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Among the cheap and interesting parlor games that we
play here is Why is Denver where it is?
This game came up again this week with the Post's series on the South Platte. In general, the articles have been interesting and informative, although at one point I was scratching my head yesterday.
About six miles up the South Platte from the mouth of Cherry Creek is the site of Montana City, where prospectors built cabins in the fall of 1858. It lasted only through that winter; next spring, they all moved down to the confluence.
So far, so good, but then I read that 1858 was the
first year that Easterners built towns in Colorado.
Wait. What about Bent's Fort, built in 1833? Certainly
the Bent brothers were Easterners
-- their
grandfather Silas was reportedly among the violent tax
protesters at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 -- but Bent's
Fort was a trading post, not a real town.
The same logic holds for Fort Uncompahgre, built near present-day Delta by Antoine Robidoux in 1828, and for the first fort at Pueblo, circa 1842.
Colorado's oldest town, San Luis, goes back to 1851, seven years before Montana City rose. But its invaders came from the south, not from the east, so they don't matter. As we all know from the Eastern Seaboard Standard History in our schoolbooks, America started in Boston and expanded westward, and nothing else counts.
I learned this a few years ago when one of my daughters
was supposed to write a report on the role of women in
colonial America.
Columbine dutifully researched and wrote about the women of Santa Fe, who horrified straitlaced Yankee visitors by smoking cigarettes, wearing low neck lines and short skirts, and staying up all night dancing at fandangos. Some American men were so shocked that they stayed in Santa Fe for weeks, even months, when they had planned to return right away.
The teacher apparently wanted a profile of Abigail Adams churning butter or Molly Pitcher loading cannons. Columbine argued that Santa Fe was in America, and was in a colony, and she had fulfilled her assignment. The teacher felt otherwise, and it was pretty tense for a while.
Anyway, does the Montana City of 1858 represent the
first year Easterners built towns in Colorado
?
In 1845, there was a general store at Greenhorn, about 30 miles southwest of Pueblo.
Unlike Bent's Fort and related ventures, the Greenhorn
store catered to the white trade, not Indians, and carried
everything from shoes to gunpowder. Nearby were irrigated
fields, a grist mill, corrals, a brickyard -- that is, the
established pattern of Eastern
settlement. And its
founder, one John Brown who received visions from his
Spirit Guide,
hailed from Worcester, Mass.
Granted, this Greenhorn did not abide -- it was abandoned by 1855 in the wake of Ute attacks on all white settlements in the Pueblo area.
But Montana City didn't stick, either -- after just one winter, it was torn down and the logs were used to build new cabins at the present-day site of Denver.
So if it were up to me, I'd nominate 1845 and Greenhorn
as the first year Easterners built towns in
Colorado.
But Greenhorn didn't grow up into a large city, and Montana City evolved toward metro Denver. Which brings us back to the parlor game. Why is Denver where it is? Aren't there any number of sites along the Front Range that would have served just as well?
Not that many. This is a desert, so a city had to be near a river. Approach Colorado from the east, as America did, and there are two main rivers -- South Platte and Arkansas. Which river, though?
At the time -- 1850s and 60s -- North and South are in
conflict. Venturing west from civilization up the Arkansas
meant starting in Missouri, a slave state, and passing
through Bleeding Kansas
where the Border Ruffians
and the Jayhawkers were at war long before Fort Sumter
fell. The Platte route began in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and
passed through solid Union territory.
So the Platte route would be easier during the formative years, even though the Arkansas route had been established and settled earlier. But where on the Platte and its tributaries?
Golden, the first territorial capital, controlled access to the Clear Creek mining camps, but didn't offer convenient access to the South Park excitement at Tarryall.
Denver offered decent routes to both Clear Creek and South Park, and farmers could reach it with their produce, thus making it a good spot for trade.
Given the Civil War and the sequence of gold discoveries in Colorado, it appears that Denver pretty well had to sit where it does. But why does it have to steal a historical distinction from little Greenhorn?
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