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
après-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.
