The story of Coloradoans and their achievements does not begin with the great Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1859 and the establishment of the contemporary cultural pattern. It stretches far back into the past, to the days more than ten thousand years ago when savage men roamed the plains, hunting the beasts of the time, warring among themselves, eventually vanishing as more advanced cultural groups appeared. Some two thousand years ago, approximately at the beginning of the Christian era, men skilled in weaving baskets came to live in the western mesa country. Other men distinguished for their skill in building cities of stone on mesa rims and in natural caves high up on sheer canyon walls later absorbed the Basket Makers and their culture; in turn they vanished to make way for warlike nomads, the forbears of the Indians whom steel-clad Spaniards encountered on their explorations northward form Mexico in search of the fabulous cities of gold. French voyageurs later explored the northern streams of Colorado, to be hunters, trappers, and traders.

"Gold!" - always a magic cry- was the tocsin that signaled the great Pikes Peak rush of '59, one of the great mass migrations of American history. Men of almost every nationality, occupation, and station in life swarmed into the Colorado mountains, and in their wake followed farmers, largely of European stock, to settle in the fertile valleys. Up from the south, across the open grasslands, were driven tremendous herds of Texas Longhorns, once numbered in the millions, now almost extinct. Barbed wire abruptly terminated the era of the open range, and American, English, and Scottish cattle barons gave way to a new type of settler, the dry-land farmer, usually American-born of English, German, Scandinavian, or Irish stock. Men discouraged in their search for sudden riches in the hills came down to the plains to work in the fields and the growing industrial centers, where they rubbed shoulders with more recent immigrants - Italians, Hungarians, and Slavs. Orientals appeared - Chinese in the mines, Japanese on the farms. German-Russians were lured from the Volga by the introduction of sugar beet culture, which they knew well. Later, Spanish-Americans flooded in from the southern valleys and from Mexico to work the beet fields..

All these - and more - are Coloradoans, and their story is the history of the State.

Thousands of years ago, when the last of the great ice sheets was melting and slowly retreating northward, there roamed the plains in the eastern part of the State an unknown people—artisans in their own right—who remain a tantalizing mystery to archeologists and anthropologists. The latter have found no skeletal remains of these people, but numerous artifacts reveal their presence and in a measure indicate the grim struggle for existence in which they were engaged. Spearheads of these early hunters have been found with the bones of a prehistoric bison believed to have lived more than ten thousand years ago. At the Lindenmeier Site (see Tour 13) has been unearthed a campsite that was used by them, according to some authorities, at least 20,000 years ago.

Two types of stone artifacts were left in Colorado by this vanished race. The Folsom point, first found near Folsom, New Mexico, ranges from one and a half to four and a half inches long, and is characterized by a long wide groove along both sides from the base to the point. This groove was formed in a single operation by removing a long delicate flake of stone. The manner in which this spall was removed from each face of the blade is fairly clear to students, but they have not skill to perform the operation themselves. The ancient people who fashioned these points were highly accomplished workmen who knew the secret of flaking the hardest stone with great precision.

The second type is the Yuma point, named for the county in the northeastern corner of the State where many such artifacts have been found. The Yuma point is longer and narrower than the Folsom; it has no groove but is similarly distinguished by remarkable flaking. Long flakes of stone were sometimes removed straight across the blade, sometimes at an angle. Bows probably were unknown to the Folsom and Yuma men, but both types of points, when affixed to shafts, made highly effective projectiles. A Yuma point has been found with a square indented base, which may have been inserted in a wooden handle for use as a knife. Since 1930 great numbers of both points have been exposed in northeastern Colorado by wind erosion; in fact, two-thirds of all such artifacts have been found here. An unusually large collection is annually exhibited at the Stone Age Fair at Cornish (see Tour 12a), and another comprehensive collection is in the Colorado Museum of Natural History, Denver. While the exact age of the points cannot be definitely determined, evidence indicates that the Folsom and Yuma cultures were contemporaneous.

The next culture of record in Colorado is of comparatively recent date and had no historical relationship with the Folsom or Yuma cultures. Between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D., there came into the mesa lands of southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona, a long-headed race of Indians who planted corn and squash, dug granaries and pit houses, and fashioned excellent coiled baskets, as well as sandals, cord, and rope. This culture reached its height in the Modified Basket Maker period when these people began to build permanent habitations in the form of pit houses, with superstructures of poles, brush, and earth. Remains of hundreds of these structures have been found on Mesa Verde and throughout the San Juan Basin. The subsequent invention of true pottery by these people was marked by a decline in basket work. The bow and arrow appeared during this period, but it is not known whether the weapon was "invented" by the Basket Makers or introduced by invading Indian tribes.

About 800 A.D. a new type of people appeared in the Southwest, and through peaceful infiltration absorbed the Basket Maker and his culture, and in time evolved their own Pueblo culture. These newcomers, characterized by skulls deformed by hard cradle boards, learned to fashion better pottery, evolved more productive methods of agriculture, wove cotton into cloth, learned the art of masonry, and developed the crude pit dwellings of the Basket Maker into massive and complex pueblos constructed of stone and mud. These early Amerinds who farmed or rather gardened southwestern Colorado also built large temples, watch towers, and kivas, or ceremonial chambers. Later, when attacked by less civilized tribes, they built high upon the walls of Colorado canyons the famed cliff dwellings that served them as a refuge from their enemies. Circular receptacles, hollowed in the rock walls of the natural caves in which they constructed their dwellings, were used to store food and enabled the apartment-fortresses to withstand long siege.

The most noted ruins in Colorado are the cliff dwellings and pueblos in Mesa Verde National Park (see Mesa Verde National Park). On the border between Colorado and Utah are four groups of similar prehistoric dwellings in the Hovenweep National Monument (see Tour 11D). The Yucca House National Monument (see Tour 11), at the base of Sleeping Ute Mountain in the extreme southwestern part of the State, preserves the ruins of still another village. Recent explorations along the Yampa River in northwestern Colorado (see Tour 7c) indicate that the Pueblo peoples may also have entered this region.

The Pueblo culture flourished between 900 and 1200 A.D., in what is known as the Pueblo Classical Age; during these centuries most of the great cliff dwellings on Mesa Verde were constructed. Decline sudden and dramatic. Chronology based upon a study of tree rings that the Cliff Dwellers suffered a great drought between 1276 and 1299. Either as a result of this disaster or of an attack by marauding Indian nomads, the Cliff Dwellers abandoned their habitations and drifted southward, leaving no trace, although competent authorities believe that they may have been absorbed by other pueblo people who still live in the Southwest.