Colorado Territory

NOTE: The reason for this HISTORY lesson is: we have a woman, whom the wikipedia.com, states, "First white woman in Colorado." FIRST white woman. (Katrina WOLF-Murat) "Joining the Pike's Peak Gold Rush, the Murats settled in Montana City, Colorado (or Aurora, Colorado) in 1848."

Murat received a commission to make the first American flag for Colorado, which flew from the Eldorado's 50-foot flagpole on May 1, 1859,

"During the period 1832 to 1856, traders, trappers, and settlers established trading posts and small settlements along the Arkansas River, and on the South Platte near the Front Range. Prominent among these were Bent's Fort and Fort Pueblo on the Arkansas and Fort Saint Vrain on the South Platte. The main item of trade offered by the Indians was buffalo robes,[6] see Early history of the Arkansas Valley in Colorado and Forts in Colorado.

In 1846 the United States went to war with Mexico. Mexico's defeat forced the nation to relinquish its northern territories by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. This opened the Southern Rocky Mountains to American settlement, including what is now the lower portion of Colorado. The newly gained land was divided into the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, both organized in 1850, and the Territory of Kansas and the Territory of Nebraska, organized in 1854.

Most settlers avoided the rugged Rocky Mountains and headed for Oregon, the Deseret, or California, usually following the North Platte River and the Sweetwater River to South Pass in what is now Wyoming.

On April 9, 1851, Hispanic settlers from Taos, New Mexico, settled the village of San Luis, then in the New Mexico Territory, but now Colorado's first permanent European settlement. Pike's Peak Gold Rush Main articles: Pike's Peak Gold Rush and List of African American pioneers of Colorado Pikes Peak, Albert Bierstadt

On June 22, 1850, a wagon train bound for California crossed the South Platte River just north of the confluence with Clear Creek, and followed Clear Creek west for six miles. Lewis Ralston dipped his gold pan in a stream flowing into Clear Creek, and found almost $5 in gold (about a quarter of a troy ounce) in his first pan. John Lowery Brown, who kept a diary of the party's journey from Georgia to California, wrote on that day: "Lay bye. Gold found." In a notation above the entry, he wrote, "We called this Ralston's Creek because a man of that name found gold here.” "[1]

The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Colorado.