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




The Territory of Colorado

Not long after this the Congress of the United States suddenly discovered that a nation had been born among the mountains, and voted that it should be called the Territory of Colorado.

President Lincoln appointed William Gilpin our first governor, and we early pioneers into the wilderness rejoiced exceedingly, because now at last we had a place among the states, and could hope that in time we might be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the older colonies. It was a matter of great pride to me that I, Seth Wagner, had had a hand in its making, for as our boundaries were marked out by the law makers of Washington, the Territory of Colorado comprised one hundred and four thousand, five hundred square miles, or in other words sixty-six million, eight hundred and eighty thousand acres of land.

[Illustration] from Seth of Colorado by James Otis

Think of that for a territory, and then say whether a lad might not be excused if he was proud of being among the foremost to bring such a vast country as this to the notice of the eastern states!

From this time on, and with good cause, we called our settlements a city, and God has permitted me to live to see them change from a collection of rude cotton-wood log buildings, to as sightly a city as can be found from ocean to ocean, boasting of people who are as loyal to it as these earliest settlers.