THE PLATTE VALLEY.
From the dawn of history to the present time, civilization has followed
the valleys. From the Garden of Eden which was in the valley of the
Euphrates to modern times the water courses have been the highways of
civilization, and made the Tiber and the Thames, the Rhine and the Rhone
famous in the annals of the world's progress. In our own country this
fact has been especially illustrated. The valley of the Rio Grande del
Norte was the pathway of the Spaniard in his march to the northward, and
it is one of the curious facts of history that, before the Pilgrims had
landed on Plymouth Rock, the adventurous cavaliers of Spain had
penetrated the center of the continent and discovered the sources of the
great river in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado.
It was along the Connecticut and the Hudson, the Delaware and the
Susquehanna, the Ohio and the Mississippi, that the pioneers of the
republic pushed their way westward and planted the civilization which
has enjoyed so substantial and prosperous a growth. And when the pioneer
resumed his westward march to the Rocky Mountains, his trains lay along
the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Platte, thus giving to the valley of
the Platte an historic place in the records of the nation's advancement.
The Louisiana Purchase, within whose boundaries lay the great valley of
the Platte and its tributaries, was completed in 1804, by President
Thomas Jefferson. It was an act of statesmanship worthy of the man who
had drafted the Declaration of Independence, and assured the young
republic a future little dreamed of by the men of that day, but which we
have lived to realize. Two years later, in 1806, Lieut. Zebulon Pike
received an order to explore the newly acquired national possessions,
and to find the headwaters of the Platte River. In pursuance of the
order, Lieutenant Pike marched up the Arkansas to the Fountaine Qui
Bouille, discovered and ascended the great peak which bears his name,
entering the South Park from the present site of Cañon City by the
Current Creek route. Aside from his discovery of the headwaters of the
Platte, Lieutenant Pike's expedition was more largely devoted to the
Arkansas and the Rio Grande than to this valley.
The second expedition up the Platte Valley was ordered in 1819 by John
C. Calhoun, Secretary of War for President James Monroe, and was under
the command of Major Stephen S. Long, of the corps of topographical
engineers. Leaving Pittsburg, Pa., in April, 1819, Major Long proceeded
westward and established his camp near the present site of Council
Bluffs, Iowa, to which was given the name of Engineer Cantonment. Thence
on June 6, 1820, with a number of scientists and a small detail of
regular troops, he marched toward the mountains. On June 30th the party
sighted the magnificent range of the Rocky Mountains, a view of which
burst upon them in the full glory of the morning light. On July 3d they
passed, as Long's annals read, "the mouth of three large creeks, heading
in the mountains and entering the Platte from the northwest." These were
undoubtedly the Cache la Poudre, the Thompson, and the St. Vrain. On
July 5th they camped on the present site of Fort Lupton, and on July 6th
on the present site of Denver, at the mouth of Cherry Creek. Thence the
party followed the valley to the Platte Cañon, and, proceeding southward
along the base of the mountains, returned eastward along the Arkansas.
[Illustration: BUFFALO BILL'S FIRST SITUATION.]
Twenty-two years later, in 1842, came Lieut. John C. Fremont, the
famous pathfinder, who traversed the Blue toward the Platte, reaching
the valley at Grand Island, a portion of the party going up the North
Fork toward Fort Laramie, and the larger part marching up the South Fork
to Fort St. Vrain, which had then been established a number of years,
and had become a noted rendezvous for trappers, hunters, and plainsmen.
The following year the intrepid explorer left St. Louis on his second
expedition, traveling the valleys of the Kaw and the Republican,
reaching the Platte at the mouth of Beaver Creek, and arriving at Fort
St. Vrain on July 4, 1843. I quote the words of Lieutenant Fremont as
prophetic of the future of the valley. "This post," he says, "was
beginning to assume the appearance of a comfortable farm. Stock, hogs
and cattle, were ranging about the prairie. There were different kinds
of poultry and there was the wreck of a promising garden in which a
considerable variety of vegetables had been in a flourishing condition,
but had been almost entirely ruined by recent high water."
Between the dates of the expeditions of Long and Fremont three noted
trading posts had been established along the Platte in the immediate
vicinity of the spot on which we are now assembled. The first of these
was Fort Vanquez, built by Louis Vanquez in 1832, at the mouth of Clear
Creek, then known as Vanquez Fork of the Platte. The next was Fort
Lupton, a portion of whose walls are still standing, and the third was
Fort St. Vrain, built in 1840. These forts, as they were called, were
trading posts at which a large traffic in skins and furs was conducted,
and which became the headquarters of such famous frontiersmen as Kit
Carson, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Jim Beckwourth, and others, who in those
days constituted the vedettes of the civilization of the country. I have
not time to dwell upon their exploits, but I note their names as
indicating that we stand upon historic ground, and that here in this
valley were planted the first germs of the prosperous growth which
to-day enfolds it in every department of its social, industrial, and
commercial life.
In 1847 the Platte Valley became the highway of the Mormons in their
exodus from Illinois to Utah. Two years later its trails were broadened
by the California pioneers en route to the shores of the Pacific to
share in the golden discoveries of Sutter and his companions.
In 1857 came the expedition of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston marching to
Utah to sustain the laws and authority of the United States.
But a greater movement was now organizing to traverse and possess the
valley of the Platte. In the fullness of time the crisis of its destiny
had arrived. The year of 1859 dawned upon a nation fast drifting into
the vortex of a civil war. The irrepressible conflict which for half a
century had been going on between free and slave labor was nearing the
arbitrament of arms, and absorbed all men's minds to the exclusion of
events which were happening on the distant frontier. In the summer of
1858 Green Russell and a party of adventurous prospectors had discovered
gold in Cherry Creek, a tributary of the Platte. The news spread, and
grew as it spread, until the people living along the Missouri, which was
then the frontier of the Republic, became excited over the richness of
the discoveries.
They were ripe for adventure, desperate almost in their determination to
reëstablish the fortunes that had been wrecked by the financial panic of
1857, which had swept with disastrous effect along the entire borderland
of the entire nation. In the spring of 1859 the march of the pioneers
began. The Platte Valley was their grand pathway to the mountains, whose
summits they greeted with exultant joy, and beneath whose protecting
shadows they camped; here to make their homes, here to lay the
foundations of the future State.
Thus in a little over half a century from the date of its purchase by
the Federal Government, the Platte Valley had become the home of
civilized man, and the work of its development begun. As gold was first
discovered in this valley, so was quartz mining first begun on one of
the tributaries in Gilpin County.
The first pioneer's cabin was erected in Denver; the first school-house
was built at Boulder; the first church was consecrated at Denver; the
first colony located at Greeley, and the first irrigating ditches taken
out, all within the Platte Valley. As the valley had been the route of
Major Long and other of the early explorers, so, following in the train
of the pioneer, came first the pony express, then the stage-coach, then
the locomotive and the Pullman car. And it is a fact which I believe has
never yet been published, that the last stage-coach of the great
overland line was dispatched from the town of Brighton to Denver, thus
associating its name with an act, insignificant in itself, but
far-reaching in its importance, when it is remembered that that act
marked the end of our pioneer period and ushered in the new growth of
the railroad era.
We stand to-day at the distance of three-fourths of a century from the
date when the foot of the white man first trod the valley of the Platte.
The names of Pike and Long are perpetuated by the two magnificent peaks
which raise their summits to the clouds and stand as guardians of the
plains below. Fremont lived to see his wildest dreams realized in the
progress of the West, but whatever fame he may have achieved as a
soldier and a statesman, his name will longest be remembered as the
pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains. Wheat-fields now flourish where once
stood the trading-posts of Vanquez and St. Vrain. The trails of the
early explorers and of the pioneers of 1859 are almost obliterated, and
grass is growing upon their once broad and beaten pathways. A happy,
contented, prosperous people possess the land. A great line of railway
now rolls the traffic of a continent along the valley where once the
stage-coach and ox-trains of Russell, Majors & Waddell wended their slow
and weary way. Thriving towns and villages and cities dot the plain, and
reflect in the activity of their commercial life the industrial
development by which they are surrounded.