History of Denver, Colorado
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The History of Denver details the history of the City and County of Denver, Colorado, United States.
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[edit] Pike's Peak Gold Rush
In 1848, the United States seized the northern territories of México with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Most American settlers traveling west to Oregon, Deseret, or California avoided the rugged Rocky Mountains though and instead followed the North Platte River to South Pass in what is today Wyoming. In 1849 and 1850, several parties of gold seekers bound for the California Gold Rush panned small amounts of gold from various streams in the South Platte River Valley at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The gold nuggets initially failed to impress the gold seekers, but rumors of gold in the Rocky Mountains persisted and over the next few years several parties explored the region.
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 kilometers) above Cherry Creek, in what is today the Overland Park neighborhood of Denver, in what was then the western Territory of Kansas.[1] The following year, William Greeneberry "Green" Russell led a party of Cherokee goldseekers from the State of Georgia to search for gold along the South Platte River in western Kansas Territory. In the first week of July 1858, Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek (in the present day suburb of Englewood) that yielded about 20 troy ounces (622 grams) of gold, the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region.
Word of this small discovery spread rapidly and by autumn hundreds of men were working the along the South Platte River. The following spring, tens of thousands of gold seekers arrived and the Pike's Peak Gold Rush was under way. In the following two years, an estimated 100,000 gold seekers flocked to the region.[2]
[edit] Settlement
Denver City was founded as a mining and supply settlement in Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory, in November of 1858. That summer a group from Lawrence, Kansas, arrived and established Montana City on the banks of the South Platte River. This was the first settlement in what would become the Denver Metropolitan Area. The site faded quickly, however, and was abandoned in favor of Auraria (named after the gold-mining town of Auraria, Georgia) and St. Charles City by the summer of 1859. The Montana City site is now Grant-Frontier Park and includes mining equipment and a log cabin replica.
[edit] Larimer Party
On November 22 of 1858, General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas, placed cottonwood logs to stake a square-mile claim on the hill overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, across the creek from the existing mining settlement of Auraria.
The location was accessible to existing trails and had previously been the site of seasonal encampments of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Larimer, along with associates in the Denver City Land Company, sold parcels in the town to merchants and miners, with the intention of creating a major city that would cater to new emigrants. The name "Denver City" was chosen to curry favor with Kansas territorial governor James W. Denver, to ensure that the city would become the county seat of then Arapaho County, Kansas. Ironically, when Larimer named it after Denver, he was unaware that the latter had already resigned as governor. In the early years, land parcels were often traded for grubstakes or gambled away by miners in Auraria.
Denver at first was a mining settlement, where gold prospectors panned gold from the sands of nearby Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. But the prospectors discovered that the gold deposits in these streams were discouragingly poor and quickly exhausted. It appeared that Denver City might become an instant ghost town, but discoveries by George A. Jackson and John H. Gregory of rich gold deposits in the mountains west of Denver in early 1859 assured Denver's future as a supply hub for the new mines in the mountains.[3]
[edit] "The Rail City"
The Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861,[4] Arapahoe County was formed on November 1, 1861,[4] and Denver City was incorporated on November 7, 1861.[5] Denver City served as the Arapahoe County Seat from 1861 until consolidation in 1902.[6] In 1865, Denver City became the Territorial Capital.[4] With its new-found importance, Denver City shortened its name to just Denver.[6] On August 1, 1876, Denver became the State Capital when Colorado was admitted to the Union.[4]
The 1880s and 1890s saw a huge rise in corruption as underworld bosses such as Soapy Smith and Lou Blonger worked side-by-side with city officials and police to profit from gambling and other criminal enterprises. By 1890, Denver had grown to be the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River, and surpassed Omaha in population by the turn of the 20th century.[7] The era of the 1890s played an important role in Denver's history, as this is when the city began to take on a "big city" image.
[edit] 20th Century
In 1901 the Colorado General Assembly voted to split Arapahoe County into three parts: a new consolidated City and County of Denver, a new Adams County, and the remainder of the Arapahoe County to be renamed South Arapahoe County. A ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, subsequent legislation, and a referendum delayed the creation of the City and County of Denver until 15 November 1902. The 1908 Democratic National Convention was staged to promote Denver's prominence, and to signify the city's participation on the national political and socioeconomic stage.
In early 1913, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, conducted a free speech fight in Denver. City authorities had refused to allow IWW organizers to speak to other working people on street corners. Union members challenged the policy, with the aim of filling the jails to put pressure on city leaders. The Wobbly tactic, which they had employed successfully for half a decade throughout the North and West, was clogging the courts so they couldn't handle anything but free speech cases. Taxpayers would complain that they were being forced to feed "whole armies of jailed Wobblies."[8]
In her autobiography, Emma Goldman wrote of twenty-seven IWW members, arrested during the Denver free speech fight, who were "tortured in the sweat-box for refusing to work on the rock-pile. On their release they marched through the streets with banners and songs..."[9] The union eventually won the right to speak to workers, and within a year had formed two Denver "branches."[10]
The cheeseburger was invented in Denver by Louis Ballast who operated the Humpty Dumpty Barrel drive-in. He applied for a patent on his now famous invention in 1935. It has been speculated that he wasn’t the first person to add cheese to a hamburger, but nobody has an earlier patent, and no evidence to debunk his claim has emerged.[11]
Denver was an important place for the "beat generation." Beat icon Neal Cassady was raised on Larimer Street in Denver, and a portion of Jack Kerouac's beat masterpiece On the Road takes place in the city, and is based on the beat's actual experiences in Denver during a road trip. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg lived for a time in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, and he helped found the Buddhist college, Naropa University or the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa" in nearby Boulder.
Denver was selected to host the 1976 Winter Olympics to coincide with Colorado's centennial anniversary, but Colorado voters struck down ballot initiatives allocating public funds to pay for the high costs of the games, so they were moved to Innsbruck, Austria. The movement against hosting the games was based largely on environmental issues and was led by then State Representative Richard Lamm. Lamm was subsequently elected as Colorado governor in 1974.
[edit] See also
- Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory
- Arrappahoe County, Jefferson Territory
- Arapahoe County, Colorado Territory
- City and County of Denver, Colorado
- History of Colorado
- Territory of Kansas
- Territory of Jefferson
- Territory of Colorado
- State of Colorado
[edit] References
- ^ Thomas J. Noel. Denver History: The Arapaho Camp. City and County of Denver. Retrieved on 2008-03-03.
- ^ Gehling, Richard (2006). The Pike's Peak Gold Rush (HTML). Richard Gehling. Retrieved on 2007-06-12.
- ^ Robert L. Brown (1985) The Great Pikes Peak Gold Rush, Caldwell, Ida.: Caxton.
- ^ a b c d State Government History (HTML). State of Colorado, Department of Personnel & Administration, Colorado State Archives (April 18, 2001). Retrieved on November 28, 2006.
- ^ Colorado Municipal Incorporations (HTML). State of Colorado, Department of Personnel & Administration, Colorado State Archives (December 1, 2004). Retrieved on November 28, 2006.
- ^ a b About Denver. The City and County of Denver. Retrieved on July 20, 2006.
- ^ US POPULATION HISTORY FROM 1850: 50 LARGEST CITIES
- ^ Labor's Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, 1974, page 174.
- ^ Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Dover Publications, 1970, page 534.
- ^ David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905, 1994, pages 161-162.
- ^ magazineUSA.com | U.S. Originals | Cheeseburger & Hamburger History
