THE TERRITORY OF COLORADO 65 



heart of the "great American desert," which Major Long had described 

 in 1820 as utterly uninhabitable for man, and which men had since 1820 

 been wiUing to take at the word of the explorer. It was this uninviting, 

 uninhabited area which in the fall of 1858 appeared before Congress. It 

 demanded not a slicing-up of existing great territories, but a new group- 

 ing of lands taken out of the crest of the Rockies and in part from every 

 one of the territories of the central and south West. To this area those 

 who advocated the new project gave the name of the Territory of Jefferson. 



Since the discovery of gold in Cahfomia and the rush of the forty- 

 niners along the overland trails there had always been bodies of pros- 

 pectors scattered over the mountain region. Rumors of gold discoveries 

 in the desert triangle had been heard early in the fifties, while the panic 

 of 1857 sent fresh bands of men to try their luck in the great game. In 

 the year 1858 numerous parties were exploring the lands between the 

 Arkansas and the Platte, and the arrival at Omaha on January 5, 1859,^ 

 of several quills filled with gold-dust proved to the Missouri settlers that 

 success had rewarded the prolonged search, and started a new westward 

 movement of large proportions to the Pike's Peak country. 



The city of Denver, named for the governor of Kansas territory, 

 became the settlement around which the Pike's Peak country grouped 

 itself in the winter of 1858-1859. Boulder and Golden, Colorado City 

 and Pueblo became secondary centers, each situated as Denver was, 

 at a point from which trade and travel branched from the great trails 

 and entered the valleys leading to the mining-camps.^ 



As early as June, 1858, the forks of the South Platte and Cherry 

 Creek were being examined by prospectors. As the summer and fall 

 advanced more adventurers appeared ; the names of Montana, Highland, 

 Auraria, and St. Charles came to designate settlements in the vicinity of 

 the forks ; and by November the inclusive name of Denver was heard. 3 



Doc. J2, 43 Cong., 2 Sess., Serial 1164. Lieutenant-Colonel William Gilpin was on July 20, 1847, detailed 

 to a station near the crossing of the Arkansas to keep the peace along the Sante F6 trail. Ex. Doc. i, 

 30 Cong., I Sess., pp. 136, isg. 



' Transactions and Reports of the Nebraska State Historical Society, H. 315. One of the men men- 

 tioned as bringing the gold, Albert B. Steinberger, was elected a delegate to Congress by the Auraria meet- 

 ing of November 6, 1858. He deserted his mission and never reached Washington. His later romantic 

 career in a Pacific kingdom is described in House Ex. Doc. 161, 44 Cong., i Sess., Serial 1691, 125 pp. 



^ An old military traU connecting Fort Union and Fort Laramie ran through some and within easy 

 distance of all these towns. Jerome C. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver, 1901), 229. 



3 The best detailed account of these earliest settlements is found ibid., 200 et seq. 



