COUNTY BOUNDARIES OF COLORADO 205 



western line along the Ute reserve in one hundred and seven degrees.^ 

 The next legislature, the tenth in 1874, was able to take advantage of the 

 cession by the Utes of their San Juan lands, and to create three southwest- 

 ern counties at the expense of Conejos and Lake. The large county of 

 La Plata received on the east a meridian six miles west of the mouth of 

 Lost Trail Creek on the Rio Grande, and on the north a parallel ten miles 

 north of the thirty-eighth parallel,^ both of which boundaries were shortly 

 to give way to more reasonable lines along the obvious summits. Conejos 

 was in the same year forced back of the ninth correction line and the first 

 guide meridian east of the New Mexico principal meridian, while the 

 lands thus surrendered were divided by the New Mexico meridian itself 

 into Hinsdale and Rio Grande. The county of Grand was erected 

 by the same tenth assembly out of that part of the huge Summit 

 north of the Ute reserve and the line between townships Nos. i and 2 

 south.3 



The eleventh legislature, 1876, the last of the territorial series, added 

 San Juan to the southwestern group, taking from La Plata for the purpose 

 its lands north of nine miles south of the tenth correction line, and erecting 

 a mountain line for most of San Juan's eastern boundary.-* The impos- 

 sibihty of the 1861 Conejos-Lake line was by this time clearly seen in that 

 the La Plata range not only did not cross the western boundary of the 

 territory, but did not even connect with the continental divide at the 

 source of the Rio Grande, which the statute called upon it to do. With 

 this legislature the territorial period ended, twenty-six of the counties of 

 Colorado being in existence.^ 



' Act of February 9, 1872 (Sess. Laws, 1872, p. 8i). The state engineer, under act of April 4, 1887 , 

 has determined the summit of Poncha Pass to be "Intersection Peak" as indicated on Sheet VII of F. V. 

 Hayden, Atlas of Colorado (Washington, 1881). {Colorado State Engineer, Fourth Biennial Report, Part I, 

 p. 116.) The court of appeals sustained his ruling in September, 1892 (Gunnison Co. v. Saguache Co. Colo- 

 rado Court of Appeals Reports, Vol. II, p. 412). 



' Act of February 10, 1874 {Sess. Laws, 1874, p. 66). A single act defined the boundaries of the three 

 counties, and in a later section (No. 13) established the tenth correction line as a new boundary between Cos- 

 tilla and Saguache. 



3 Act of February 2, 1874, (.Sess. Laws 1874, p. 71). The mountain boundary of the new Grand left 

 the Snowy Range where it throws off a spur between the Williams' Fork and Blue Rivers, on the west boundary 

 of Clear Creek, and follows the spur range to the township line mentioned. 



♦ Act of January 31, 1876 (Sess. Laws, 1876, p. 58). 



5 The writer is indebted to one of his graduate students, Mr. Frederick Eugene Hagen, for assistance 

 in the preUminary survey of the territorial period. He has, however, based all his conclusions upon a persona 

 examination of the statutes involved. 



