Denver, Colorado 1901 History

August 2003	1901 History	Last updated on 08/10/2003

Effect in the East of "Pike’s Peak Stories" in Winter of 1858-59 - Great Invasion in the Spring of 1859 - Reflex of Panic of 1857 - Character of Immigrants - Hardships of the Journey - Reckless Enthusiasm of the Host - Legends Adorning Wagons - Daily Routine and Incidents - Delusions of Embryo Miners - Mass of Immigrants Not of Unworthy Men - Peculiar Circumstances Attending Colorado’s Settlement.

       Through the winter of 1858-59 the "Pike’s Peak fever" spread over the Mississippi valley and even down the Atlantic slope.  The reports from the west, ranging all the way from the most grotesque fabrications, down to occasional but almost downright contradictions, with each kind apparently having some sort of foundation, put the Missouri river towns into a babel of excitement, and then proceeded farther east expanding as they went along.  To the restless, mercurial portion of the inhabitants of what was then the frontier, the optimistic accounts were by far the more acceptable, and nearer like what they thought they ought to be, and what they wanted.  To the stranded, impecunious, idle boomers of the Kansas and Nebraska paper-balloon "cities" submerged by hard times and rank growths of prairie grass, these golden stories came as special messages from a pitying Providence; to the gamblers and adventurers of the Missouri river region, joint sufferers with the forlorn town-boomers and from the same causes, these rumors were comforting invitations to new fields of usefulness; to the bankrupt, the weary, and the disgusted, they held out a promise of better things, and stirred their hearts with new hope; to the sturdy, honest, ambitious, adventurous element, which was by far the larger portion of the eager multitude, Pike’s Peak became the landmark around, which they would find fortunes large enough to last them all their days; and so they started in a heedless, headlong rush across the plains toward the new land of gold.

       The following incident of the popular excitement along the Missouri river in these times, is recorded by Hollister:

"A German in Council Bluffs was observed gathering up a large lot of meal-bags. He was asked what he was going to do with them. ‘Fill them with gold at Pike’s Peak,’ he replied. O! he could never do that, they said, ‘Yes, I will,’ returned he, ‘if I have to stay there till fall.’ It is a matter for congratulations that people have become well cured of such charming infatuation."

       Thousands in other parts of the country had made preparations to move forward to this land of promise, and in the spring of 1859 there was a great multitude of hardy, hopeful people stringing across the plains with vehicles of all sorts, from the huge prairie schooner drawn by a half-dozen yoke of oxen, down to the push-cards to which sanguine souls hitched themselves and trudged along for weeks before the whitened summit of Pike’s Peak in the hazy distance, gladdened their eyes.  On the southern route, a young man, who certainly deserved well of fortune, trundled his belongings - provisions, clothing and tools - all the way from the Missouri river in a wheel-barrow, arriving at Denver in good condition, and with a cash capital of ten cents in his pocket.  He was a printer by trade, and afterward won greater prominence in the affairs of the community.  Some carried all their possession on their backs and cheerily made their way through the long journey, in company with some better equipped friend, or a newly-made acquaintance.  There was an almost endless procession on their backs and cheerily made their way through the long journey, in company with some better equipped friend, or a newly-made acquaintance.  There was an almost endless procession of white-covered wagons, from the modest outfit drawn by two mules or oxen, to the huge freighter moved by a dozen or so of animals.  In the heydays of the rush they were nearly always in sight of each other, and usually they went in groups and caravans.

       Early in the spring some disquieting rumors had been put in circulation to the effect that the small amounts of gold sent east to the previous year had not been found in the vicinity of Pike’s Peak, but had been brought from California.  This caused some, already a few miles on their overland journey, to turn back; and kept others who had not yet left the Missouri river, from attempting the trip.  Many of these dismayed embryo pioneers returned to their former homes and stayed there the rest of their days.  In that excitable frontier assemblage hope and enthusiasm would hold full away for a brief season, and then give way to some doubt, and uncertainty of purpose.

       Nevertheless, after all the wavering had been left behind, the hitherto unfrequented trails, known best by the buffalo and the Indians, were

soon lined with sanguine emigrants and their outfits.  At night their camp-fires made strands of beacon lights that stretched along the new thoroughfares, from the Missouri river to the Rockies.  The stampede to California ten years previous was repeated on a larger scale, by this host of hopeful, eager, would-be hunters of gold. The dark side of the California story, its privations, sufferings, and bitter disappointments, were all forgotten in the excitement and hopeful enthusiasm of these times.

       When it is properly considered that all these people - every mother’s son of them - were coming to this little-known country that was still in full possession of the Indians, hundreds of miles from the advance line of civilization, upon the mere unconfirmed but glowing class of rumors that had reached them in their distant homes, the extraordinary character of the movement may be more intelligently understood.  There is no parallel to it in the history of this or any other country, for the occasional unfavorable reports appeared to have had but limited effect.  The break for California ten years previous was in some important features not comparable to it; not in numbers of those who participated, nor in conditions, nor in circumstances.  Up to the first week of May, 1859, when Gregory found his lode, and Jackson’s work had been done, no gold had been discovered here in amounts worth considering; yet, before the date mentioned, all of these people had made preparations for their long flight and probably two-thirds of them were actually on their way hither; and all induced to the great undertaking by the flimsiest stories from unknown sources, spread broad-cast by reckless and irresponsible agencies.

       It is probable that had conditions in the States been different at that time, there would have been no such streams of eager, visionary humanity flowing across the plains to a region in which fancies, growing out of these fabulous stories, had pictured golden fortunes lying await for everybody who would or could come here and take possession of them.  The year 1857 had brought financial disaster on individuals, corporations, municipalities, counties, States, and even the Nation.  The panic of that year had torn over the country, from the Missouri river to the Atlantic sea-board like a tornado, spreading wreck and ruin everywhere.  The flimsy, stupid, trouble-breeding financial and banking system of the country - if such a weak and makeshift fabric might properly have been called a system - was chiefly responsible for the memorable financial revulsion of that year.  Back of it and depending upon it were inflated credits, wild speculations, the "booming" of unnecessary "cities" in impossible places, and all the other castles in the air that usually precede, and also usually precipitate, a financial collapse of far-reaching evil consequences.

       State banks with their offspring branches, corporate banks trying to stand alone, and private banks galore, had flooded the country with their trashy "currency," and when the strains passed the breaking point, these concerns tumbled down aheap, and most of their promises to pay could have been used for cigar-lighters without loss to those who held them.  Public credit and resources suffered with those of individuals. Treasuries were empty, and nothing in sight, worth having, to replenish them.  The weak government of the Nation was about as badly off as the rest, and in its impotency was unable to either help itself or anything else.

       The hurricane strewed the country with wrecks of personal fortunes, and so littered the paths of all enterprises with broken rubbish that they came to a standstill.  Through all the avenues of business and occupation the paralysis made its way, until almost every man felt its grisly effects.  Thousands were out of employment; thousands were out of homes; thousands out of business, and bankrupt beyond hope.  There was neither money, credit, nor opportunity after the storm of that year had swept over the country.

       The wide-spread consequences of the blast were sorely felt in 1858. Indeed, it may be said that the full effects of the disaster were not comprehended until that year by the masses of the people. Signs of even partial recovery were few, and slow in making their appearance. While this depression ruled the land, came the false accounts of marvelouslly [sic.] rich discoveries of gold at Pike’s Pea - tales magnified a hundred fold in their telling and retelling.  Thousand who could rake and scrape means enough together to provide what was necessary for a journey to the distant region, made preparations to set out for the new country where they hoped to retrieve their broken fortunes.

       To these unhappy circumstances of 1857-58 the presence of many hundreds who helped to swell the host of men who went trudging across the plains in the spring of 1859, was due.  Scores of them were bankrupt men, hopelessly unable to pay their debts, but that did not imply that they were not honest men; the fact that they were on their way here proved that they were courageous, hopeful, willing men.  In innumerable instances all the worldly possession of individuals, who but late had had much more, were represented by the outfit they were taking across the plains to the hoped-for land of gold.

       In 1858, the central plains were comparatively lonely places for white men. The Indians and the buffalo were the most conspicuous of the moving objects seen by those who came to the mountains that year. There were occasional straggling parties of people still connected with the disappearing fur business, and some caravans of freight wagons bound for Fort Laramie or some other remote military post, or to Salt Lake, with a sprinkling of emigrants headed for California or Oregon. The

Salt Lake stages made their semi-occasional trips along the Platte valley, rounding up the list of movements over the plains in this direction at that time.  Fort Riley, in Kansas, and Fort Keanery, in Nebraska, marked the western frontier, with little between them and the other side of the mountains except Fort Laramie, and a few scattered outfits of traders gathering up the odds and ends of what had once been a great business.

       The following year saw all this vastly changed.  Before midsummer of 1859 there was, not a mere succession of emigrant trains, but practically a continuous train from the Missouri river up the Platte valley to Denver, that being the route followed by most of the people.  But the Smoky Hill route, and that along the upper Arkansas river, were thronged, though by lesser numbers.  No emigrant had reason to complain of lack of company on the plains that year or in the next one.  He could hardly get out of sight of others bound on errands similar to his own.

       With the exception, to repeat a statement already made, of the movement to California in 1849-50, nothing approaching the like of this hegira was every seen before, nor will it be seen again, in this world.  The California tide at its highest in the progress across the plains, never assumed the remarkable proportions of the great stream that made 1859 so memorable a year in the history of the west. All sorts and conditions of men were represented in the hurrying multitude.  This driver of an ox-team was former banker from the land of sunrise; that one a doctor without a practice in the place he had left; the other a lawyer whom clients had deserted. Bankrupt merchants, decayed politicians, gamblers and adventurers - all plodding along in the almost endless throng, which included a goodly sprinkle of individuals who had left the States for urgent, if not pleasant reasons.

       But the general character of the mass was far from being an unworthy average.  The majority of the men were there because they were cast in a different mold from those they left behind them. Thousands of them were the kind of men that had led the way in every pioneer movement in this country.  Many of them were directed to the isolated and laborious life of a Rocky Mountain pioneer, by circumstances; but the fact that they had the energy and determination to do what they were doing, hastening to the hardships and privations of the plains and mountains, showed that they were made of pretty good material.  Every New England State, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and its borderland; France, Germany, England - all were contributors to that hopeful multitude.  City men from Boston, new York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis were among the masters of ox-teams, the cooks at the camp-fires, and the scullions and helpers in the daily life of the long journey.

       It was not a holiday outing.  To nearly all it brought trials, privations and hardships; to some it meant all of these with sickness and death added.  The Indians were not seriously troublesome at that time, yet some of them occasionally made attacks when good opportunity offered, and more than one isolated unfortunate had his dreams of fortune and his life ended together at their hands.  Some of the impatient ones, eager to get through at a faster pace, turned off the beaten trail into new and untried routes, only to suffer untold misery.  Their supplies gave out, the new ways led through dry, grassless stretches, their animals perished from exhaustion, and themselves not always escaped death from hunger and thirst.

       Three brothers from Missouri, named Blue, starting by the Leavenworth route, wandered into a dry and grassless region. Their cattle died and they subsisted for a few days on the carcasses. Later one of the men died of starvation and the other two ate of his flesh. Then another died and the third repeated the practice of last resort, but was a maniac when discovered by others who had also left the established route. Many of the thoughtless or ignorant people started with an inadequate supply of provisions and became depen-

ent on the generosity of their more provident fellow-travelers, before the journey was half completed.  Others set out early in the season, before winter had given way to spring, and frozen limbs made cripples of some of them for life.

       The buffalo and antelope had by that time learned that the great, serpent-like train of wagons and people, winding its way through their domain, was a most dangerous thing to them, and were inclined to keep away from it.  Therefore, to obtain additional food supplies from this source a halt would often have to be made and a hunt organized; and unnecessary stoppages were no part of the programme contemplated by that hurrying throng, the progress being slow enough at best.  Upon occasion and in many places there was little trouble in shooting a buffalo or an antelope, while at other times the animals kept at long distances, and in some instances were entirely out of reach.

       Some emigrants who came by way of the Smoky Hill trail in the dry season were obliged to drive their teams of patient oxen continuously for stretches sometimes reaching sixty miles between water points.  Both men and animals suffered extremely, many of the animals perishing from thirst and exhaustion.  These, however, were exceptional instances.

       But through it all, and in the large majority of that patient, toiling host, there was the sanguine, buoyant, determined spirit characteristic of the American; often reckless and always hopeful.  To most of them the experience was entirely a novelty, and the plains and mountains as new to them as the landscape of the moon would have been.  More than half of them were from offices, shops, retail stores, and farms east of the Missouri river, and a large portion from east of the Mississippi.  They had never seen the plains, had never seen the mountains, nor wild Indians, nor buffalo, nor lode, not placer, nor a grain of gold in its native situation, nor anything belonging to the new country of their destination, nor anything associated with the practical methods of accomplishing their one great purpose - digging gold at Pike’s Peak.  On the west, usually finding safety in numbers, and trusting to luck favoring them in regions which were the remote abodes of wild beasts and still wilder red men.

       Many of the emigrants embellished the white covers of their wagons with mottoes and legends indicative of the purpose of the journey, or of the determination of the individual proprietor.  An Ohio man on the Leavenworth route in the spring of 1859 had emblazoned on his wagon in large letters, "Root, Hog, or Die!"  An Indianian had a picture of a sharp, needle-like Peak which stuck through the clouds and far above, under which he had confidently paint-brushed, "I’ll Get there."  On another wagon, and probably the result of experience, appeared: "Jordan am a hard road to travel."  The favorite inscription was the simple announcement "Pike’s Peak;" that conspicuous outpost, in the absence of an official name for the gold region, standing for all the country from which it was visible.  Some resolute souls added to this the words, "or Bust;" and one whose cattle had died, leaving him without motive power, amended his proclamation so that it read in full:  "Pikes Peak, or Bust! Busted, by thunder!"  This conception was imitated by others upon whom like misfortunes had fallen.  When the eastward panicky stampede set in later in the spring of 1859, fervidly proclaimed the experience and conclusions of their owners.  One cheerful individual had sketched with charcoal as large a figure of an elephant as the canvas cover of his wagon would admit and beneath the rude drawing was written:  "What we saw at Pike’s Peak."

       The absence of wood on the plains compelled the people to turn to some other resource for fuel for camp-fire cooking.  This was found in great abundance in the "buffalo chips" with which the ground was everywhere strewn.  These were the dried excrement of those animals and consisted chiefly of the woody, undigested fiber of the coarse "buffalo grass."  They made a ready and excellent substitute for more substantial fuel, but the great demand for them soon caused a scarcity along the main lines of travel.

       The daily routine of the immigrants while on their way across the plains, is thus described by a writer who made the journey with a team of oxen drawing his loaded wagon:

"The majority of the travelers left camp about 7 o’clock in the morning and would travel until about noon unless the day was sultry, when they would turn in at 11 and rest until 2 o’clock.  Then they would proceed until 6 o’clock, when they would encamp for the night, provided fuel and water were at hand.  The first duty of the morning was to loose the cattle and turn them out to grass.  The next was to provide breakfast.  When this was dispatched the tent was struck, the bedding folded, the camp furniture gathered and all was packed away on the wagon.  Then the cattle were driven into camp and yoked and the start was made.  After traveling eight or ten miles the party stopped for lunch.  After an hour or two the journey was resumed and we continued until 6 or 7 o’clock, having traveled a distance of eighteen or twenty miles.  At times it was necessary to continue for twenty-five or thirty miles in order to reach wager."

       The emigrants were well supplied with arms, mostly rifles and revolvers.  Many were killed or injured by carelessly handling their weapons while on the journey or after reaching the mining camps.  A fruitful source of trouble was their habit of drawing their rifles out of the wagon by the muzzle end.  Standing their guns against the wagons to have them knocked over by accident, or frequently scrutinizing their new revolvers, often brought fatal consequences to themselves or bystanders.  It is probable that more lives were lost by these accidents than were saved by possession of the firearms.  But every man regarded his weapons as essentials to his outfit, and quite as necessary as his pork and beans.

       One of the more pretentious caravans of this period is thus described by a writer who saw it encamped for the night:

"It comprised six of seven heavy wagons, mainly drawn by oxen, with a light traveling carriage and pair of horses conveying the patriarch’s family; some two or three hundred head of cows, steers, and young cattle with three or four men on horseback driving and keeping the herd. Girls were milking; women cooking or washing, children playing - in short, here was the material for a very fair settlement, or quite an imposing Kansas ‘city.’"

Such a scene would recall the life of Abraham, of old, with his kindred, his flocks and herds gathered around him, on the plains of western Asia.

       The emigrants made it a rule to cross a stream immediately upon reading it, if it were possible to do so and if their way was across it.  They would not camp until they did so.  The Platte and some of its tributaries had an eccentric and troublesome fashion of suddenly rising to flood tide and making fording a risky undertaking for several days; and occasionally delaying the weary, impatient travelers a week or more, when this rule had been disregarded.  Reckless attempts to ford the swollen streams caused many a disaster to the driver’s worldly possessions.  But the streams out farther did not so often bother them in this way.  In the summer months there was more frequently a famine of water than a feast of it in their beds.

       In the advance guard women were scarce, but they soon appeared more promisingly among those who followed it, and with them came children of both sexes, all sizes and ages.  Some of these, now in the afternoon of life, are living in Denver in enjoyment of the favors fortune has brought them.  With the coming of women and children came, also, the graces of life, better social order and conditions, an increased regard for the amenities of existence, and consideration for the rights of neighbors.

       As soon as the new-comers reached the streams which put out from the mountains, the eager ones would jump in and begin looking for gold, probably turning over dirt and sand that had been previously and fruitlessly searched by far more experienced men.  Occasionally they were rewarded by a very little gold in a great deal of sand, but far more frequently they were not.  Most of them acted as if the recovery of gold was one of the simplest undertakings, and that the metal was to be gathered up anywhere and everywhere in the creeks and rivulets; nor had many of them any knowledge of the great amount of the hardest kind of labor that placer mining demanded.  They soon learned that they had to throw away the golden fancies that had cheered them wile on their journey across the plains, and this new wisdom added to the bitterness of the disappointment that subsequently came to most of them.

       What we have said in the foregoing is more especially with relation to the movement of 1859; yet, it applies with almost equal force to that of 1860, when nearly as many people crossed the plains to the mountains here, re-enacting the same scenes, presenting the same individual characteristics, entertaining the same visionary expectations, and undergoing the same experiences and practicing the same follies after they got here-Fortune smiling on the few and frowning on the many.  After the civil war broke out, the movement was checked, and for two or three years remained of comparatively slender proportions.

       As a whole, the circumstances under which this region was peopled have no parallel in the history of this country.  Some of those, as we have said, presented by the settlement of California ten

years previous, were similar.  But the example of that State did not equal, in many respects, the remarkable experience of Colorado.  There was no such pouring in of people there as this flocking of thousands and tens of thousands here in 1859 and 1860 - most of whom trooped away again - and all the conditions were radically different. The means of reaching California were better, and considering everything, were cheaper, to those who went there by water.  While many made the journey overland, those who voyaged to the isthmus and thence by water again were in the great majority, and could make the trip with comparative comfort.  Furthermore, they were not pressing into the midst of an wholly unsettled region, infested by warlike Indians, and remote from a ready highway of travel available for mechanical transportation.

       Colorado had no gentle tide of immigration like that which slowly and steadily occupied the territory of the older States.  When it set in it came as a tidal wave, carrying with it the good, the bad, and the indifferent.  The pioneer, as Ohio, Missouri, or Kansas knew him, establishing himself on virgin soil from which he cultivated the means of his subsistence, and on which he built a cabin home for himself and his family, was unknown in the settlement of this country.  Those who had been scattered through it before the summer of 1858, were mere roving adventurers, here for a transient purpose, neither thinking of nor caring for permanent, civilized, expanding occupation and development.

       It cannot fairly be said that as a rule those brought in by the great tidal wave of 1859 were led on by motives much different or better than those of the trapping and trading adventures.  The common desire for gold was first and last in the thoughts of all, and the accepted beliefs that the new country was inhospitable and undesirable for any purpose save that of satisfying this craving, made almost every man, whether by calculation or chance, keep a feeling about himself and his enterprise, that he was only to be a sojourner here who would return to his old home as soon as he had basked a while in the smiles of fortune.

       These winding trains, these trailing caravans, and these trooping foot-soldiers of fortune were not bound for a region in the west far beyond the distant horizon, where it was hoped to found a new empire, to subdue a wilderness, convert it into fruitful farms and blooming gardens, and to establish happy homes for declining years.  These men had no such purposes in view as those which brought the Pilgrims to the rocky coast of Massachusetts; no such patriotic impulses as those which led to the French settlement of Canada and Louisiana - the honor of their King and the glory of France; no such motives as those which inspired the Jesuit fathers to carry the word of their Master to the savage people in the American wilderness.

       They did not expect to stay a great while in the country to which they were bound; they were not particular about finding a place where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences; they were quite willing that the administration at Washington should attend to the honor and glory of the Nation; and they had not the slightest interest in the spiritual welfare of the western red man.

       There was little of that anticipated identity which the new country that usually comes into the thoughts of men going to new places and scenes to work out the purposes of their lives.  It was great army of fortune-seekers, pure and simple, to be turned this way or that by the capricious grimaces of the goddess of their cause, that came streaming across the plains in 1859 and 1860.  The plans of nearly all were held subservient to the chances or changes of a day, and every one of their calculations centered around the single purpose to quickly acquire a fortune and speedily return to civilized parts.  Nothing could have been further from their intentions than the founding of a beautiful city, the building of a great State, and their permanent detachment from their former homes.

       A popular but altogether erroneous belief concerning the general character of these hosts of men, is that they were the refuse of the older communities whence they came.  This statement has been made, and repeated so often in books and newspaper letters telling, or trying to tell, of these old times, that something like a conviction exists in the minds of many people, that the pioneers of 1859 and 1860, in the Pike’s Peak region, were mostly scoundrels, of but varying depths of dye.  As an example of this misrepresentation, an average statement, is that of McClure in his book "Three Thousand Miles in the Rocky Mountains." He said, referring to the great movement of 1859:

"Nine tenths of those who came at first were either fugitives or adventurers. In one mingled

mass came the honest bankrupt, the fugitive from justice, the gambler and the loafer."

This was not so.  In one sense they were all adventurers, but to assert or imply that as a whole the mass was composed of bankrupts, criminals, gamblers, and loafers, is stupid, ignorant nonsense; formulated from the stories it was once common to relate of many places in the west.  There were gamblers and other criminals a-plenty; but as to the loafers, this country was probably the most uninviting region in the world for them.  The truth is that while many had been bankrupted, and many others impoverished by the collapse in 1857, in the main the men who came here in the pioneer times were of average honesty, and of more than average enthusiasm and heedlessness.  They were inspired by no worse motive than one to better their worldly condition, and to do it in one or two summer seasons.

       In those days the appearance of the average person here was not what would fulfill our present conceptions of a presentable man.  Those who had wives back in the east waiting for their lords to return treasure-laden, would not have been recognized by their distant spouses.  The miners were bearded and begrimed, tanned the color of sole-leather by exposure to the sun and winds, and clad in a motley and often patched or tattered outfit of garments.  The three imperative demands upon their time - working, eating and sleeping - left none for personal adornment, even if the inclination to it had not, practically, disappeared.  The new arrivals daily trudging into Denver by hundreds, as heavy of movement as their weary slow-going teams of oxen, were no better.  They were hideously hairy and unkempt, sun-browned, recklessly ragged, some of them bare-footed, and all dust-covered and begrimed.  The addition of goggles, worn to protect their eyes from the glare of the prairie sun, gave to many a mild-mannered, peaceful man a dangerous and, to some individuals, a ferocious, aspect.

       In what we have said here of the transitory character and purposes of these people, the application is intended for the great mass of the multitude.  In a few instances new-comers partly realized the possibilities of the country, or thought they did, and acted upon the impulses thus aroused.  It is exceedingly difficult to reconcile events with the theory that the men instrumental in bringing them about were endowed with unusual wisdom, and extraordinary ability to foresee things.  It is not probably that those who platted and named the embryo towns at the mouth of Cherry creek in the autumn of 1858, ever dreamed at that time that either, or both combined, would become a great city, or even an important town.  But the fact that they did propose a permanent settlement and occupation of the country, separated them in thought and purpose from nine out of every ten men around.

       In most instances the founding of American cities was the out-growth of pre-existing necessities; or of the presence of some commanding local natural advantages fully understood beforehand; or of some other motives in which calculations, preparation and intention were likewise involved.  Sites were deliberately chosen with especial reference to the previously known natural advantages of locality and surroundings, immigrants came with the purpose and expectation of permanent personal identity with their chosen places, and the infant settlements were patiently nursed and coddled by their projectors and partisans.

       It was not so with Denver.  Her founding was an accident of circumstances at a time when even the circumstances bid fair to be transitory, and when advantages and recourses may be said to have been unknown.  In her infancy she was the temporary objective point for thousands who cared nothing for the country, nothing for the town; who had no intention of permanently identifying themselves with either, and with but the one thought of getting what they came for before somebody else got it, and then getting away again.  It was not until the rare beauty of the accidental location, the grandeur of the region, the charms of the climate, and the enormous permanent resources of the country became fixed in the minds of the people, that these alien feelings and purposes disappeared.

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