History of the State of Colorado Volume I

Volume I opens the story of Colorado long before anyone found gold there. Frank Hall begins with the Spanish expeditions of the 1500s, follows the cliff dwellers and the question of who built their homes, and then moves through the explorers, hunters and traders who crossed the plains and mountains before the settlers did.

From there the volume turns to the rush that began in 1858 and 1859, when prospectors reached the tributaries of the Platte. Hall covers the first mining towns, the short-lived Territory of Jefferson, the congressional fight over organizing the new territory in 1861, and the First Colorado Volunteers, who marched to meet the Confederate threat in New Mexico. The volume closes in 1872, with the coming of the railroads and the founding of Union Colony at Greeley.

This is a reprint of an 1889 work, so Hall writes in the voice of his day, and some of his judgments about Native peoples will read as dated. The catalogue lists the book at 664 pages. It is the place to begin if you plan to read the whole set in order.

Volume I suits readers who want the beginnings: the people who walked the ground before Denver existed, and the argonauts who founded it. Genealogists tracing a family to the 1859 rush may find names here, and so may students of the Santa Fe Trail, the fur trade and the Civil War in the Southwest. Teachers can use it as primary-source flavor. Read it as a nineteenth century history with its own opinions, and it pairs well with a modern survey.

Frank Hall wrote this history on a commission he took up in June 1887, after he had served as Secretary of Colorado Territory from 1866 to 1874. The Online Books Page dates his life 1836 to 1917. We reprint all four volumes of the work. His author page explains the set and what each volume holds.

More about Frank Hall →

Volume I carries its readers from the Spanish entradas into the American territorial years. Its first chapters cover Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, whose search for the Seven Cities of Cibola brought Spanish soldiers into the Southwest in the 1500s. Hall then turns to the cliff dwellings of southwestern Colorado, relying on the survey reports of Holmes and Jackson published in the Hayden report of 1876.

The American chapters take in the explorations of Major Long, the old Santa Fe Trail, the five Fremont expeditions, Captain Gunnison's ill-fated survey and the trading posts built by the Bent brothers and St. Vrain. Hall's prefatory note marks the modern period as opening with the Cherokee party that came with Green Russell to prospect the Platte tributaries. He also states that this first volume closes with 1872 and is limited largely to the points of greatest settlement, a gap the later volumes were meant to fill.

Source: Hall, History of the State of Colorado, Volume I (Internet Archive)