COLORADO is one of the least geographically
homogenous of the United States, ranging from the flat, endless
plains of the east to the colossal mountains of the west. In the
north, Native Americans hunted and trapped in
lush mountain valleys in summer, and returned to the prairies
for the winter; in the south, the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa
Verde grew corn on their isolated mesas and shared in the great
early civilization of the southwest.
Different parts of what's now Colorado accrued to
the US at different times: the east and north were acquired under
the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, while the south
was won 45 years later in the war with Mexico
. (Land grants issued under Mexican rule were honored by the Americans,
which accounts for a still-strong Hispanic influence.) Gold-hungry
Spaniards came through in the sixteenth century, and US Army Colonel
Zebulon Pike ventured into the mountains on an exploratory expedition
in 1806, but the Native American way of life only became seriously
threatened with the discovery of gold west of
Denver in 1858. At that time Colorado was still part of Kansas
Territory; it became a territory in its own right in 1861, and
a state in 1876. The distractions of the Civil War gave the Native
Americans the opportunity to fight back, but they were soon overwhelmed.
From then until the end of the century, Colorado boomed; the quantities
of gold and silver extracted from the mountains did not really
compare with the riches found in California, but they were sufficient
to fuel a rip-roaring frontier lifestyle. At first, too, absentee
landlords attempted to exploit massive ranches
on the plains, but their disregard for conservation ensured that
the droughts and storms of 1886 and 1887 swept away the topsoil.
For the modern visitor, the obvious first port of
call is Denver , at the eastern edge of the Rockies
and the biggest city for six hundred miles. Outside Denver, the
northern half of the state holds the most popular destinations,
starting with the dynamic college town of Boulder and
the spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park
. The majority of the resorts that have made Colorado the continent's
foremost skiing destination snuggle into the
mountains to the west of Denver: Summit County
attracts the most visitors, Vail is considered
best for terrain, and Aspen boasts the glitziest
apr?s-ski scene. The far west of the state stretches onto the
red-rock deserts of the Colorado Plateau. Pikes Peak
towers over the enjoyable city of Colorado Springs
, but the rest of the state's southeast quarter
is mostly agricultural plains. To the southwest untouched
old mining towns like Crested Butte and
Durango stand in the mountains, while Mesa Verde
National Park preserves perhaps the most impressive of
all the cliff cities left by the ancient Ancestral Puebloan civilization.
