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Today, the first day of August, used to be a holiday
here. It was Colorado Day
to honor Aug. 1, 1876,
when Colorado entered the Union as the 38th state. Since
that was the centennial year of the Declaration of
Independence, the timing gave Colorado its nickname, the
Centennial State.
It was also a presidential election year, and Colorado statehood was not a coincidence. The GOP was worried in 1876 -- after eight years of corruption during the Grant administration, American voters might get disgusted and put a Democrat in the White House.
To save the country, the Republicans figured they would need every possible electoral vote. Much the same thing had happened in the summer of 1864, when Abraham Lincoln despaired of re-election. To provide him a few more electoral votes, Congress arranged to admit Nevada.
The political barometers of 1876 indicated that Colorado, a territory since 1861, could be trusted to vote the right way.
Previous efforts at statehood for Colorado had failed, but this time, the skids were greased in Washington. That November, Colorado did its duty and gave three electoral votes to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes.
Hayes needed them. The full story of the 1876 presidential election, with contested ballots and a special commission, is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say that after various machinations, Hayes won a one-vote victory in the Electoral College: 185-184.
It was the first, and last, time that Colorado made any difference whatsoever in a presidential election. The Republican leadership of 1876 correctly foresaw a close election, and took action. Had they failed to act by admitting Colorado, Samuel J. Tilden would have been the 19th president of the United States.
That said, how should we celebrate Colorado Day?
It's not an official state holiday any more -- the General Assembly abolished it in the process of adopting Martin Luther King Day about 15 years ago. So we're on our own to find things about Colorado that are worth celebrating.
After sober reflection, it dawns on me that the things I like most about Colorado are things that would be stupid to write about. My Colorado favorites are places, and over the years, I have learned that the more people there are who know about such places and get inspired to visit, the less I will like those places.
Some people ascribe mystical value to such places,
referring to sacred sites,
but my consciousness is
not sufficiently elevated. Visiting the finer tracts of
Colorado is not a spiritual quest, but a deeply anti-social
act -- the more anti-social, the better, in fact.
Many writers make a career out of discovering special
places
and then publicizing them so that lots of people
visit. Over time, this process is more destructive as
strip-mining, clear-cutting or over-grazing.
The writers often defend themselves with the argument that by popularizing the place, they build a constituency for its protection. Thus more lobbyists and more regulations and rangers, and the place wouldn't need to be protected if they just hadn't written about it.
Let's get back to figuring out how to celebrate Colorado Day properly. It started as Colorado becoming one of the United States of America -- that is, joining the mainstream of American life. To stay in the spirit of the occasion, then, we should celebrate Colorado Day by doing our best to make Colorado just like the rest of America.
For instance, our roads now seem sufficiently crowded to me, compared to the days when I could make a night run from Conifer to Salida without ever having to dim my lights for oncoming traffic.
But new arrivals almost always claim that no matter how crowded Colorado roads may appear, Colorado is still an improvement on where they came from.
So it looks as though we've got a ways to go to make Colorado truly part of the mainstream, and we can do our part by driving more.
Another way to help would be to transform more useless Front Range land into generic American subdivisions with houses lining cul-de-sacs, off-ramp strips at the freeway exits, shopping malls with gargantuan parking lots and the like. Most of America lives in such zones now, and Colorado still has a few holdouts in urban downtowns or small towns.
We've made rapid progress toward homogenization in the corporate sector -- no more Mountain Bell, Public Service or Denver & Rio Grande Western. A few Colorado institutions may remain, and Colorado Day would be a good time to find them and merge them away.
Come to think of it, though, the General Assembly was right to abolish Colorado Day; if we celebrated it properly, it would be just like every other day in the Centennial State.
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