Maxine Benson - A Colorado History

UBBELOHDE | BENSON | SMITH

TENTH EDITION

2006, 2015 by Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

First edition published in 1965.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Ubbelohde, Carl.

A Colorado history / Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, Duane A. Smith. Tenth edition.

pages cm. (The Pruett series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87108-319-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-87108-324-1 (hardbound)
ISBN 978-0-87108-323-4 (e-book)

1. ColoradoHistory. I. Benson, Maxine. II. Smith, Duane A. III. Title.
F776.U195 2015
978.8dc23

2015007904

Designed by Vicki Knapton

Cover photo (bottom): Train coming up the valley on a narrow gauge track, Ouray County, Colorado. Courtesy of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USF33-012910-M1.

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The origins of this book can be traced to the mid-1950s, when Carl Ubbelohde was designated to teach Colorado history at the University of Colorado in Boulder. For the young instructor, fresh from doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, the assignment was far removed from colonial and revolutionary history, his primary area of expertise. It had not been Ubbelohdes intention to convert writing interests from Early America to western topics, he recalled in the Preface to the 1982 edition of A Colorado History, but not unfriendly colleagues warned of linkages between academic survival and the course in Colorado history.

Taking this advice to heart, Ubbelohde quickly began delving into Colorado history research. In 1959, he and fellow faculty member Robert G. Athearn coauthored Centennial Colorado: Its Exciting Story, issued to commemorate the Rush to the Rockies celebration. He also edited a collection of essays and documents entitled A Colorado Reader, published in 1962 by Pruett Publishing Company in Boulder. The next year he contributed an article on the states labor movement to the Denver Westerners Brand Book and brought Colorado history to the airwaves with an eighteen-week course over KOA radio.

All the while, Ubbelohde was working on a one-volume history to use in the classroom. Early on he had discovered, as he phrased it, the hazards and frustrations of attempting to teach collegiate-level history without a textbook, for Percy S. Fritzs 1941 Colorado: The Centennial State was long out of print and unavailable. So, after a trial run on the extension circuit, with particularly memorable early Saturday sessions in Sterling, he continued, the decision seemed obvious: preparation of a textbook was requisite to future happiness.

Thus in 1965 Pruett published the first edition of A Colorado History. It was, Ubbelohde wrote, a book designed for reading, not reference, one that was intended to provide a modern introduction to the general history of Colorado for students and other readers.

Just as the book was coming off the press, however, Ubbelohde left Boulder for a new teaching post in Cleveland, Ohio. He spent nearly three decades on the history faculty of Case Western Reserve University, retiring in 1994 as Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor Emeritus. Always a gifted and charismatic teacher, he twice received the Carl F. Wittke Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching, first in 1967 and again in 1973.

In the meantime, A Colorado History continued to grow in popularity with both students and the general public, making it necessary to update the work to keep abreast of developments. Although Ubbelohde had prepared a slightly revised edition in 1967, by the early 1970s it was apparent that a more substantial revision was in order. With Ubbelohde now in Ohio, Maxine Benson and Duane A. Smith, both University of Colorado graduates who had served as research assistants for the first edition, came on board to coauthor the third edition, published in 1972.

Over the years, the three coauthors produced six more editions between 1976 and 2006. Although the basic text has remained the same, several changes have reshaped the book as we have moved through the various versions. For example, a bibliographical essay entitled Suggested Reading has replaced the footnotes of the first edition; a Prologue entitled The Land was incorporated in 1988; and chapters on recent events have been added. Unchanged is the emphasis on the political developments of the Centennial State, augmented by explanations of the social, cultural, and environmental contexts of those developments.

In the first edition, Ubbelohde thanked Maurice Frink, former director of the Colorado Historical Society, for reading and editing the manuscript; Harry Kelsey, then state historian and editor of The Colorado Magazine, for permission to quote materials; the University of Colorado Press, for similar privileges; and Fred Pruett, an understanding publisher.

In subsequent editions, we acknowledged our indebtedness to the following additional persons: James G. Allen, Robert G. Athearn, Robert P. Browder, Robert W. Delaney, Matthew Downey, Michael Hooks, Mrs. L. Robert Hughes, James Kedro, Jerry Keenan, Cathryne Johnson, Tona Johnston, Alice Levine, Peter M. Mitchell, David Murrah, Elizabeth Opal, Jim Pruett, Lee Scamehorn, Ted Shields, John Richard Snyder, and Ronald R. Switzer. Joyce Wilson assisted with the production of this edition. We remember Thomas Hornsby Ferril with appreciation for kindly giving us permission to quote from his poems. We also recognize the generous contributions of the many librarians and archivists who have aided our work through the years, especially the exemplary staff members of the Western History/Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library, the Stephen H. Hart Library of History Colorado, and the Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango.

In 2012 Pruett became part of Graphic Arts Books of Portland, Oregon, and the present edition appears as part of The Pruett Series under the West-Winds Press imprint. We thank Douglas A. Pfeiffer and Kathy Howard of Graphic Arts for their help during this transition.

Lastly, the two of us wish to express our gratitude to Carl Ubbelohde, who passed away in 2004, for the opportunity to participate in the life of this book over the past five decades. Carl wrote in 1982 that our partnership had been remarkably tension-free, and so it remained. We hope that he would be pleased with this latest incarnation of A Colorado History.

MAXINE BENSON
Boulder, Colorado

DUANE A. SMITH
Fort Lewis College
Durango, Colorado