[ FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE IN DENVER.]

It is 1857; the country has become vaguely known, many have crossed it; the Mormons have taken possession of the Salt Lake basin; from the mountains across the plains there float back rumors of gold; and the region which has been simply a desert to be crossed begins to be a region to be explored, perhaps to be settled. Who first found gold it is idle to inquire. A party of Cherokees from the gold regions of Georgia were perhaps the first to get traces on the Platte. Certain men of Lawrence, Kansas, prophets perhaps, boomers probably, certainly addicted to the town-site habit, and abounding in hope, went up the Arkansas in 1858; tried to start a town on Monument Creek under the shadow of Pike's Peak; wearied soon of waiting for a population which did not come, and crossed the divide north to the Platte; staked out a town, Montana, on that stream a few miles above the site of Denver, and disbanded. Of this party a few moved down the Platte to the mouth of Cherry Creek, and there in the bottom, among the cotton-woods, just where the old military road crossed the creek, laid out the town of St. Charles. Another party, from Iowa, in the same year, settled across the creek on its west side and soon laid out a town and called it Auraria. Then came another party over the divide from the Arkansas, found the St. Charles town-site promoters were absent, saw the city that was to be, jumped the site, and organized a company to build a town thereon to be called Denver in honor of the then Governor of Kansas. And so, in the winter of 1858-59 Denver found itself, on what proved to be "Section 33 and the west half of section 34, in township 3 south of range 68 west of the 6th principal meridian." How fatal to the romantic element in the beginnings of the Western city are the transit and the chain! What can there be of mystery or poetry in "Sec. 33 and W. 1/2 of Sec. 34, Tp. 3 S. of R. 68 W. 6th P.M."?

Denver was a rival of Auraria. Her supremacy was settled early in 1859 by thirty wagons which came up the Platte and unloaded their merchandise on the Denver side of Cherry Creek. In the spring of 1859 a large company, perhaps 1000, were already camped in and about the new towns. The Pike's Peak excitement became intense. A new gold fever was on. Mr. William N. Byers reached Denver April 21, 1859, with a printing outfit and issued the first number of the first paper printed in Colorado, April 23d. On his way across he met the returning tide. Report says 150,000 started that spring across the plains; 50,000 turned back; 100,000 went on to the mountains; not over 40,000 of them stayed. The early months of 1859 were troublous times. Foolish, reckless gold seekers, led West on half-knowledge, tried to lay the blame for their own folly on the shoulders of others. Gold in paying quantities was as yet far from common. Horace Greeley crossed the plains in July, looked over the ground with care, reported favorably on the country in the Tribune, and, in good local phrase, "gave Denver the best advertisement she ever had."

The city, now under way, attained little importance until after 1870. Rival trade centres attracted attention. Mining camps scattered through the mountains drew most of the population. After the Leadville excitement in 1878 and 1879, it rose in 1880 to 35,000, by fairly steady growth to 106,000 in 1890, was checked by the panic and hard times about 1893, and yet rose to 133,000 in 1900.

[ FACSIMILE LETTER FROM WM. N. BYERS, THE FOUNDER OF THE "ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS."]

Once established as the leading distributing point of the mining regions of the New West the city's growth was assured, and followed in the main the lines of many other Western cities. Peculiar to itself were a few incidents due to its position, to ignorance of the climate, its isolation and the difficulty of extending Eastern railways to so remote a point. Early in 1863 a great fire destroyed much of the business portion of the city. The summer following, the plains were burned by a terrible drought. The barrenness of the wide stretches about the city was intensified. To this day the sun-burnt plains of midsummer sweep up to Denver's very door-yards, mock at the blue sky above them, and speak unutterable things of hunger, thirst, and death. In the early '60's it was easy to imagine that they spoke in earnest. Then came a winter, cold beyond all experience. Many suffered. Cattle died. The pride some had felt over the balminess of previous winters was forgotten. With early spring, Cherry Creek, the miserable, despised bed of sand which crept through the town, scorned as a possible stream and used for building sites over all its wide bottom, rose in fury, rolled down from the divide, swept away the cheap bridges that simply served to aggravate the flood, killed twenty persons, and destroyed nearly a million dollars' worth of property. Nor was this the end of troubles. For in 1864 the Indians planned a general massacre, killed a few people near Denver, destroyed stage stations, cut off communication with the East, and left Denver unspeakably alarmed and with only six weeks' supply of food.

[ PROSPECTING PARTY, RICO, COLORADO, 1880.]

In these first years gold seemed the one excuse for the white man's presence in Colorado. Several million dollars were taken out from easily worked placer mines before 1863. The supply then seemed exhausted. All efforts to get the gold from veins were ineffectual. Millions were spent by the overzealous in machinery and mills not adapted to the country's needs. But over this, as over all other obstacles, the triumph was sure; and by 1871 new and proper processes of mining and ore reducing had been successfully adopted.

The fertility of Colorado soil under irrigation was not realized fully for nearly a decade after the founding of Denver. But before 1870 the agricultural possibilities were demonstrated; the cattle industry continued to thrive; and the region north of Denver lying under the several streams which issue from the mountains within sight of the city began to grow into the garden spot it now is, and to lend stability to Denver's factors of growth.

The Union Pacific reached the city via Cheyenne in June, 1870, and the Kansas Pacific soon after. Of that wonderful railway to whose growth Denver owes so much, the Denver & Rio Grande, the first rails were laid in 1871.