Contents ▼▲
Front Matter How I Came to Write my Story Who I am My Great Loss My Worldly Wealth Plans for the Future The Gold Fever My Great Disappointment Cured of the Gold Fever My Opportunity How I Might Work My Way Keeping My Bargain At Pueblo A Welcome Time of Rest Outbreak of Gold Fever Opportunity for Money Middleton Agrees With Me Middleton's Proposition Gold Seekers Land Claims Our Ranch Building a Dwelling Corn and Gold Dreams of a Harvest Disappointed Prospectors Returning Evil for Good Striving to Save Our Corn Defending Our Own A Council of War Interview With The Enemy Missouri Miners Make Sport How to Collect The Debt Possession of Cattle Night Before the Battle A War of Words The Prospectors Try to Kill Us A Real Battle A Truce Terms of Peace The Enemy Surrenders The Prospectors Depart The Growth of Our City Farming Or Mining My Share of the Harvest Middleton Goes on a Journey Auraria and Denver Middleton Turns Trader Middleton's Plan A Weighty Problem Middleton's Partner A Change of Homes Arrival At Auraria The Town of Denver We Hire a Shop I Regret Turning Merchant How We Transported Goods Middleton's Advice The Tide of Emigration Finding Goods By the Roadside Gold in Colorado How the Cities Grew A Post Office in Auraria Letters From Home Our Business Flourishes Denver Outstripping Auraria Claim Jumping The Claim Club The Turkey War The Need of Government Union of Denver and Auraria What Others Thought of Us Territory of Colorado Good Citizenship Civil War Breaks Out Need of a Jail Denver in Flames Our Loss By Fire Mrs. Middleton Consoles Us Good Resulting From Evil Middleton's Honesty Rebuilding Denver The Flood Destruction of the Town In Great Peril The City Destroyed Our Lives Are Spared Fears Regarding the Future Uprising of the Indians Begging for Help A Famine Threatens Horrors of an Indian War My Duty at Home Beginning Over Again My Story is Done

Seth of Colorado - James Otis




How the Cities Grew

I shall not weary you by any long recountal of the troubles and annoyances which beset the firm of "Middleton & Wagner"; but rather I shall describe how the country became settled around us.

Let me set down what I have since read regarding our settlement of Auraria, and the making of this country of Colorado.

In his account of the events of this year of 1859 Bancroft, the historian, writes:—

"Those who returned to the states carried reports sufficiently confirmed by the gold exhibited, to re-arouse the gold fever, causing an emigration the following summer equal to, if not exceeding, that of 1859. The settlements already founded were greatly enlarged, and new ones made both in the mining and agricultural districts. Over six hundred miles of road from the Missouri to the mountains, a stream of wealth rolled in, which was expected to flow back again in a stream of gold dust a few months later.

[Illustration] from Seth of Colorado by James Otis

"Fortunately for the prosperity of Colorado at this period, there was nothing to interrupt the influx of people or of property. The freight trains of Russell and Major dragged their winding lengths along the Arkansas or Smoky Hill route day after day, bringing cargoes of goods, which were stored at their depots and sold to retail merchants on their own account, or carrying the goods of others. Many thousand wagons stretched in a continuous line along the Platte also, from its mouth to its source. Prices were necessarily high, and likewise high because everybody who had anything to sell desired to become rich out of it without loss of time. Mail facilities were introduced, and more quickly than could have been anticipated, correspondence with the east became established."