A USEFUL AND AGREEABLE ADDITION
IT WAS MONDAY, MAY 27, 1861, AND HOTTER THAN A CAST-IRON SKILLET ON A wood-burning stove. Shimmering in the dry, afternoon heat on the flat, barren plains just east of where the prairie abruptly shifts upward and transforms into the Rocky Mountains, the rough-hewn frontier oasis of Denver City was abuzz with excitement and anticipation—the new territorial governor was on his way, scheduled to reach town on that afternoon’s stage.
Handbills had been printed and distributed to many of Denver City’s 2,000 residents, announcing the governor’s arrival and inviting all to a welcoming reception at the Tremont House, one of the town’s finer hostelries, at the corner of Front and Blake Streets. Men stationed on rooftops and along the wagon road that paralleled the South Platte River on its lazy journey to Julesburg, 200 miles to the northeast, kept a sharp lookout. Finally, late in the afternoon, a dust cloud was spied on the far horizon and the cry went up: “The coach is coming!”
The word quickly spread throughout the town, and merchants, miners, and ladies alike scurried to put on their best hats, brushed the dust from their clothing, and began streaming toward the Overland Express Stage depot at Jim McNassar’s Planter’s House, a whitewashed, two-story hotel at the corner of Blake and G Streets.
Among the throng was Mayor Charles A. Cook and a delegation of city and territorial officials trying not to appear nervous. With the war between the states only a month old, all were keenly interested in learning if this new governor was strong enough to resist the Southern sympathizers who were, even now, agitating in the territory and attempting—with a modicum of success—to recruit soldiers for the Confederacy.
Everyone in Denver City, it seemed, was anxious to see and meet this new governor, supposedly a well-bred Easterner personally appointed by President Abraham Lincoln. Rumor had it that he had been a lawyer, a member of the second Frémont expedition that had explored the West, a passionate advocate of America’s doctrine of Manifest Destiny, an Indian fighter, an officer in the war against Mexico, an author, cartographer, geographer, geologist, philosopher, classical scholar, visionary, and bachelor. The rumors would prove true on all counts.
At last, the stagecoach rattled to a stop in front of the Planter’s House, and the four-horse team, lathered from the journey, stomped and snorted in the afternoon sun. It was a full coach, loaded with nine stiff and sweating passengers, including Colorado’s new surveyor general Francis M. Case, and Eli M. Ashley, Case’s chief clerk.
The door swung open and out stepped a six-foot-tall, forty-five-year-old man with dark brown hair, a neat, close-cropped beard, and penetrating, hazel eyes. His name was William Gilpin, and he was the first governor of the new territory called Colorado. Had he been exhausted from the long, jolting trip, or discouraged by the fledgling, treeless town he found clinging precariously to its patch of barren land a million miles from nowhere, it would have been understandable. But he looked around at the crowd beaming at him, applauding him, and he humbly doffed his hat. Although he had never seen Denver City before, he felt as if he had come home.1
The great maps of the United States hanging in the Washington, D.C., office of the honorable Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Secretary of War in the early months of 1861, conveyed an impression of the eighty-four-year-old republic being an incomplete work of art. Towns and cities from Maine to Florida, and from the Eastern seaboard westward as far as Missouri, dotted the maps. A spider-web of lines connected the dots, a graphic representation of railroads with such names as Baltimore & Ohio, Orange & Alexandria, New York & Erie, Nashville & Chattanooga, Boston & Albany, Richmond & Danville, and scores more. At the northwest corner of Missouri, the nation seemed to abruptly end, just as the line indicating the Hannibal & St. Joseph Rail Road terminated at St. Joseph.2
William Gilpin, first governor of Colorado Territory, ca. 1862. (Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, F-643 #10025405)
Beyond Missouri on the maps lay a great void. West of Iowa and Missouri was a large, horizontal space labeled “Kansas,” which had become a state on January 29, 1861. Above Kansas was Nebraska, an immense area extending northward to Canada and encompassing the space that would later be divided into Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, and part of Colorado. The area south of Kansas that later would be known as Oklahoma bore the inscription “Indian Territory,” for there the Federal government had been attempting for decades to relocate tribes from the East.
Some 2,000 miles west of Washington, a jagged line of mountains slashed southward from the Canadian border to Mexico. A handful of lonely military outposts—wind-blown forts with names like Breckinridge, Buchanan, Craig, Defiance, Fillmore, Garland, Larned, Leavenworth, Mann, McLane, Stanton, Thorn, Union, Wise, and Yuma—stood guard across the vast space.3 Here, too, in this great wilderness, a meager assortment of white settlements managed to withstand the elements, the harshness of frontier life, and the danger posed by warlike Indian tribes. Among these settlements were the old Spanish towns of Albuquerque, Tucson, Santa Fé, and, to the north, the new towns of Pueblo City, Colorado City, and Denver City.
Before 1858, Denver City did not exist. But that year the electrifying news of gold flakes sparkling in the clear streams of Colorado soon spread, and the rush was on. Men came in droves to stand nearly shoulder to shoulder with large, round pans to scoop water and silt from streambeds in hopes of finding a few particles of gold—a sure sign that great, unseen deposits of the metal were bleeding from the rocks into the waterways. A further discovery of gold to the west of Pikes Peak later that year triggered even more excitement for gold, and tens of thousands of men sold all their worldly possessions in order to head west and seek their fortune. More than one covered wagon bore the painted inscription, “Pikes Peak or Bust!”4
Western United States, ca. 1855–1860.
To feed the national hunger for gold, which sold then for the extravagant sum of eighteen dollars an ounce, the mountains and hills and streams and gulches west of Denver City were alive night and day with the sounds of pick on stone, of blasting powder thumping deeply underground, of hammers nailing together sluice boxes and shaft houses and temporary towns even more boisterous and untamed than Denver City—all for the fabulous wealth that would be theirs if only the next shovel or pan-full of ore brought indications that they had struck the mother lode.
Gold miners, of course, required vast amounts of food, lumber, nails, hammers, blasting powder, picks, shovels, whiskey, and a thousand other things. It wasn’t long after the first discoveries were made that, on a few square miles just east of the foothills of the Rockies, at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, hundreds of merchants went into business selling all the supplies the miners would need in their pursuit of gold. The settlers named the rough-hewn place first St. Charles, then, on November 22, 1858, changed it to Denver City, in honor of James Denver, then governor of Kansas Territory.5
Denver City, as photographed in the early 1860s. The Rocky Mountain News building is seen at right. The Tremont House, scene of William Gilpin’s official welcoming reception, is visible at left. The buildings are on stilts because of the frequent flooding of nearby Cherry Creek. (Denver Public Library, Western History Collection)
In the short span of three years, Denver City, on the high plains one mile above sea level, had sprouted weedlike from the barren confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte—from 300 flimsy tents and crude log cabins in the spring of 1859 to a population of more than 2,000. Once one of three tiny towns struggling for supremacy, Denver City was now a prosperous, bustling, Wild West frontier town in a territory called Jefferson.6
The United States in the mid-1800s was a nation built on gold. There were gold bars in every bank vault, gold coins circulating in abundance, and every paper dollar was backed by an equal amount of gold in Federal vaults. Indeed, the preferred medium of exchange in Jefferson Territory was gold dust, not paper currency; every store, shop, saloon, and emporium possessed a brass scale on which bags of gold dust could be weighed and valued.
In 1858, $5 million worth of gold was extracted from Colorado’s mountains, hills, and streams, followed by $8 million the next year; geologists of the day made the sensational estimate that at least $50 million worth of the yellow mineral could be pulled from the territory annually. The lure of all this gold (and, not inconsequentially, vast, untapped reservoirs of silver) brought people from all over the world to stake their claims, work someone else’s claim, or get rich selling to (or bilking) the other two groups. Walking into any saloon, one could hear, over the banging cacophony of the piano, German being spoken, along with Welsh, Irish, and British-accented English.7
The only handicap to the development of the area was the region’s remoteness. In the mid-1800s, a journey from the East to the Rockies could take weeks or months, and surviving such a journey was by no means guaranteed. Traveling into this wild and remote land was a perilous adventure not to be undertaken lightly. Despite the availability of large tracts of farm- or ranchland for pennies per acre, and the gold and silver deposits available for the taking in the mountains, only the hardiest (or foolhardiest, as some opined) would ever embark on such a trip. Using even the most modern of conveyances available—a train as far as St. Joseph, a stagecoach thereafter—the wearying journey from the East to Denver City was a time-consuming undertaking.
But the expenditure of time was the least consideration. Beyond St. Joseph, the comforts of civilization were virtually nonexistent, and the rough prairie accommodations gave new meaning to the word “primitive.” In most places, a rutted road bounced the poor traveler from one stage stop to another. A horse going lame was commonplace. Bridges did not exist; rivers were crossed by raft, where rafts existed, or by fording—when the depth and current permitted. And everywhere lurked dangers. Massive herds of stampeding buffalo could be encountered on the plains without warning; mosquitoes swarmed in numbers too enormous to count; and rattlesnakes were a constant hazard. Savage blizzards, from October through April, lashed the open spaces, blinding horses and oxen and exposing coach drivers to the bitterest of winds and bone-numbing temperatures.
Crossing the Great Plains during the summer was also no picnic. Searing heat, tornadoes, and lightning-laden thunderstorms—along with raging, wind-whipped prairie fires—often brought tragic ends to many brave souls. Except for groves of cottonwoods hugging the banks of streams, few trees offered shelter from the broiling sun and, in many areas, there was no water for miles; and when water was found, it was often brackish or poisonous.
Then, of course, there were the Indians. In the latter part of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth, the sight of a white person west of the Missouri River was considered by many Native Americans to be a curiosity. In the beginning, a handful of trappers and traders moved easily among the tribes, causing little concern. But, by the 1850s, the novelty had worn off, and the whites were often seen as invaders and threats to the natives’ way of life—fair game for any roving band of Indian warriors defending their territory. Many a wagon train met its doom in the middle of nowhere, the horses, livestock, and household possessions stolen; the wagons burned; the men, women, and children killed, scalped, mutilated.8 Many graves, or piles of sun-bleached bones, marked the trails westward.
To protect the white immigrants from the land’s original inhabitants, the Federal government erected forts. With the forts came long columns of blue-coated soldiers with cannon and musket, determined to claim by force this territory for the Great White Father in Washington, D.C. Treaties were signed and quickly broken by the government. Angry and frustrated, the tribes struck out violently against the invaders. Keeping the peace in the West was an annoying and an increasingly expensive proposition for Washington, especially as the likelihood of war between North and South loomed ever larger.
To Lincoln’s cabinet, the Colorado and New Mexico Territories presented a conundrum. They were too far away for the hard-pressed Federal government to provide aid in the event of a Confederate invasion, yet too valuable in their mineral resources to ignore. And to the average Denverite of the day, the rest of civilization might as well have been on the moon. In 1862 no trains puffed into Denver City; it would be another eight years before rails connected the town with the outside world.9 The telegraph line from the East ended at Julesburg in the northeast corner of the territory; when telegrams arrived for anyone in Denver City or the mountain communities, they were bundled up and brought to town by Overland Express stagecoach,10 a journey that took two days, sometimes longer, depending on the weather and the Indians.11 Cut off as they were from “the States,” the citizens of Denver City nevertheless managed to remain as well informed about events elsewhere as was possible. Two newspapers cranked out editions filled with information that was weeks old but nevertheless still news to the residents of this region.12
Although officially pro-Union, Colorado Territory was a bubbling cauldron of secessionist talk, and tensions between the North and South factions were palpable in Denver City and the mining towns. The territory’s residents came not only from Europe, Britain, Illinois, New York, Vermont, and California, but also from Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, and the Carolinas—places where slavery was the norm. Some of the Southern immigrants even envisioned the new territory becoming a slave state. Fights with fists and guns were not infrequent between those who held opposing political views. One newspaper reported, “Nearly a third of the settlers out here had come from the Southland and were ‘touched by the secesh,’ as the phrase ran. Utah was frankly for the Confederacy, while the [west] coast states wanted to set up a little union of their own.”13
A military force able to keep the peace in the territory was clearly required. At the beginning of 1861, two companies of militia—the Jefferson Rangers, under Captain H.H.C. Harrison, and the Denver Guards, commanded by the town’s postmaster, William Park McClure, were Colorado’s only military forces. But this was not a satisfactory solution; McClure was an avowed Southern sympathizer.14
One thing and one thing only made the Rocky Mountain region and Colorado Territory impossible for Washington to ignore entirely—gold. And, with the coming war between the states, Colorado’s gold gained an even greater luster, for the governments of both the North and South knew they would require vast treasuries in order to purchase the cannon, muskets, ammunition, wagons, horses, harnesses, hardtack, uniforms, flags, bugles, surgeons’ saws, and all the other necessary accouterments of war.
Shortly after news of the opening shots at Fort Sumter reached Denver City late in April 1861, secessionists stirred Colorado Territory even before Gilpin had arrived to assume his new post. On April 24, to celebrate the bombardment of Fort Sumter, a pair of Southern sympathizers named Wallingford and Murphy raised a Confederate flag above their general store on Larimer Street. A full-scale riot between pro-North and pro-South factions was averted only when the owners were persuaded by the mob that it would be in the best interests of their health to take the flag down.15 The next evening, in response to this event, fully half of Denver City’s population turned out for a pro-Union bonfire rally in front of the Tremont House on Front Street, an act which inspired similar demonstrations throughout the territory. The rebels quickly got the message that Colorado was firmly for the Union and little more public agitation was seen. But the incident was worrisome nonetheless.16
Clearly, however, a trained militia was needed in the territory. On May 20, 1861, a little over a month after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Henry M. Teller, a young lawyer in the mining town of Central City, west of Denver City, wrote to Secretary of War Cameron, asking for authority to raise a regiment of troops in Colorado. Cameron, beset with problems closer to Washington, rejected Teller’s request, no doubt because he knew that once Gilpin reached Colorado, the new governor would assume responsibility for the raising of troops.17
William Gilpin, the man who had come to save Colorado for the Union, was a true Renaissance man. Many considered him one of the most remarkable Americans of his time. Born on October 4, 1815,18 in the house that once served as Marquis de Lafayette’s headquarters on the Revolutionary War battlefield of Brandywine, near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, William was the youngest of Joshua and Mary Gilpin’s seven children. This refined and wealthy Quaker family could trace its lineage back to a member of William the Conqueror’s army in 1066, was distantly related to George Washington, and counted Andrew Jackson as a family friend.19
Young William quickly showed he possessed a studious mind and an adventurous spirit. Because of the paucity of good schools in America at the time, his parents sent him to England, where he studied in Yorkshire and Liverpool from ages twelve through fourteen. While in England, he developed a lifelong fascination with that most revolutionary invention of the Industrial Age—the steam locomotive. Returning to America with the fire of knowledge burning deep within him, William voraciously devoured any text that he could find, especially if it contained references to trains, travel, and military campaigns.20
In 1831, fifteen-year-old William was admitted as a junior to the University of Pennsylvania. Learning came easily for him, and his prodigious intellect quickly absorbed the writings of DeTocqueville (another family friend), Shakespeare, and classical authors such as the Roman historian Tacitus, whose works William could read and recite in the original Latin.21
Despite his peaceable Quaker upbringing, he had acquired, apparently through Andrew Jackson’s tales of exploits on the battlefield, an interest in things military. His family moved to Delaware and, in August 1833, after graduating from Penn, he set about obtaining an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. On July 1, 1834, William was admitted to West Point. Other classmates would distinguish themselves as officers in the upcoming, as-yet-unforeseen Civil War—men such as Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (who would receive the surrender of Fort Sumter and who would, as second-in-command of the Army of Northern Virginia, win the First Battle of Bull Run); Irvin McDowell (who would lose the First Battle of Bull Run to Beauregard); and Lewis Armistead (who would fall, mortally wounded, during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg).22
Once a cadet passed the entrance examination, he spent the rest of the summer engaged in military exercises—learning how to march, handle weapons, pitch tents, and build rudimentary defensive works. Rigorous academic classes began in early September, but the military instruction never ended and the routine never varied. Bugles announcing reveille commenced at dawn, followed by roll call, cleaning of the barracks and personal equipment, a brief study period, breakfast, guard mount, and parade. Lectures, study, and recitations in French spanned the hours from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon, followed by lunch and recreation. Classes then resumed and continued until four, when it was time for more drill and another parade before bugles sounded retreat. A half hour was allocated for supper, which was followed by more study time. Lights were extinguished at nine-thirty and upper classmen made bed checks of the plebes, who slept on thin mattresses on the cold floors.23
At the academy, young Gilpin’s naïve dreams of a glorious military career were brought down to earth by the school’s stifling discipline, which was more than his restless, adventuresome spirit could bear. He was bored and unhappy with a curriculum that included French and mathematics (in which he was only an average student) but little in the way of tactics, and so he submitted a request for resignation from the academy. The exact reasons for his resignation are hazy. On January 28, 1835, in a letter to Secretary Lewis Cass, young Gilpin wrote, “I enclose a consent which I have received from my father, & beg you will accept this resignation of my appointment as a Cadet, which I offer in obedience to his wishes, & with my own consent.”24
Leaving West Point in February 1835, William moved to Philadelphia to study law, but his hunger for adventure resumed its gnawing. With America in a brief state of peace, even with the Indians, he looked about for a war that could use his youthful, martial enthusiasm. He soon learned that a 10,000-man force was forming in England for the purpose of intervening in an internal struggle in Spain.25 Sailing to Liverpool, William hoped to secure a commission in the British Foreign Legion but was dismayed to learn that his services were not needed. While cooling his heels overseas, he heard of an Indian uprising in Florida.
The army of the United States had defeated the Seminoles in battle in 1818 and, in 1832, had ordered the Seminoles to sell their lands and move west to Indian Territory. But the Seminoles rebelled and began waging war on the whites in Florida. The Second Seminole War—a conflict that would last seven years—broke out in December 1835. William decided to return to America and see if family friend Andrew Jackson, now president, could get him into the fray. Jackson could—and did.
Arriving back home in March 1836, William obtained a commission as a second lieutenant an elite unit—the Second Regiment of Dragoons.26 But, instead of sending Lieutenant Gilpin to fight Seminoles in Florida, the army sent him to St. Louis, Missouri, to recruit troops from the western frontier. It was a fateful appointment. Although unsuccessful as a recruiter, Gilpin became captivated by the promise of the wild, unexplored lands beyond the sunset and made a pledge to someday return and explore the area more fully.27
In October 1836, he was posted to Kentucky, promoted to first lieutenant, and in December ordered to escort a boatload of new recruits from Louisville to New Orleans Barracks for training and eventual deployment to Florida. Lieutenant William Gilpin was then reassigned to Florida, where he was named commander of Company H of the Second Dragoons. Instead of battle, however, his company was ordered to guard Indians and runaway slaves. Bored with this assignment, he resigned his commission and, in April 1838, returned to St. Louis to establish a law practice.
Gilpin hung out his shingle, but his restless nature could not be satisfied by such dry duty and he began casting about, looking for new worlds to conquer. Late in 1839, he became the editor of a prominent St. Louis newspaper, the Missouri Argus, a paper whose editorial position strongly supported the powerful Missouri senator, Thomas Hart Benton. Benton had made a deep impression on the young Gilpin, who soon discovered that the senator was an even more ardent champion of the West than he was. Both men shared a dream that one day the West would be the cultural, financial, industrial, political, and intellectual center of the United States. Gilpin’s interest in politics grew and he was soon made Secretary of the Missouri General Assembly. Then tragedy struck. The publisher of the Argus was killed in a brawl by a Whig named William P. Darnes, whom Gilpin had attacked in an editorial. Realizing his words had been responsible for his friend’s death, Gilpin resigned as editor in May 1841 and moved across the state to Independence, bought a small cabin, and sought to reestablish his law practice there.28
Independence, Missouri, in 1841 was truly the edge of white American civilization. It was here that both the Oregon and Santa Fé Trails had their eastern termini. The sodden streets were full of heavily laden wagons and pioneers, trappers, and other adventurers preparing for, or returning from, their journeys to the West. It was inevitable that Gilpin would spend much of his free time in the company of explorers who regaled him with exciting tales of the truly Wild West.29
Although white men had been exploring the West since at least the 1730s, during the first half of the nineteenth century the number of expeditions crisscrossing the continent west of the Missouri River was increasing. The most famous of these was the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805–1806, followed by expeditions made by Zebulon Pike (1806), Wilson Hunt (1812), Jim Bridger (1824), and numerous others.30 In June 1842, another trek, this one under the command of twenty-nine-year-old John Charles Frémont, a second lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, prepared to depart Westport Landing on the Missouri and follow the Oregon Trail to the Pacific. The mission of this first Frémont expedition (three more would follow) was to accurately survey and map as much of the virgin territory as possible. Luckily for Frémont, one of the expedition’s most ardent supporters was Senator Benton, whose seventeen-year-old daughter the lieutenant had married a year earlier.31
For the next two months, the Frémont party headed westward across the hot plains of Kansas until it reached the Rocky Mountains, near present-day Grand Teton National Park. The expedition returned to Missouri in October 1842, where plans for a second, more extensive expedition were formulated—one that would involve William Gilpin.32
Gilpin soon learned from his mentor Benton about this second expedition and secured an invitation to join it. Excited, Gilpin closed his struggling law practice, borrowed a hundred dollars from a friend, sold his law books, bought a horse named Flash, and at the end of May 1843, looking every bit the mountain man with his dark hair cascading to his shoulders, journeyed from Independence to Westport Landing to take part in the adventure.33 Presenting to Frémont a letter of introduction from Benton, Gilpin asked to join the group and was accepted. In his memoirs, Frémont noted, “We were joined here by Mr. William Gilpin of Missouri, who, intending this year to visit the settlements in Oregon, had been invited to accompany us, and proved a useful and agreeable addition to the party.”34
Fascinated by geography and geology, Gilpin took copious notes on the natural features of the land through which the group traveled and the abundant minerals they unearthed—notes that would form the basis of several books on geography and geology that he would later write.35 In late June, the group approached the Rocky Mountains, which stretched from horizon to horizon across their path; camped near the site of what would one day be Denver; marched south past Pikes Peak; and continued on close to the confluence of the Arkansas and Fountain Rivers, where Zebulon Pike had set up camp during his expedition in late 1805–early 1806 (today known as Pueblo).36
Frémont originally had planned to travel a southerly route to the Pacific but, after learning that the Mexicans were making trouble for foreigners, the lieutenant decided to take the Oregon Trail instead, detouring far enough to explore the environs of the Great Salt Lake.37 Onward the group pressed through what is now Idaho, reaching the Columbia River and Fort Vancouver at the end of October. While Frémont obtained new supplies for the next leg of his journey,38 Gilpin decided not to continue on to California. With winter closing in on the northwest, he elected to remain in Oregon until spring. His interest in creating new communities out of the wilderness was budding and, in early 1845, resulted in the establishment of the town of Linnton, a forerunner of Portland. Then, while wintering at Champeog in the Willamette Valley, he was persuaded by the locals to carry a petition from them to Washington, D.C.—a petition that called for the Federal government to establish Oregon Territory.39
A restored portion of the Oregon Trail near Walla Walla, Washington, in 2004. (Photo by author)
In April 1845, with bags of mail and the petition on his person, he bade farewell to those who had befriended him, mounted Flash, and linked up with parties heading east. Gilpin finally reached Missouri in October. After a journey of nearly sixteen months and 4,500 miles, he had two dollars left to his name. Dirty, ragged, broke, and unemployed, Gilpin sought to restart his life. Behind him had been an adventure of unimaginable proportions; ahead lay only uncertainty.
Moving to Jefferson City, he became involved in Benton’s victorious 1845 senate campaign. The Missouri legislature was in session and, with Benton’s backing, Gilpin was chosen chief clerk. The Oregonians’ petition, however, was burning a hole in his pocket and, once the legislative session ended, he headed for Washington to meet personally with President James Polk and provide him with details of the expedition. It was a propitious meeting, for Polk was the nation’s leading proponent of Manifest Destiny, and Gilpin’s enthusiasm for national expansion bolstered the president’s views. In Washington, Gilpin soon discovered that being a member of the Frémont expedition had turned him into a celebrity of sorts. For over a year, the gifted, articulate Gilpin was a regular fixture in the halls of Congress, lobbying senators and representatives with his impassioned pleas for continued westward expansion and a transcontinental railroad. Even though a coast-to-coast railroad linking the nation together sounded preposterous to many, it was to Gilpin a very real possibility. In fact, his vision was so grand that he thought it entirely possible that a railroad could encircle the world.40 And so compelling was his vision that one historian proclaimed, “It is quite probable that the verdict of posterity will be that the West owes more to William Gilpin than to any other American.”41
In 1846, on the basis of Gilpin’s petition from the Oregonians and another similar one, Polk pressed Congress to adopt most of the provisions and establish a border between the Oregon territory and British-controlled Canada at the 54° 40' parallel, giving rise to the popular battle cry, “Fifty-four forty or Fight!” For months, the Oregon question was hotly debated in the halls of Congress. Although many predicted war with Britain over the proposed boundary, the bill was passed and Polk signed it into law in April 1846.
Gilpin, meanwhile, remained in Washington, where he published his report on the Frémont expedition. His words created a sensation. Inspired by his colorful descriptions of the land, the people, the animals, and the opportunities, America was soon gripped by “Oregon fever”—a fever that was broken only by war with Mexico. Gilpin soon would find himself caught up in the middle of this war—a war in which he would finally achieve the military excitement and glory he had sought for so long.42
1. LeRoy R. Hafen, “The Reception of Colorado’s First Governor,” Colorado Magazine 7:6 (November 1930); Rocky Mountain News, May 28, 1861.
2. George E. Turner, Victory Rode the Rails (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 96.
3. Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 4 vols. (Chicago: Blakely, 1889–1895), 1:18.
4. LeRoy R. Hafen, Colorado and Its People, 4 vols. (New York: Lewis History Publishing, 1948), 1:197; Thomas Noel, Buildings of Colorado (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 38; W. B. Vickers, History of the City of Denver, Arapahoe County, and Colorado (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1880), 33.
5. Rocky Mountain News, April 23, 1921.
6. From October 1859 to February 28, 1861, the area now known as Colorado was called Jefferson Territory. Colorado Legislative Assembly; Hafen, Colorado and Its People, 197.
7. Blanche Adams, “Colorado in the Civil War” (Masters thesis, 1930, Colorado Historical Society), 2–3.
8. Hafen, Colorado and Its People, 1:131, 134–137, 151.
9. Jerome C. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver: Times-Sun Publishing, 1901), 1:604; ibid., Semi-Centennial History of the State of Colorado, 4 vols. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1913), 1:604.
10. The telegraph line would not reach Denver City until October 1863. Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 303.
11. Rocky Mountain News, May 17, 1862.
12. Besides being late, the news was often erroneous. For example, on September 18, 1861, the Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain News both reported the death of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, but he remained very much alive until December 6, 1889.
13. Denver Post, July 2, 1916.
14. James H. Baker and LeRoy R. Hafen, History of Colorado, 5 vols. (Denver: Linderman, 1927), 3:957–979; Smiley, History of Denver, 377; J. E. Wharton, History of the City of Denver (Denver: Byers & Daily, 1866), 182; F. Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 1:269.
15. Rocky Mountain News, date unknown but probably April 25, 1861 (Dawson Scrapbook #29, p. 107, Colorado Historical Society [hereafter, CHS]).
16. Rocky Mountain News, April 26, 1861.
17. Milo H. Slater, “An Historical Narrative,” address given for the dedication of Colorado’s Civil War monument, October 9, 1907, Denver, CO (CHS), 17.
18. Thomas L. Karnes, William Gilpin—Western Nationalist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 16–17.
19. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin: A Character Study (San Francisco: History Company, 1889), 5–6.
20. Karnes, William Gilpin, 16–17.
21. Eugene Parsons, “William Gilpin: Colorado’s First Governor,” The Mining American 74:1823 (January 27, 1917): 8–9.
22. United States Military Academy, Proceedings of Academic Board, January 1835.
23. Max L. Heyman, Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General Edward R.S. Canby (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 28–33.
24. United States Military Academy, Engineer Department Letters, 1835.
25. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin, 9–10; Denver Republican, January 21, 1894.
26. Karnes, William Gilpin, 24–28.
27. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin, 9–12; Karnes, William Gilpin, 24–28.
28. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin, 14, 18; Karnes, William Gilpin, 29–69.
29. Karnes, William Gilpin, 72.
30. Frederich S. Dellenbaugh, Fremont and ’49 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914), 11–12.
31. Ibid., 50.
32. Ibid., 53–102.
33. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin, 18.
34. John C. Frémont, Memoir of My Life, 10 vols. (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, and Company, 1886), 3:170.
35. Gilpin file, CHS.
36. Fremont, Memoir of My Life, 3:177; LeRoy R. Hafen, “The Fort Pueblo Massacre and the Punitive Expedition Against the Utes,” Colorado Magazine 4:2 (March 1927).
37. Karnes, William Gilpin, 92–93.
38. Dellenbaugh, Fremont and ’49, 114–178.
39. Karnes, William Gilpin, 111–137.
40. Bancroft, History of the Life of William Gilpin, 28–30; Karnes, William Gilpin, 138–140; Denver Republican, January 21, 1894.
41. Connelley, quoted in Dellenbaugh, Fremont and ’49, 113.
42. Karnes, William Gilpin, 138–140.
