24 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



institution, or in a local school, or in the privacy of his own stifdy, the 

 opportunity is the same. It is the chance to write a history that is 

 yet fresh from the making and that presents its materials close to every 

 hand. 



Particularly in the case of the local schools is the opportunity attrac- 

 tive. For the senior year in the high school the ideal course in history 

 is based on American history and civil government. It is thus possible, 

 in the case of that majority of students whose scholastic education is 

 now in its completion, to fill the mind with the actualities of local life. 

 The mayor and the alderman possess a new interest when the student 

 applies his theory of civics to the workings of his town. And if he thus 

 realize the difference between the theory and practice, he is made thereby 

 the better citizen. The basis of American history is more clearly 

 understood if he identify some of its conditions as they have appeared 

 in the making of his own community. And, fresh from this last year 

 of the high school, he is thrown out into his later world with history and 

 politics as real things, not as shadowy phantoms. From a practical 

 standpoint of public morality, no man who has once learned to look 

 historically upon his local government is likely to place himself in an 

 embarrassing historical attitude. The judgment of the daily press is 

 commonly personal or political — mistaken in either case — but the esti- 

 mate of history must, in the long run of events, be right. 



The student, the teacher, and the man in the street are only just 

 beginning to appreciate the significance of the historical position of 

 Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. "Here, "'writes one of the 

 workers, "is the virgin soil almost untouched by the student or the 

 historian. Here, too, it is possible to study the frontier at close range, 

 and to carry out for states and sections that magnificent line of research 

 work which Professor Turner of Wisconsin and others are doing so 

 admirably for the country as a whole." 



» Professor Thomas K. Urdahi,, in "Introduction" to R.\stall, Cripple Creek Strike 0/ 1893, p. iii. 



