Colorado | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

“On April 12, 1861, the Civil War began with a Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter. One month later, at the age of 31, George Edgar Buss enlisted in New York’s 14th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company F, signing up for two years of service.”

“In 1863, when he was mustered out, he re-enlisted for a three year term, this time in a cavalry unit. The war ended before his second tour of duty was finished, so he was sent to Fort Collins, a small military outpost along the Overland Trail in the northern part of the Colorado Territory.” (Dunn, Northern Colorado History)

His wife Amelia traveled to Colorado in 1866 “[T]he family’s first winter was exceedingly difficult. Amelia kept a diary of her first year in Colorado. In it she tells of one of her nearest neighbors, Mrs. Jesse Sherwood, coming to visit and saying, ‘I really pity you in coming here.’” (Dunn, Northern Colorado History)

During the 1800s, the U.S. Government and other companies built forts along the Oregon, California and Mormon Trails to protect the emigrants traveling west and to also provide supplies for these wagon trains. Forts and outposts that were built along the Overland Trails in the States of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. (NPS)

“British, Canadian, French, Spanish, and American forts were distributed from the Prairie Provinces to West Texas and from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, although not evenly and not all having a strictly military purpose.”

“Broadly defined, Great Plains forts [in the rolling grasslands and agricultural land that slopes gently eastward from the Rocky Mountain foothills to the Kansas border] fell into two groups. Forts of the first group were places from which to carry on commerce, a staging area for traders of furs and robes. Forts of the second group, detailed here, were places from which to execute war, a staging area for soldiers.” (Plains Humanities)

“Fort Collins was founded in 1864 as a military fort called ‘Camp Collins.’ The camp was named by Gen. James Craig to honor Lt. Col. William Oliver Collins, who commanded the Ohio Cavalry troops headquartered at Fort Laramie. Soldiers from Kansas were originally sent to the area in 1862 to guard the Overland Stage Line and protect the Cherokee trail.”

“North of Fort Collins, U.S. Route 287 follows the path of the Overland Trail north to Laramie. West of Laramie the Overland Trail route was closely followed by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 and the Lincoln Highway and Interstate 80 in the 20th century.” (Visit Laramie)

“The Overland Trail was a critical route in the westward expansion of the United States. Stretching from western Kansas to Salt Lake City, the trail passed through parts of modern-day Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.”

“In its early days, the trail was primarily used by people traveling west to reach Salt Lake City and California, as well as mining settlements in the Rockies during the Colorado Gold Rush. The Overland Trail was developed with heavy emphasis as a stagecoach mail line, serving the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay and later Wells Fargo.” (CSU History Matters)

“Colorado troops took over the camp, then located in LaPorte, about 3½ months later. Collins sent some of his men to Fort Collins to relieve Colorado troops in May 1864.” (Kyle, Coloradoan) “A devastating flood rushed down the canyon of the Cache la Poudre River during the night of June 9, 1864. Flooding Camp Collins, it carried tents, ammunition and some of the cabins downstream.”

“Soon a search began for a new location for the post. Joseph Mason (credited with being Fort Collins’ first white settler) was living on his farm between the present North Shields and Wood Street on Vine Drive. Mason pointed out land on the Cache la Poudre River in the vicinity of the present Willow Street.”

“On August 20, 1864, Col. Collins signed the order setting aside the present location of Fort Collins as the new military reservation. Here the danger of flooding would be less and sufficient land was available without interfering with the claims of individuals. Thus it is August 20 that Fort Collins Historical Society honors as the celebration of Fort Collins’ birthday.”

“In October of 1864 the new post was ready for occupation and the term ‘Fort Collins’ is used instead of ‘Camp Collins’ in the order book, although there seems to have been no official order for the change. For almost two years Fort Collins remained a military post”. (Fort Collins History Connection)

“When General William T. Sherman visited Fort Collins in 1866, he determined that threats to the trails and settlers in the area had been substantially reduced and that the fort was no longer of military use. … In 1867, President Johnson ordered the post abandoned. (Fort Collins History Connection)

“A few farms and ranches were located around Fort Collins and squatters settled on the abandoned military reservation in ‘Old Town’ … Finally on May 15, 1872, Congress opened the reservation to pre-emption homesteading and that same year the Agricultural Colony arrived to buy land and plat out Fort Collins.”

“Old Town had been built parallel to the river, while New Town was attached to it, being square with the compass. Fort Collins was incorporated as a town February 3, 1873. Statistics of 1870 give the entire population of Larimer County as 838 people.” (Fort Collins History Connection)

“The colony movement, which led to the successful founding of Greeley, was also important in the growth of Fort Collins and the surrounding area. The movement was an attempt to reduce the hazards of moving to the frontier by bringing an entire community to help establish a settlement.”

“In 1869, a group of men representing families in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, arrived in Fort Collins looking for a site for a colony. … Unfortunately, the colony soon ran out of money and abandoned the undertaking.” (Fort Collins History Connection)

“The Fort Collins colony was a scheme developed by Robert A. Cameron, who had become superintendent of the Greeley Colony. … The group planned the new colony to spread what they believed were the benefits of the Greeley experience, as well as to reap profit from the sale of land.”

On May 15, 1872, “the military reservation was officially opened to settlement, and a new era of development ensued. The improvement company purchased lands and sold certificates of membership in their new colony which entitled the holder to commercial or residential lots or farm tracts, depending upon the cost of the membership.” (Fort Collins History Connection)

“Despite the establishment of important businesses and the erection of several frame and brick buildings, [there was] the ‘gloomy’ period following 1873 showed little progress for the town.”

“After the initial boom in population resulting from the creation of the colony, building activity dwindled and a number of people moved elsewhere in search of brighter prospects. The Panic of 1873, which resulted in bank and business failures throughout the country had an effect on the local economy.”

“Another milepost in Fort Collins’ progress was the opening of Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University (CSU)) in the fall of 1879. Ten years later the first high school opened on the second floor of Franklin School, which once stood where Steele’s Market on West Mountain is now located.” (Fort Collins History Connection)

“The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 altered the usage and significance of overland stagecoach trails. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, railroad networks were becoming a more reliable, safer, and luxurious form of transport, and the development of tourism to the region began to grow.”

“By the early 20th century, stagecoach travel was essentially dead. The explosion of the automobile industry and its promise of individualized travel led to the growth of road networks and highway systems, which largely replaced railroad travel in the Western United States.”

“However, large portions of early highway networks in Colorado and Wyoming, like the Lincoln Highway and I-80, were heavily based on the Overland Trail route.” (CSU History Matters)

“Around the 1940s, when hunting for a nickname for their fair city, Fort Collins garden clubs looked no further than the lilac bushes growing in their own backyards. Fort Collins shall hereby be called “The Lilac City,” they declared. … It didn’t stick.”

“Through the 1950s, pamphlets and tourism ads for the growing Northern Colorado community heralded it as “Fortunate Fort Collins,” an up-and-coming oasis in the state’s “Horn of Plenty” – where agriculture, industry, scenery and outdoor sports so wholesomely converged. … That one fizzled, too.”

“It wasn’t until later that decade that Fort Collins truly found its footing in the nickname department, becoming – once and for all – the Choice City.” (Udell, Coloradoan)

“Harper Goff, who created Disneyland’s Main Street USA with Walt Disney, grew up in Fort Collins. Harper came back to Fort Collins in the 1950s to photograph the buildings of his youth”.

“Fort Collins and Walt Disney’s hometown, Marceline, Missouri [were] an inspiration and models for Disneyland’s Main Street USA.” “‘Disneyland’s City Hall was copied from Fort Collins… so was the Bank building and some of the others.’” (Harper Goff ) (Fort Collins History Connection)

Katharine Lee Bates, was born on August 12, 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts; she was described as a “brilliant trail-blazing woman – poet, teacher, community builder, and patriot – who challenged Americans to make their country the best it could become in its values and literature.” (Ponder)

Bates graduated from Wellesley College in 1880; she joined the faculty just five years later. After earning her master’s degree at Oxford University in 1890, Bates became the head of the English literature department.

“It appears that in 1893 Miss Bates had been called to join the faculty of a summer school at Colorado Springs. On the way she visited the Columbian World’s Fair at Chicago.”

The end of the three-weeks’ session of the school was celebrated by the stranger members of the faculty (including Dr. Rolfe, the Shakespearean scholar; Professor Todd, the Amherst astronomer, and Miss Bates’ colleague at Wellesley, Professor Katherine Conan) with an excursion to the summit of Pike’s Peak.” (Baxter in Boston Herald)

“We strangers celebrated the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak, making the ascent by the only method then available for people not vigorous enough to achieve the climb on foot nor adventurous enough for burro-riding.”

“Prairie wagons, their tail-boards emblazoned with the traditional slogan, ‘Pike’s Peak or Bust,’ were pulled by horses up to the half-way house, where the horses were relieved by mules.”

“We were hoping for half and hour on the summit, but two of our party became so faint in the rarified air that we were bundled into the wagons again and started on our downward plunge so speedily that our sojourn on the peak remains in memory hardly more than one ecstatic gaze.”

“It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.” (Bates)

Gazing out from the top, the view from the “purple mountain majesties” (the Rocky Mountains) captivated Bates and inspired the opening lines or her poem (it later became a song).

In the first stanza, Bates describes “amber waves of grain.” She later remarked that this lyric referred to the seas of grass and grain fields in Kansas that she could see from the top of Pikes Peak.

The final stanzas of the song offer praise for “heroes proved in liberating strife” and a vision of “nobleness,” and “brotherhood.” These lines became popular among American troops fighting overseas during World War I. (NPS)

The refrain “From sea to shining sea!” is perhaps one of the more recognizable lyrics. Yet, the first version of Bates’ poem read “And music-hearted sea!” The more familiar wording did not appear until 1910.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

“When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip.”

“The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895.” (It was first presented as a poem, “America”.)

“The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency, that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct.” (Bates, Museum on the Green)

“America the Beautiful” has been called “an expression of patriotism at its finest.” It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism. (LOC)

Katharine Lee Bates died March 28, 1929 and is buried in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Radiocarbon dating indicates that Clovis people were the first to inhabit the area, roughly around 11,000 BC. More recently, Ute, Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne also frequented the area. The Utes called Pikes Peak “Sun Mountain Sitting Big” and believed that it was here that the Great Spirit created the world.

Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Pikes Peak became part of the United States. In 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, after whom the peak is named, was sent on an expedition to locate the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers.

The expedition also aimed to explore the new territory and its natural resources, as well as establish friendly relations with Native American nations. On November 15 he spotted the peak and referred to it as “the Grand Peak.” (Colorado Encyclopedia)

Pikes Peak is the 31st highest peak out of 54 Colorado peaks (at 14,115 feet). It is the farthest east of the big peaks in the Rocky Mountain chain, which contributed to its early fame among explorers, pioneers and immigrants.

During the 1850s and 1860s an estimated 100,000 people moved to Colorado in search of gold and were known as “Fifty-Niners”, a reference to 1859, the year the rush to Colorado peaked.

The initial gold discoveries were made below confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, which is now the location of downtown Denver. Denver City was established near the gold discoveries in late 1858.

The first “bonanza” of rich gold placers was discovered by a prospecting party from Georgia led by John Gregory, at a site that was first named “Gregory Gulch” and would soon be the site of the Central City mining district. Other gold discoveries were made and news reports back East caused the frenzied rush to the Pikes Peak region.

It was the symbol of the 1858 Gold Rush to Colorado with the slogan, “Pikes Peak or Bust”, reference to the prominent mountain at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains that guided many early prospectors to the region westward over the Great Plains.