Colorado: A History of the Centennial State

Colorado has an interesting history. It was once nothing but an outpost on the American frontier, then a stopover on the way to California, then a crossing point for prospectors. It was settled late, mainly after the Civil War, and even today it’s sparsely populated. This book makes it clear that the railroads had a lot to do with it. Since Colorado was far from the East Coast, and on the West side of the rivers, it was hard to get to. Until the railroad came along, nobody had any way or reason to go there. Before the Civil War the territory was inhabited by miners. Afterwards, more miners came, followed by farmers.

This book doesn’t gloss things over, on the contrary it makes clear that the native tribes suffered terribly. But it also tells an unusual story about the Native American attitude towards the coming of the European settlers. Some Cheyenne elders could see right away that they’d lose the battle. The “red devils” (the Ute pejorative) had better guns and greater numbers. Yet the younger Cheyenne were eager to fight, and fight they did. But it just made the US Army angrier and the junior officers, eager to prove themselves in combat, used the Cheyenne and Ute as a punching bag. If the modern weapons were not enough, simply putting down roots definitely was. The new arrivals plundered the buffalo, limited the grazing lands for the tribes’ horses, and pacified the region.

This book starts to get funny in the part about Colorado’s colleges. While the East coast had the Ivy League and the seminaries, Colorado had big plans for colleges too, but with a different purpose. The legislators wanted schools to train farmers and mining engineers. They didn’t want the professors teaching ancient languages, and with the state’s meager property tax being put towards the railroad, there wasn’t much money for education. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Denver Cities had frequent fires; the hastily-built wooden buildings were tinder boxes. I imagine it wasn’t cheap to rebuild, since the arid Colorado had few forests and the wood was probably imported.

Reading this book teaches you a lot about US history. Unionization, for instance, was met with harsh suppression by the state militias, not because the governor hated the union, but because he needed the businessmen’s tax money to keep the state going. This happened throughout the US with the railroad strike, Pullman strike, US Steel strike, etc. Then came WWII, which swelled the state’s population with army camps. After the war came racial integration, environmental concerns (no small issue in a state full of mine tailing dumps) and gay rights.

I would recommend this book for anyone studying US history. There’s a lot to learn here with regards to how business plays a strong part in US politics.