THE HISTORICAL OPPORTUNITY IN COLORADO 



By Frederic L. Paxson 



There is great danger lest the teacher of history in the far West 

 should bewail the thousand odd miles that separate him from the source 

 material of his profession, and so overlook the opportunity that lies at 

 his feet. He is too liable to forget that the parallel to the course of 

 his own country has rarely, if ever, been seen; that the external facts 

 of the history of the West show to the thoughtful worker a field of 

 amazing richness, and that the internal facts, so far as they have been 

 exploited, confirm the first impression. The chance to investigate the 

 workings of a civilization which in less than half a century has passed 

 from wilderness through frontier and pioneer conditions to order and 

 wealth is what he ought to see before him. And the opportunity to 

 work out the causes and results in this concentrated life is his historical 

 opportunity. 



It is useless for the student of history in Colorado to mourn over th( 

 absence of great libraries. He may as well admit the fact that the his- 

 torical library is a product of generations, and that, save for two or three 

 working collections of various degrees of incompleteness, such a library 

 is not within his reach. If he be a worker in any field of general history, 

 be it European, mediaeval, ancient, or even American, he must be 

 content with a few secondary authorities. He cannot hope, even with 

 access to all the libraries in the state, to produce a piece of original 

 work that will add anything to the knowledge of the world. But if 

 he admit this fact, and settle down to the belief that no productive work 

 in history can be done in Colorado, he will overlook in the local field 

 a historical opportunity that is hardly to be equaled in the United States. 



The beginnings have been made in the writing of the history of 

 Colorado, but the journalists have thus far monopolized the work, and 

 it is only today that the trained historical scholar is coming to weigh the 

 evidence and record a critical judgment. A small number of general 

 works must be considered by anyone who undertakes to study the 



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