Welcome to the deep dive. You know, when you
picture Colorado, you probably just see modern
postcards of snowy peaks and like fancy ski resorts.
Right. Or you picture that classic 19th century
pioneer story. Exactly. Dusty saloon towns, lone
prospectors panning for gold and mountain streams
and English speaking settlers pushing westward.
But the reality of this region completely shatters
that image. It really does. Today, we are looking
at a comprehensive historical overview of Colorado,
and the source material paints a picture of a
region forged by some of the most extreme boom
and bust cycles imaginable. Yeah, it's a fascinating
turbulent history we're talking about. ancient
migrations, phantom territories that didn't technically
exist, brutal labor wars, and just, you know,
radical reinventions. I mean, to start off, we're
talking about an area that boasts up to 37 ,000
years of human history. Which is just staggering
when you really think about it. It is. And it's
first permanent European settlement. It wasn't
founded by gold miners from the East Coast. It
was actually built by Hispanic settlers moving
up from New Mexico in 1851. Okay, let's unpack
this. We really need to. Because to get the full
picture, you have to rewind long before any European
claims were even made. You have to look at the
geography itself. Right, because the eastern
edge of the Rocky Mountains wasn't just this
massive barrier. Not at all. For thousands of
years it operated more like an ancient prehistoric
superhighway for human migration. What's fascinating
here is the sheer timeline of habitation. Native
Americans and their paleoindian ancestors used
this mountain corridor for at least 13 ,500 years.
That is just a massive scale of time. Yeah, and
possibly up to 37 ,000 years. There's this archaeological
location called the Lindenmire site, and it contains
artifacts dating back to 8720 BCE. Oh, wow. So
human migration and trade were flowing up and
down this region for millennia before anyone
ever drew a border on a map. Which makes the
arrival of early European explorers almost comical
in their arrogance, honestly. Totally. Like you
look at Zebulon Pike's expedition in 1806. He
marches into the territory, contacts the local
tribes and just announces that the United States
now claims the land. Just declares it. Yeah.
He even looks at this prominent mountain that
the native Ute people called Tava and decides
to rename it Pike's Peak after himself. It was
pure colonial theater. Because before the 1850s,
colonial control in this region was mostly an
illusion. Wait, I want to dig into that disconnect.
Yeah. Because on paper, the territory is constantly
changing hands, right? Constantly. First, it's
claimed by the Spanish. Then Mexico wins independence
in 1821. So suddenly it's Mexican territory.
Then the U .S. takes control after the Mexican
-American War in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. Right. The invisible lines are shifting
all over the place. But like, wait, so the U
.S. claimed this land. but couldn't really settle
it effectively until those Hispanic families
moved up from Taos and founded San Luis de la
Calerba in 1851. Exactly. How did the native
populations like the Utu controlled the vast
majority of the actual land react to these invisible
lines being drawn by distant governments? Well,
they held the real power, so the foreign claims
functioned through integration, not conquest.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, early European and American
presence was purely about survival and trade.
If you look at a place like Bent's Fort on the
Arkansas River. Right, the famous trading post.
Yeah, it wasn't a military stronghold dictating
terms. It was a deeply integrated system. American
traders brought refined goods, but they were
entirely reliant on native tribes for furs and
survival knowledge. So it was a shared economic
zone. Exactly. And the Ute maintained fierce
territorial control over the western portions,
so it created this fragile shared balance. And
these slow shifting borderlands and integrated
trade networks might have lasted for decades
longer, honestly. If history played out differently,
absolutely. But that fragile balance gets completely
obliterated by a single discovery in 1858. Gold.
Ultimate disruptor. Rumors start trickling eastward
and suddenly you have the Pike's Peak Gold Rush.
Yeah, an estimated a hundred thousand gold seekers
flood into the region. They called them the 59ers,
right? Yep, the 59ers. And almost overnight,
this massive influx creates the first major white
American population in the area. And you have
to imagine the sheer logistical nightmare of
that. Like 100 ,000 desperate people arriving
in a place with zero infrastructure. No roads,
no supply chains, no legal framework. Right.
And here's where it gets really interesting.
Because technically parts of this area were fragmented
across distant territories like Kansas and Nebraska.
But those territorial capitals were hundreds
of miles away across unforgiving plains. They
couldn't possibly govern this sudden explosion
of people. So the settlers do something incredibly
audacious. They just make up their own state.
They create the territory of Jefferson. Yes.
Yeah. It's like a tech startup deciding City
laws are too slow, so they just declare their
office building a sovereign nation and start
passing their own laws? That startup analogy
is spot on. I mean, they operated this extra
-legal, unrecognized territory for 19 months.
Which is just wild to me. It reveals a core trait
of the West, pragmatism over legality. They needed
local governance to protect their wealth, so
they engineered a spontaneous commonwealth. But
Washington eventually steps in. officially forms
the territory of Colorado in 1861. And I have
to imagine they didn't do that just to help out
some disorganized prospectors. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, the timing is everything.
It's 1861. the onset of the American Civil War.
Ah, of course. The Union desperately needed to
solidify control over the mineral wealth of the
Rocky Mountains. Right, to fund the war effort.
Exactly. Legitimizing it was a calculated move
to ensure that mountain gold funded the Union,
not the Confederacy. Although actually becoming
a state took much longer. Yeah, President Andrew
Johnson vetoed earlier attempts. Right. They
didn't officially become the Centennial State
until August 1st, 1876. So this frantic rush
for wealth literally forces a state into existence.
But, I mean, that boom had a devastating cost.
A horrific cost, yeah. You can't just drop 100
,000 resource hungry immigrants into land controlled
by native tribes without causing catastrophic
clashes. The new arrivals completely ignored
the boundaries set by the 1851 Treaty of Fort
Laramie. Which sparked the Colorado War between
1863 and 1865. And this is where the romanticized
myth of the West completely falls apart. We really
need to pause on this because the history here
is incredibly heavy. The source text describes
an event in November 1864, the Sand Creek Massacre.
Yes, U .S. Army Commander John Chivington led
an attack on an encampment. And the source specifically
describes it as having, quote, genocidal brutality.
It horrified people even back east and fundamentally
shifted how white Americans viewed It resulted
in the forced removal of tribes from their ancestral
lands to Oklahoma. It was a brutal displacement
driven entirely by an insatiable demand for resources.
So what does this all mean? I mean, if the reality
was actually mass industrial death, martial law
and the U .S. military firing on Native Americans
and later striking miners, why do we hold on
to the myth of the rugged independent prospector?
Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture,
it all comes down to the concept of mineral rights.
How so? The lone prospector myth existed for
a very fleeting moment when the gold was just
sitting right on the surface. But that surface
gold ran out very quickly. Right. You could just
pan it out of the streams at first. Exactly.
But to get to the real wealth, the deep veins
of silver, and eventually massive coal deposits,
you had to dig deep into solid rock. And you
can't do that with just a pickaxe and a mule.
No. Deep shaft mining requires immense capital
and heavy machinery. So almost overnight, independent
miners became expendable wage laborers for massive
corporations. And the conditions they were forced
into were just horrifying. The source text notes
that more than 1 ,700 workers died between 1884
and 1914. Just in Colorado's mines. Yeah. And
when workers naturally tried to unionize and
strike against these deadly conditions, the response
was militarized violence. You see, martial law
declared in the 1880 Ludville strike, you have
the 1894 Cripple Creek strike. And it all culminates
in the Colorado -Colefield War of 1913 to 1914.
Specifically, the Ludlow Massacre. The Colorado
National Guard fired into a tent colony of striking
workers, killing many, including children. The
cognitive dissonance is staggering. We celebrate
this wild freedom myth, but the historical reality
was heavily armed corporations and the military
firing on striking workers. It's an incredibly
dark legacy. But what is so striking about Colorado's
history is its profound ability to adapt and
reinvent itself. Because eventually the oar ran
out. Natural gas started replacing coal. Exactly.
The state was staring down the barrel of a massive
economic bust. To survive, they had to radically
pivot. They had to move from extracting what
was under the mountains to essentially monetizing
the mountains themselves. Yes. And this leads
to one of the most fascinating demographic shifts.
The state's salvation didn't come from another
mineral discovery. No, it came from health seekers.
I am still mind blown by this tuberculosis statistic
from the source text. The World Sanitarium. Yes.
Back East, doctors were prescribing dry, high
altitude climates as the only treatment for tuberculosis.
So by 1900, one third of Colorado's entire population
were TB patients. They called them Lungers. Imagine
if, today, one out of every three people in a
state was only living there on a doctor's prescription.
It's hard to overstate the impact of that. It
completely flipped the economy to hospitality
and medical care. But I ask myself, how does
a state go from a lawless mining camp to being
a pioneer in social rights? Like, in 1893, Colorado
became the first state to grant women's suffrage
by popular vote. Well, this raises an important
question. What happens to the culture of a state
when you have thousands of educated upper class
health seekers mixing directly with rugged heavily
unionized miners. Oh wow. Yeah, you get a totally
unique political stew. They were severed from
traditional East Coast norms, so they just invented
a society that worked for their specific reality.
That perfectly explains the political whiplash.
And that spirit of radical reinvention just accelerates
into the 20th century. Oh, absolutely. Like in
the 1930s, they realized the massive snowfall
is actually a highly lucrative commodity, and
that gives birth to the ski industry. And during
World War II, the military sets up Camp Hale
to train the 10th Mountain Division ski troops.
Then moving into the— In the 1960s and 70s, it
becomes an epicenter for the Chicano movement,
with leaders like Corky Gonzalez. And in 1967,
Governor John Love signs the nation's first liberalized
abortion law. They just consistently chart their
own course. They do. And the ultimate proof...
of that fierce independence happened in 1972.
Oh, the Winter Olympics. This is the ultimate
flex. It really is. Colorado uniquely rejected
hosting the Winter Olympics after winning the
bid. Wait, they already had the bid. It was a
done deal. But the actual voters looked at the
financial costs and the environmental impact
and they refused to fund it. They literally told
the international community, no thanks, we don't
want your games if we have to foot the bill.
The IOC had to scramble to move the games. It
had never happened before. It perfectly encapsulates
everything we've uncovered. I mean, Colorado
is a master class in shape shifting from an ancient
migration highway to a rogue territory to a brutal
industrial battleground. And then when the earth
dried up, it became a sanctuary for the sick,
a pioneer in social rights and a global hub for
recreation. The adaptation is just relentless.
But before we wrap up, I want to leave you, the
listener, with one final connection to ponder
based on the source text. Oh, what's that? Well,
today, Colorado is a pioneer in legalizing and
heavily taxing recreational marijuana. Right,
the modern green rush. Yeah. Generating massive
revenue. Exactly. But the text also points out
that historically, when the mining ore ran out,
towns like Cripple Creek turned to gambling to
survive. Ah. So I invite you to consider, is
the modern green rush of marijuana legalization
just the 21st century version of Colorado's historic
boom and bust cycle? That's a great question.
When the traditional wells dry up, does this
state simply find a brand new resource to pull
from the earth to keep the boom alive? Just a
new cash crop to pull from the dirt. The cycle
never really stops, does it? It just changes
form. It really does. Well, next time you see
a postcard of those pristine, quiet peaks. Just
remember the chaos and brilliant reinvention
it took to build the world sitting right below
them. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.
Keep questioning the myths and, as always, keep
digging into the fascinating layers of history
right in your own backyard.