TJte Territory of Colorado 55 from every one of the territories of the central and south west. To this area those who advocated the new project gave the name of the Territory of Jefferson. Since the discovery of gold in California and the rush of the forty-niners along the overland trails there had always been bodies of prospectors scattered over the mountain region. Rumors of gold discoveries in the desert triangle had been heard early in the fifties, while the panic of 1857 sent fresh bands of men to try their luck in the great game. In the year 1858 numerous parties were exploring the lands between the Arkansas and the Platte, and the arrival at Omaha on January 5, 1859,^ of several quills filled with gold-dust proved to the Missouri settlers that success had rewarded the pro- longed search, and started a new westward movement of large pro- portions to the Pike's Peak country. The city of Denver, named for the governor of Kansas territory, became the settlement around which the Pike's Peak country grouped itself in the winter of 1858-1859. Boulder and Golden, Colorado City and Pueblo became secondary centres, each situated as Denver was, at a point from which trade and travel branched from the great trails and entered the valleys leading to the mining-camps.^ As early as June, 1858, the forks of the South Platte and Cherry Creek were being examined by prospectors. As the summer and fall advanced more adventurers appeared : the names of Montana, Highland, Auraria, and St. Charles came to designate settlements in the vicinity of the forks ; and by November the inclusive name of Denver was heard.' In a governmental way the new camp of Denver was situated in Arapahoe County, Kansas. But Arapahoe County had never been organized, and remained only a name until after the legislature of Kansas abolished it in February, 1859.^ The settlers themselves saw from the start that the five hundred miles of trail between the diggings and the territorial capital forbade protection from as well • Transactions and Rcforts of the Nebraska State Historical Society, II. 315. One of the men mentioned as bringing the gold, Albert B. Steinberger, was elected a delegate to Congress by the Auraria meeting of November 6, 1S58. He de- serted his mission and never reached Washington. His later romantic career in a Pacific kingdom is described in House Ex. Doc. 161, 44 Cong., i Sess., Serial 1691, 125 pp. 2 An old military trail connecting Fort Union and Fort Laramie ran through some and within easy distance of all these towns. Jerome C. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver, 1901), 22g. ^ The best detailed account of these earliest settlements is found ibid., 200 et seqq.
- Helen G. Gill, " The Establishment of Counties in Kansas ", Kansas His-
torical Collections, VIII. 452.
