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On Aug. 1, 1876, Colorado became the 38th state. This 110th anniversary should be a general statewide holiday. It isn't, because the only people who celebrate Colorado Day are state employees, and they honor their employer by not coming to work on the first Monday in August.
Even that is more than most other states bother with. Besides Colorado, only Arizona, West Virginia, California and Nevada make holidays out of the date they joined the union.
Perhaps the other 45 states have the right idea. Because we're a state, we have two senators -- of opposite politics, so their votes cancel when they aren't off running for the presidency. We have a gubernatorial campaign and the 55-mph speed limit. In 1984, we sent $9.908 billion to Washington in taxes, and received $9.165 billion; we pay at least $743 million a year for statehood.
Colorado Day has been celebrated for a long time. I found reference to a 1945 barbecue in Guam, involving more than 300 Colorado servicemen, including an ex-governor, and to the explosion of an antique cannon at a Colorado Day festival a decade earlier. The first Colorado Day legislation apparently passed in 1903, and there are scattered mentions of Aug. 1 celebrations with giant powder and beer kegs during the 19th century.
My research also disclosed the real reason that we've celebrated for all these years. No other territory had as much trouble becoming a state as Colorado did.
In April of 1859, as the gold rush was barely underway, there were meetings in Fountain City (today's Pueblo) and Auraria that resulted in a constitutional convention for the proposed State of Jefferson, comprising the remoter parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Utah and New Mexico territories. A general election was held Sept. 5.
Statehood received but 1,649 votes, while a proposal to
ask Congress for a new territory received 2,007; the
Territory of Colorado emerged on Feb. 28, 1861. For a mere
territory to become a full-fledged state, Congress had to
pass an enabling act.
Then the territory would
prepare a constitution. If Congress and voters approved,
the President proclaimed statehood.
A Colorado enabling act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 22, 1862. It died, as did another introduced Jan. 5, 1863. The Senate passed one on March 3, 1863, but it was defeated a day later in the House.
In 1864, both houses passed an enabling act, signed by
Abraham Lincoln on March 21. Colorado prepared a
constitution, and then indulged in its own civil war. One
faction had the political connections to control patronage
if statehood passed; the others fought the corrupt
Denver Ring
by opposing statehood. By a 4-1 margin that
September, Colorado remained a territory.
Under the same enabling act, another constitution came before the voters in 1865. It passed by 155 questionable votes; two senators from the new state, Jerome Chaffee and John Evans, proceeded to Washington. There they were considerably embarrassed when President Andrew Johnson rebuffed them. Colorado wasn't really a state, he said, because it hadn't conformed to the enabling act.
Congress approved statehood for Colorado in 1866. Johnson vetoed it, citing insufficient population, vote fraud and the exclusions of blacks from citizenship. Pretty much the same thing happened in 1867.
Statehood languished until 1873, when President U.S.
Grant toured the territory. When he stepped out of his
carriage in Central City, he stood on a $13,000 silver
sidewalk, which influenced him to announce that Colorado
possesses all the elements of a prosperous
state.
With Grant's support, the House passed an enabling act on June 8, 1874. It was tabled in the Senate, whose Republican leaders feared the new state might go Democratic. Even so, the measure passed the Senate on Feb. 24, 1875. At a special election on July 1, 1876, Coloradans approved by 15,433 to 4,062 the constitution we still live under. A month later, Grant issued the proclamation. Colorado had finally become a real state.
Grant was wrong about prosperity, and the Senate didn't need to worry about Colorado's supposed Democratic leanings. Statehood came after defeats in two general elections, after the embarrassment of selecting senators who weren't senators, after two presidential vetoes. Anything that people would work that hard for has to be worth celebrating, even if it does cost us $741 million a year.
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