Corps started construction of Trail Ridge Road in 1930.
 (Courtesy of Rocky Mountain National Park)

In 1976 the United Nations designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves.  In 2009 the U.S. Congress protected most of the park as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act.

Today, the park, with five visitor centers, is host to over 4.4 million visitors annually, making it the third most visited national park in the U.S.

Boulder

The city of Bolder is located 35 southeast of Estes Park, 25 miles northwest of Denver, in a wide basin beneath Flagstaff Mountain, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, at an elevation of 5,430 feet.  Like Denver, Boulder was founded by gold prospectors, and in the same year, on October 17, 1858.  On February 10, 1859, the Boulder City Town Company was organized by A. A. Brookfield to begin selling land lots.  The town is thought to have been named for the large boulders that have cascaded into Boulder Creek over the years.  Boulder City was part of the Nebraska Territory until February 28, 1861, when the Territory of Colorado was created by the U.S. Congress.  Boulder was incorporated in 1871, dropping the term “city” from its name.

Also like Denver, Boulder developed as a supply base for miners going into the mountains in search of gold and silver.  Transportation was improved in 1873 with the completion of a railroad link to the transcontinental line in Cheyenne, Wyoming and soon thereafter to Denver and mining camps to the west.  Boulder was selected as the location for the state university; the University of Colorado officially opened in September, 1877.  By 1880 Boulder’s population had passed 3,000.

The 1200 Block of Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, 1899.  (Courtesy of Carnegie Branch Library)

By 1905 the economy was faltering and Boulder turned to tourism to boost its fortunes.  The town built first class hotels in the early 1900s and for 40 years tourism dominated Boulder’s economy.  Following World War II, past visitors returned to Boulder as students, and professional and business people, joining veterans attending the University on the GI Bill.  Boulder’s economy and population began to grow.  New neighborhoods and shopping centers developed.  Along with these development initiatives, efforts began to preserve the area’s natural beauty by preserving recreational open spaces, with conservation easements, nature preserves, and parks.

Today, Boulder has achieved a diverse, unique economy:  home to a world-class university, a mix of industry clusters, major government research facilities, and a highly educated population.  Leading industry includes aerospace, bioscience, cleantech, infotech, natural products, and outdoor recreation.  As an example of economic diversity, Boulder is the home of Celestial Seasonings, a major producer of herbal tea.  Boulder has also carefully managed growth and architectural development, while at the same time preserving the town’s history including sites along historic Pearl Street and the building of the Pearl Street Mall in the 1970s.

Boulder also has a diverse culture.  Well known for its bicycle paths and events, the city also offers extensive hiking, rock climbing, music with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra and the Colorado Music Festival, and is the home for multiple dance companies and establishments, including the Bolder Ballet.

Today, Boulder’s population is just under 110,000 and city receives high rankings in art, health, well-being, quality of life, and education.

Boulder also has a significant fiber arts presence that relates to Pat’s background as owner and operator of the Fiber Factory in Mesa, Arizona from 1998 to 2006.  Boulder’s Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins (1992) is a “one stop shop for everything related to fiber arts,” a sister enterprise to Pat’s Fiber Factory, and Boulder’s Schacht Spindle Company (1969) was the source of Pat’s weaving and spinning tools.