New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1865-09-07
COLO ADO.

tllS young Territory, dlttI t"lOo iciuo'"5 =" Wv
so, have voted to come into the Union as State,
under the conditions prescribed in an enabling
act of the late Congress. Her immaturity and
aversion to saddling herself thus early with
the expense of State government, have hither-
to deferred her; possibly, the exemption OF Ter
lritores from drafts to fill the Union armies,
may have disposed some of her citizens to wait.
But. however caused, her reluctance is at length
overcome, and COLORADO will soon be officially
proclaimed the thirty-Seventh among the States
composing our Union.
Her history is soon written. Though prob
ably visited by the Spanish explorer, Vasquez
de Coronado, so early as 1910; traverSed by
Pixies expedition, dispatched by President Jciicr-
son in ISO2; by Longs, twenty years later; and
| BY Fremont's, after further interval of twenty
years, this region remained entirely unpeopied
by Whites save few scattered and vagrant
hunters or trappers Except that few small
hamlets and their neighboring ranches origin
ally and properly belonging to New-MeXico,
have been included within its purely arbitrary
Ilimits) until the Summer of 1853, when few
adventures, who had mined in Georgia or Call
forna. and fought in Kansas, were drawn west
ward to the Rocky Mountains by reports that
Gold had been washed from their streams.
They Travelled up the Arkansas (the most direct
and inviting of the rivers that run eastward from
those mountains and thence by Pixies Peak,
(the highest in what is now C0l0rad0,) along
the eastern base of the chain as far as the Chcro-
kee trail (half way between the two Plattes,)
thence returning to where Cherry Creek
falls into the South Platte, where their search
for gold had been most hopefully rewarded, and
now the City of Denver Digging and panning
in the beds and banks of the many creeks which
here issue from the Mountains, or selling each
other lots in their new city, they managed to
subsist through the Winter, and in the follow
ing May, Q559,) their perscverng quest was
rewarded By the discovery Of unmistakable gold
in the ravne Of Vasquez Fork or Clear Creek,
twenty miles within the mountains and twice so
far from Denver though then only accessible
lby far more devious and difficult
way over many hight, through
many deep ravine. Here (in 50 Gregory Dig
gngs," now Central City, y we found nearly
two thousand impromptu mners-most of them
fresh arrivals from "the States, early in
June Of that year; while Green Russell, with
his Georgian party, had made another strike,
three or four miles south-westward. Hundreds
more have since been found on either side and
in almost every depression of the Rocky
Mountain chain; but Denver remains the
emporium of Colorado, and the Gregory Dig
gngs and their vicinity perhaps as produc-
tive as any other. To-day, there are probably
at least Fifty Thousand Whites in Colorado;
some of them farming or herding cattle on val
| lev "ranches;" but Gold Mining is the main
employment, the Indictment and support OF
every other Close the mines and washings to-
morrow, ignore their existence, and Colorado
would soon relapse into its savage solitude SO
recently diSpelled.
For the surface of the new State ranges from
4 800 to 1000 feet above that of the oceans; so
that the South Platte the Arkansas, the del
even a branch Ofthe Sweetwater with thousand
tributaries, have here their sources. Yet though
several peaks are crested with eternal snow, and
every ravine has its creek or runnel drOuth is
prevailing sco'rge. Even within the gate
ways of the mountains whence issue perennial
streams, and though light showers are not very
nirequent, the erased hillsides are parched and
brown throughout the Summer and Fall; while
on the plains at either side, irrigation is essen
tial TO the securing Of crops. Grass grows lux
uriantly for some miles from the Mountains;
but the arid winds soon dry up the
smaller streams and diminish the larger,
until, at forty or fifty miles distance,
sterility begins; and not tree is seen, save
n few miserable cottOnwoOds, thinly skirting
the perennial water-courses, and, very rarely, a
stunted yellow pine cresting some CRASHES
sand-bank, till reach the eastern boundary Of
the new State long. l02 W. of Greenwich. II
is much the same westward Of the Rocky
Mountains-only dryer and more sterile-but
the face of the country is there more rugged,
and the streams consequently hioio HOq"'"'
and copious. Colorado will always want Flour
and Pork from her Eastern sisters, though she
may ultimately grow her own Beef and Mutton
Colorado is about 400 miles from east TO
west by $50 FROM north " south. with an area