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.
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