Colorado
Colorado
(
/kɒləˈrædoʊ/
(help·info)
or
/kɒləˈrɑːdoʊ/
(help·info)
) is a state of the United States of America that is located mostly in the Rocky Mountain Range of North America. Colorado can also be considered to be part of the Western States or the Southwestern States of the United States. In infrequent instances eastern Colorado is considered to be part of the Midwestern United States (since that part of the state is located on the Great Plains.)
Colorado was admitted to the Union in the year 1876, and hence it is nicknamed the "Centennial State", since that year was the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Colorado is bordered to the north by Wyoming and Nebraska, to the east by Kansas and Nebraska, to the south by New Mexico and Oklahoma, to the west by Utah, and at just one geographical point, at its southwestern corner by Arizona. Colorado is one of very few purely rectangular states - ones whose borders are strictly parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude. (The other one is its neighbor, Wyoming.)
Colorado is prominent for its scenery of mountains, plainslands, rivers, and a western area of desert. The Rocky Mountains of Colorado have 50 or more peaks with elevations of 14,000 feet or higher above sea level - far more than any other state. Colorado is the home of the Rocky Mountains National Park, and of numerous National Monuments and National Forests.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the state population was 5,024,748 on July 1, 2009, an increase of about 16.8% since the 2000 U.S. Census. Denver is the capital city of Colorado, and it is also the most populous city of Colorado. Residents of Colorado are properly known as "Coloradans" although the archaic term "Coloradoan" is still occasionally used.
Colorado has the highest average elevation of any of the 50 states. Also, the elevation of the lowest point in Colorado is higher than the lowest points of any other states. This lowest point is found where the Arkansas River flows from Colorado into Kansas, at an elevation of about 4,000 feet above sea level.
History
Main articles: History of Colorado and Outline of Colorado historyThe region that is today the state of Colorado has been inhabited by Native Americans for more than 13 millennia. The Lindenmeier Site in Larimer County contains artifacts dating from approximately 11200 BCE to 3000 BCE. The Ancient Pueblo Peoples lived in the valleys and mesas of the Colorado Plateau. The Ute Nation inhabited the mountain valleys of the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Western Rocky Mountains. The Arapaho Nation and the Cheyenne Nation moved west to hunt across the High Plains.
The United States acquired a territorial claim to the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains with the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. This American claim conflicted with Spain's claim that a huge region surrounding its colony of Santa Fé de Nuevo Méjico was its sovereign trading zone. Zebulon Pike led a U.S. Army reconnaissance expedition into the disputed region in 1806. Colonel Pike and his men were arrested by Spanish cavalrymen in the San Luis Valley during the following February, taken to Chihuahua, Mexico, and then expelled from Mexico the following July.
The United States relinquished its claim to all land south and west of the Arkansas River, west of 100 degrees west longitude, as part of the American purchase of Florida from Spain with the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. Mexico surrendered what is now southern and western Colorado to the United States after the Mexican-American War with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
In 1849, Mormons in what is now Utah organized the extralegal state of Deseret, which claimed all lands drained by the Green River and the Colorado River. The Federal government of the United States refused to recognize the new Mormon government. The United States divided the area of the future state of Colorado among the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, both of which were organized in 1850, and the Territory of Kansas and the Territory of Nebraska both organized in 1854.
Most American settlers traveling west to Oregon, the state of Deseret, or California, avoided the rugged Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and instead followed the North Platte River and Sweetwater River into Wyoming, and westward across Wyoming and the Great Basin into Utah and Idaho. On April 9, 1851, Mexican American from the area of Taos, New Mexico, settled the village of San Luis, Colorado, then in the New Mexico Territory, Colorado's first permanent European-American settlement. Gold was discovered along the South Platte River in (then) western Kansas Territory in July 1858, precipitating the historic Pike's Peak Gold Rush. The placer gold deposits along the rivers and streams of the region rapidly played out, but miners soon discovered far more valuable seams of hard rock gold, silver, and other minerals in the nearby mountains.
The Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson was organized on August 24, 1859, but this new territory failed to secure approval from the Congress of the United States. The election of Abraham Lincoln for the President of the United States on November 6, 1860, led to the secession of nine southern slave states and the threat of civil war in the United States. Seeking to augment the political power of the Union states, the Republican Party dominated Congress quickly admitted the eastern portion of the Territory of Kansas into the Union as a free state, Kansas, on January 29, 1861, leaving the western portion of the Kansas Territory, and its gold-mining areas, as an unorganized territory.
Thirty days later on February 28, 1861, the outgoing President James Buchanan signed an act of Congress organizing the free Territory of Colorado. The original boundaries of Colorado remain unchanged today. The name Colorado was chosen because it was commonly believed that the Colorado River originated in the territory. Early Spanish explorers of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona named the Colorado River the "Rio Colorado" in response to seeing the reddish-brown silt that this river carries south from the mountains. In fact, the river that is named the "Colorado River" did not flow through the state of Colorado until the House of Representatives Joint Resolution 460 of the 66th United States Congress changed the name of the Grand River in Colorado to the "Colorado River" on July 25, 1921.
The United States Congress passed an enabling act on March 3, 1875, specifying the requirements for the Territory of Colorado to become a state. On August 2, 1876 (28 days after the Centennial of the United States), U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting the state of Colorado to the Union as the 38th state and earning it the moniker "Centennial State". The discovery of a major silver lode near Leadville in 1878, triggered the Colorado Silver Boom. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 invigorated silver mining, but the repeal of that act in 1893 led to a huge collapse of the mining and agricultural economy of Colorado.
Colorado women were granted the right to vote beginning on November 7, 1893, making Colorado the second state to grant universal suffrage and the first one by a popular vote. By the U.S. Census in 1930, the population of Colorado first exceeded one million residents. Colorado suffered greatly through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but a major wave of immigration following World War II boosted Colorado's fortune. Tourism became a mainstay of the state economy, and high technology became an important economic engine. Colorado's population exceeded 4.3 million in the U.S. Census in 2000.
Three warships of the U.S. Navy have been named the USS Colorado . The first USS Colorado was named for the Colorado River. The later two ships were named in honor of the entire state, including the battleship USS Colorado which served in World War II in the Pacific beginning in 1941. At the time of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, this USS Colorado was located at the naval base in San Diego, Calif. and hence went unscathed.
Colorado is the home of significant U.S. Air Force installations, including Peterson Air Force Base, Buckley Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command near Colorado Springs. Also, some of the Minuteman ICBM launch silos of the Francis E. Warren AFB in Cheyenne are actually located in nort