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The history of the European settlement of Colorado links very
closely to the progress of development and subsequent discovery of mineral
deposits worthy of mining in the West.
The first big wave of Northern Europeans came West for the 1849
California Gold Rush, which drew many tens of thousands of men and women
(though at first, mostly men) across the continent on a long, arduous
wagon journey, or by an equally long sea voyage through the Straits of
Magellan at the southern tip of South America. |
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was right in the middle of the continent, near the end of crossing the
Great Plains and at the beginning of the portions of the journey that must
have seemed even more foreboding: crossing over the mountains and the
deserts and badlands that lay beyond, leaving some 2,000 miles' journey
winding through some of the vastest wildernesses this continent has to
offer. Certainly, with no
roads or support services along the way, it must have seemed even more
hostile than anything they'd seen in the Midwest.
Many came through the cities of the Pre-Civil-War-Era United States
that was, in the opinion of its former European patrons, mostly still a
small and quite novel experiment in a new form of government. |
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The prosperity and economic developments of the Renaissance brought
overpopulation and overcrowding in Europe.
Following hundreds of years of
fluctuating population (the result of plagues and other diseases created
by the unhygienic living conditions in their own cities) and slow
development, the technical and cultural advancements of the 17th Century
drove a huge increase of the European economy.
The increase of available food supplies brought on a great surge in
the number of Europeans in the 19th century,
all competing for the same space, jobs, and resources, resulting in both
rural and urban overcrowding. Escaping
to the vast new wilderness that was the Colonies sounded dangerous but
worth it to legions of European colonists, who were willing to leave
everything they'd known behind for the prospect of a new life with
available land and the promise of democracy. |
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Certainly it wasn't just the farmers who were actively fleeing the
tyranny of European land ownership and the feudal arrangements of life
they'd long suffered. Tales of
real private land ownership was a powerful driving force for many.
Miners were among the groups of skilled and semi-skilled laborers
who were actively recruited in Europe's mountainous regions, where
declining natural resources and job opportunities offered miners little
hope of prosperity, financial or otherwise.
Promised bonuses and private houses, many came to these United
States with dreams of a better life and a better future for their
children, but this tale is common in this nation.
The difference here is that many who were brought from overseas as
miners in this period, “...Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish, central
European, Hispanic, Italian and Swedish workers and their families” (Foote,
Trumbo, 2004: 1), came across the sea and didn't get stuck in the
cities, but got on a train straight off the ship and went to places like
Tennessee and West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal mining has a rich and
varied history all its own. |
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the time of the Mexican-American War, in which Mexico ceded California,
New Mexico, and Texas to the U.S. in 1848, followed closely by the
California Gold Rush, then, there are multiple flows of people across the
plains migrating of their own will across the prairie in covered wagons to
California and Oregon Territory, a slow and treacherous journey, as we
have seen. In 1858, the
discovery of “a few hundred
dollars' worth of gold near what would become Golden,” heralded a new
wave of immigration to Colorado for the Colorado Gold Rush.
By the time of the 1860 census, Colorado's population had reached
39,000, with twenty men to every woman. (Knight,
1971: 2)
It would be another thirty years before the Klondike Gold Rush
would send people north to Alaska for similar reasons. New technology also
heralded change for the wild frontier country that was Colorado, when |
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“The
railroad reached Denver in 1870. Between
1870 and 1880, Colorado's population multiplied some five-fold, to
195,000, its greatest percentage increase in any decade.
White and black “gold” (silver and coal) vied with yellow gold
as wealth producers. ...When Colorado gained statehood in 1876, it had...
railroads building from Denver and southern Colorado westward; mines
producing gold, silver, lead, and coal; smelters and foundries springing
up; and farming and ranching well established.” (Knight,
1971: 2)
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In
these decades of rapid growth, “The proportion of foreign-born among the
migrants to Colorado rose from 7.7 percent in 1860 to 16.5 percent in
1870, and 20.4 percent in 1880.... During
the entire period, however, about two-thirds were from the British Empire.
While 600 Chinese brought to work in the building the railroads
were recorded in the 1880 census, the influx of non-English-speaking
foreigners was to come later.” (Knight, 1971:
17)
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Some miners spread out across the plains around Denver to mine the
local coal seams that constituted the Northern Field, an area spread
across modern-day Boulder and Weld counties where the Laramie Formation's
faulting and cracking at the base of the mountains exposes numerous
coal-bearing rock strata. Initially
these efforts were small and primitive, but Denver was a growing regional
industrial hub; in keeping with its role as a major stop on the railroad,
as “the coming of the railroad and of metal fabrication, to say nothing
of the expanding domestic market, greatly increased the demand for
coal.” (Knight, 1971: 15-16)
Coal mining created communities on the plains East of Boulder, most
notably Marshall, Louisville, Lafayette, Erie, Superior, Frederick,
Dacono, and more. Boulder City
was an intermediary stop between the hard-rock mining of Nederland, Gold
Hill, and Ward and the coal mining on the plains.
The other primary location for coal mining was in southern Colorado
in what are now called Huerfano and Las Animas counties, called the
Southern Field, connected to Denver by over 110 miles of railroad track to
carry the coal to its destination. Most
of this area was dominated by the 'company mine', and miners had many
problems with the associated fight for workers' rights in those mines. |
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Click
on either of the two highlighted areas to read more about these mining
areas and the conflicts that occurred there. This map of Colorado
shows current county boundaries (grey), major highways (blue), and
railroads (red). Notice how the railroad lines follow the coal
fields. In those days, rail transport was (and still is) the
cheapest way to transport large amounts of heavy material like raw
coal. |
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