The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

These divisions of the West embraced in 1854 the whole of the country between California and the states. As yet their boundaries were arbitrary and temporary, but they presaged movements of population which during the next quarter century should break them up still further and provide real colonies in place of the desert and the Indian Country. Congress had no formative part in the work. Population broke down barriers and showed the way, while laws followed and legalized what had been done. The map of 1854 reveals an intent to let the mountain summit remain a boundary, and contains no prophecy of the four states which were shortly to appear.

The West in 1854

Great amorphous territories now covered all the plains, and the Rocky Mountains were recognized only as a dividing line.

For several decades the area of Kansas territory, and the southern part of Nebraska, had been well known as the range of the plains Indians,—Pawnee and Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Apache. Through this range the caravans had gone. Here had been constant military expeditions as well. It was a common summer's campaign for a dragoon regiment to go out from Fort Leavenworth to the mountains by either the Arkansas or Platte route, to skirt the eastern slopes along the southern fork of the Platte, and return home by the other trail. Those military demonstrations, which were believed to be needed to impress the tribes, had made this march a regular performance. Colonel Dodge had done it in the thirties, Sumner and Sedgwick did it in 1857, and there had been numerous others in between. A well-known trail had been worn in this wise from Fort Laramie, on the north, through St. Vrain's, crossing the South Platte at Cherry Creek, past the Fontaine qui Bouille, and on to Bent's Fort and the New Mexican towns. Yet Kansas had slight interest in its western end. Along the Missouri the sections were quarrelling over slavery, but they had scarcely scratched the soil for one-fourth of the length of the territory.

The crest of the continent, lying at the extreme west of Kansas, lay between the great trails, so that it was off the course of the chief migrations, and none visited it for its own sake. The deviating trails, which commenced at the Missouri bend, were some 250 miles apart at the one hundred and third meridian. Here was the land which Kansas baptized in 1855 as the county of Arapahoe, and whence arose the hills around Pike's Peak, which rumor came in three years more to tip with gold.

The discovery of gold in California prepared the public for similar finds in other parts of the West. With many of the emigrants prospecting had become a habit that sent small bands into the mountain valleys from Washington to New Mexico. Stories of success in various regions arose repeatedly during the fifties and are so reasonable that it is not possible to determine with certainty the first finds in many localities. Any mountain stream in the whole system might be expected to contain some gold, but deposits large enough to justify a boom were slow in coming.

In January, 1859, six quills of gold, brought in to Omaha from the mountains, confirmed the rumors of a new discovery that had been persistent for several months. The previous summer had seen organized attempts to locate in the Pike's Peak region the deposits whose existence had been believed in, more or less, since 1850. Parties from the gold fields of Georgia, from Lawrence, and from Lecompton are known to have been in the field and to have started various mushroom settlements. El Paso, near the present site of Colorado Springs, appeared, as well as a group of villages at the confluence of the South Platte and the half-dry bottom of Cherry Creek,—Montana, Auraria, Highland, and St. Charles. Most of the gold-seekers returned to the States before winter set in, but a few, encouraged by trifling finds, remained to occupy their flimsy cabins or to jump the claims of the absentees. In the sands of Cherry Creek enough gold was found to hold the finders and to start a small migration thither in the autumn. In the early winter the groups on Cherry Creek coalesced and assumed the name of Denver City.

The news of Pike's Peak gold reached the Missouri Valley at the strategic moment when the newness of Kansas had worn off, and the depression of 1857 had brought bankruptcy to much of the frontier. The adventurous pioneers, who were always ready to move, had been reënforced by individuals down on their luck and reduced to any sort of extremity. The way had been prepared for a heavy emigration to the new diggings which started in the fall of 1858 and assumed great volume in the spring of 1859.