66 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



In a governmental way the new camp of Denver was situated in 

 Arapahoe County, Kansas. But Arapahoe County had never been 

 organized, and remained only a name until after the legislature of Kansas 

 abolished it in February, 1859.^ The settlers themselves saw from the 

 start that the five hundred miles of trail between the diggings and the 

 territorial capital forbade protection from, as well as interference by, that 

 government, and that their poHtical salvation lay nearer home. They 

 saw that four territorial governments were involved in the Pike's Peak 

 country, and that the country was in itself an economic unit. It was 

 this understanding which pressed upon Congress early in 1859 with a new 

 territorial scheme, and which even earHer than this had produced a 

 spontaneous pohtical activity in the mountain camps. 



The beginnings of Colorado pohtics are to be found in the movement 

 originating in Denver in November, 1858, and culminating in the terri- 

 torial organization of Jefferson in November, 1859. The origin seems to 

 have been in a typical early snowfall that drove the miners into their bins 

 in November, 1858, and by enforcing idleness upon them gave an oppor- 

 tunity for talking pohtics.^ Perhaps two hundred miners were in Denver 

 when the snowfall came, of whom some thirty-five attended a meeting 

 on November 6, and determined to erect a new government for the Pike's 

 Peak country. "Just to think," wrote one of them, "that within two 

 weeks of the arrival of a few dozen Americans in a wilderness, they set 

 to work to elect a Delegate to the United States Congress, and ask to 

 be set apart as a new territory ! But we are of a fast race and in a fast 

 age and must prod along."^ To secure an attention to their demand 

 they chose one Hiram J. Graham to appear in their behalf at Washington, 

 and one A. J. Smith to represent them in the legislature of Kansas.'* 

 The arrival of these men in Omaha seems at once to have confirmed 



'Helen G. Gill, "The Establishment of Counties in Kansas," Kansas Historical Collections, Ylll. 

 452- ■ >• f--«l 



' OvANDO J. HoLLisTER, Mincs o! Colorado (Springfield, Mass., 1867), 17, is responsible for the"! 

 statement that ten inches of snow fell on October 31, 1858. . .,•• Mi 



J Ibid., 18. 



■« Ibid., 90; Smiley, 305, 530; Frank Fossett, Colorado: a Historical, Descriptive, and Statistical 

 Work on the Rocky Mountain Gold and Silver Mining Region (Denver, 1876), 17; Frank Hall, History 

 of the State of Colorado (Chicago, 1889-1895, 4 vols.), I- 208; H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific 

 States, Vol. XX., Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming (San Francisco, 1890), 402. 



