"SMOKEY" JONES

Then came Sublette and his like, and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, the Santa Fé trail, trappers, Indians; and these also, beginning about 1822, would furnish material for romance, were the simple story thereof not romance enough.

Bonneville in 1832 vanished from sight in the Northwest for three years; and many others, among them Irving, Bonneville's historian, sought profit, adventure, or knowledge in the new land. In '42, Frémont, the Pathfinder, on his first expedition pushed out nearly to the site of Denver. And Frémont's travels, the romantic note in them heightened by the presence of Kit Carson, prince of pioneers,—what color they add to our chronicles of exploration! Five times he set forth. Once he camped on the site of Denver, with 160 lodges of Arapahoe Indians near by. Once he nearly perished with all his party in the Sangre de Cristo range.

Kearney's military expedition to Santa Fé at the time of the Mexican War; Gunnison's exploration for a railroad route to the Pacific, in 1853; Marcy's incredible midwinter march from Fort Bridger, across the very backbone of the continent, south to New Mexico; all these were great deeds, and all served to add to that knowledge of the still wild West which brought about its final conquest.

[ THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER, THE PROPER CREST FOR THE COAT-OF-ARMS OF THE WEST.]

To speak feelingly of the Mormon exodus, of that venture into the western wilderness of a few men of our own blood and faith, is to be misunderstood. Some day that flight of a few brave exiles for conscience sake, from their brother men to the heart of a continent, where a relentless nature seemed, with her isolation and her desolation, doubly equipped for cruelty—some day that flight, worthily and justly told, will find a place in history.[15]

The gold seekers of California, who crossed by thousands the land the outline of whose human history we are trying to sketch, these have, perhaps, received their due.

Such, then, in broadest outline, is the background of Denver's history. It is almost depressing to consider how little the outline holds of that recognition element which makes "historic" for us a country, a scene, a person, an event. Here is a wide and wonderful country; here have been done great deeds by brave and true men. Coronado, Escalante, Pike, Lewis and Clark, among explorers; Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, the Bents, Jim Baker, among scouts, trappers, and traders; the names could be multiplied many times. Their deeds are fit to provoke emulation or national pride. But mention of either names or deeds stirs the emotions only of the few. This is inevitable. They are not yet part of universal knowledge. They are not yet types of men or actions, as are Ulysses, Agamemnon, Hampden, and the voyage of the Mayflower. Things are not "historic" until later generations have made them so. Perhaps the dominance of Old World types in literature and art, together with the swift rush of affairs of the passing day, will crowd much of the story of America's development out from the domain of history as known to men at large. If so, the story of the taking by our forebears and our brothers of the great West beyond the Mississippi will always remain as little "historic," as barren in its emotional content, as it is to-day. This were a pity, tho' perhaps best. But even then it would seem proper to suggest, in the bare outline I have drawn, the historic possibilities which lie back of, lead up to, explain, the Denver of to-day.