In its early days Denver had quite a number of Confederate sympathizers. On the 24th of April, 1861, a rebel flag was run up over Wallingford & Murphy's store on Larimer street, but its stay was brief. The first great fire in the consolidated city occurred April 19, 1863, when nearly all the business portion of Blake street--the best business thoroughfare in the city--was wiped out; loss, $250,000. General Grant visited Denver July 1, 1868--the month in which occurred the last Indian outbreak. The first street-car line was opened December 17, 1871, on Larimer and Sixteenth streets. The first free school opened September 6, 1864. The darkest day ever known in Denver's early history was July 12,1866, when the news reached the city that the Union Pacific road could not be built on any of the numerous surveys with her on the route. What is now the very heart of Denver was almost as barren as the middle of the road in 1863 and 1864. Cattle then grazed over much of the town site and very few if any of the lots were fenced. A few rough-board and log shanties had been built south of Curtis and Arapahoe streets, but even such buildings were decidedly scarce, those streets then being on the extreme outskirts of the city. There was not a business house south of Larimer street in 1863, and there was comparatively little business of any kind carried on west of Cherry creek. There was nothing in the shape of a bridge spanning this creek until after the great flood of May, 1864. Bridges were not needed in 1863, for the reason that there was not a drop of water in the bed of the creek. A sort of corduroy roadway had been built through the deep dry, sandy bed of Cherry creek from Blake street across. That portion of the city west of Cherry creek was first known as Auraria, and, for a few years, it was a question as to which place would ultimately be the main town. Denver, however, finally got the ascendency, and it continued to make such rapid strides that it was not long until it absorbed its early and only rival, which ever since has been known as West Denver. From Denver, the grandest picture one can gaze upon is a view of the glorious old Rockies, over 100 miles of which are spread 'Out in plain view west, north and south of the city. In the lan- |
guage of Bayard Taylor, the writer and traveler, "no external picture of the Alps can be placed beside it." April 22, 1859, was the date of issue of the pioneer journal of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News. This great paper, first started as a weekly, was founded by Hon. William N. Byers; but it happened that on the same day, only a little later, there also appeared a rival sheet for journalistic honors, the Cherry Creek Pioneer, issued by a man named Jack Merrick. In reality, Merrick was the first man to reach Denver with a printing-press, but the superior rustling force of workmen connected with the News party enabled them to get out their paper ahead of their rival. The first was the last and only number of the Pioneer ever issued, for, recognizing the fact that two papers were one too many in Denver at that early day, the plant was at once purchased by Thomas Gibson and consolidated with the News. The News was published weekly about eighteen months before it appeared as a daily. It was not the first daily, however, established in Denver, but it was the first one to get the telegraphic news. Its first dispatches were published on the 13th of November, 1860. The "latest news by telegraph" was received on the plains at Fort Kearney when that military post was the western end of the Pacific wire stretched from Omaha. There its dispatches were taken off the wire and placed in a Government stamped envelope, thence carried by the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express, in charge of the messenger or driver, up the Platte valley to its destination, a distance of 400 miles, the time consumed in transit being about four days--considered fast time in the early '60's. Publishing a newspaper under the shadow of the Rockies was subsequently a task that met numerous obstacles. Many a time the fearless frontier editor paid one dollar a pound for blank paper on which to print the News. Often it became necessary to issue on half, and, later, on quarter sheets. When all the white paper in the territory was exhausted, the publishers were obliged to use manila, and, not long afterwards, were forced to bring into requisition a half-dozen colors of tissue paper, which could be printed only on one side. I was a regular subscriber to the daily News the most of 1864, and remember the paper as plainly as if it were only yesterday. A few times it came out printed on tissue, with only a few short columns. That was after |
the Indians had placed an embargo on all commerce of the plains over the Platte Valley route. For 300 miles, and for at least two or three weeks, business of every kind along the line was at a standstill practically paralyzed. It was quite a task in 1859 and 1860, when the paper had just started, for the publishers to get the news. People in the new mining region wanted news from the East, and there was no telegraph line nearer than the Missouri river, over 650 miles away. The nearest post-office was Fort Laramie, over 200 miles distant to the north, on the Salt Lake trail. When the News was being regularly issued as a daily and the Pacific telegraph had reached a point 100 miles west of Fort Kearney, the reports were taken off at Cottonwood Springs; and, still later, at old Julesburg, 100 miles further west, and still 200 miles east of Denver, but for a long time the nearest point where news was received by wire--nearly forty-eight hours away. In the latter part of 1861 the subscription list of the weekly edition of the News had reached 1700, at $5 a year. The daily edition was 700, at $16 per year. Connected with the office was a first-class job-printing outfit. It cost something in Denver for printing in pioneer days. Ordinary business cards, $20 per 1000; one-eight-sheet handbills, $5 per 100; ball tickets, $10 per 100. At that time the News Company owned and published a paper called the Miner's Record, at Tarryall, in the southern mines. They also bad a branch office at Central City, forty-five miles up in the mountains, to which point they ran a pony express three times a week, upon the arrival of the war news per the California Pony express and stage-coach at Denver. By the enterprise of the News Company, the miner and prospector on the summit of the Rockies received the latest news from the seat of war less than four days old. The following appropriate gem appeared in one of the early issues of the News in 1859:
Are sparkling with treasures no language hath told; Where the waves of the river, the spray of the fountain, Are bright with the glitter of genuine gold." On the 15th of December, 1899, the
pioneer paper, started as a little 10 x 12 folio, celebrated
its fortieth anniversary, closing the event with a grand
banquet in the evening, at which a goodly |
 Office of the "Rocky Mountain News," Denver, 1863. |
number of the members of the association known as "The Colorado Pioneers" were present. It was a great event in the history of the paper, and the News closed an editorial which appeared in the paper the next morning as follows: "In extending its greetings and congratulations to the society of Colorado pioneers, whose anniversary was celebrated last evening, the News can do so with all the more heartiness and pride because it has borne, with its members, the burden of pioneer work, and can share with them the honors of pioneer success. As an influential factor in the progress of the city and state it stands without a rival. Its history is their history; its growth is a reflex of their growth; its future is closely bound up with their future, even as its past is linked with the annals of the four decades of Colorado's existence. "The ranks of the pioneers are thinning, and in a few years the last of the founders will have taken his departure over the long trail from which no traveler has ever returned. But they will have left behind them a record of splendid deeds and heroic endeavor which their posterity will forever prize. While many of them may sleep in humble graves, there will be one monument which will be shared by all, and that monument will be the State of Colorado." Colorado is a wonderful state and is making rapid strides. Its greatest railway--the Denver & Rio Grande, the pride of the Centennial state--laid its first rail at Denver July 27, 1871. With the energy and push that have ever characterized this important road, its line was rushed ahead rapidly. Building along the foot-hills at the eastern base of the Rockies, in less than ninety days the neigh of the iron steed was heard in Colorado Springs, under the shadow of Pike's Peak, seventy-five miles to the south. The road did not stop, however, at that point. It was pushed forward to Pueblo, thence up the valley of the Arkansas, and soon the panting locomotive echoed through the grand cañon or royal gorge. A branch of the road was extended southwest from Pueblo over Veta Pass in the later '70's, when it reached the highest point in North America surmounted by a locomotive. The road in 1880 reached Leadville, in its day the greatest lead and silver mining camp on the globe. But there was no stop. It continued to push forward numerous branches. It was the first road in Colorado to cross the continental divide and go into the Gunnison country. It continued to move ahead until it penetrated the rich San Juan and Sari Miguel regions. It was also the first road to reach Cripple Creek, one of the greatest gold mining |
camps on earth. Evidently there were no difficulties so great in building the "baby line" that its enthusiastic projectors could not overcome, for there is not a prominent mining camp in Colorado that is not reached by the Denver & Rio Grande. They have laid the iron bands over the rolling prairies, across the foothills; followed winding streams and gulches; passed roaring cataracts; bored tunnels and spanned precipitous mountain gorges, They have climbed to the summit of a number of the higher Rocky Mountain passes, crossed the "back-bone of the continent," from which can be counted hundreds of towering peaks and cliffs and ranges, innumerable valleys, various streams, countless groves of pine and quaking aspen, and practically no end of the most delightful mountain scenery the sun ever shone upon. The road has penetrated the Black Cañon of the Gunnison for a distance of fifteen miles, in which many miles of granite had to be blasted out for the road-bed. Along portions of this cañon the almost perpendicular walls reach hundreds of feet in height, through which the river rushes like a mighty cataract, presenting to the tourist a section of the grandest and most rugged scenery human eyes ever feasted on. The road was extended westward in the '80's to the Salt Lake valley, and the Mormon capital has in it one of the leading trunk lines eastward. No railroad ever built can surpass the Rio Grande for its varied and lovely scenery. Tourists no longer need cross the Atlantic on the long voyage to Europe, seeking among the Alps Italian skies and charming landscapes. Colorado's sunshine is practically perpetual. The glorious Rocky Mountains, with their wonderful and apparently endless attractions in the way of scenery, far surpass anything ever discovered. In a little more than a quarter of a century the Rio Grande has built a network of road into almost every section of Colorado. Leaving Denver, in a few hours it can mount to an altitude of 10,500 feet, to immense snow-drifts in midsummer, and, in an hour or two from them can drop down to boiling-hot springs, at several thousand feet lower altitude. A feature of the management of the Rio Grande is that it has arranged for tourists a trip so that they can make what is called a "swing around the circle"; in other words, put in a week, if necessary, and make a tour of 1000 miles, taking in on the "circle," with observation cars, many of the prominent towns |
and mining camps. unsurpassed agricultural, fruit and stock regions, and the longest and loveliest stretch of the most picturesque and charming scenery on the globe. The "baby line," as it is known at home, with its thousands of miles of road-bed, surely has grown to be a giant among the Rocky Mountain railways. It is perhaps only a question of time when this wonderful road will have its own through line from Denver westward to the Golden Gate. STAGE CROSSING BIG BLUE RIVER AT MARYSVILLE, KAN. -12 |
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© 1999, 2000, 2001 for the NEGenWeb by Pam Rietsch, Ted & Carole Miller