In 1863, two years after Colorado had become a Territory, its delegate in the Congress somewhat rashly introduced a bill to authorize its entrance into the Union as a State. The measure died in committee, but in March 1864 the Congress passed an enabling act for the purpose. A constitution was drafted and accepted by a small majority of voters, and in May 1866 the Congress passed a measure admitting Colorado to statehood. President Andrew Johnson vetoed this measure and a similar one passed the following year. But by the middle 1870's Colorado's claims could no longer be ignored. A convention met in Denver on December 20, 1875, to draft another constitution. This was ratified by the people, and at last Colorado was admitted to the Union as the thirty-eighth State on August 1, 1876, the centenary of the country's independence—hence its title, the Centennial State. Territorial Governor John L. Routt was continued in office as the first chief executive of the State.

The constitution, under which the State is still governed, is notable for the detailed manner in which it vests all political power in the people and enumerates the particular rights of the individual. In this it reflected the spirit of the Miners' and the Peoples' Courts of the early 1860's. But the regard of the framers of the constitution for such rights was responsible for the chief defect of the document, which contained, along with purely constitutional provisions, a great mass of statutory matter. This, in the opinion of many authorities, has served to thwart progressive legislation. Social and economic readjustments have necessitated many changes in the constitution, and the clumsy and unwieldy process of amendment has been resorted to no less than forty-four times.

Many of the statutory inclusions were born of the needs and conditions of the times. Provisions abrogating the law of riparian rights along streams by stipulating that water shall be prorated among users on the basis of priority of right, as established by their diversion, and beneficial use of such water, may properly have no place in the constitution, but no one familiar with the history of irrigation in the West has seriously questioned the soundness of the legislation itself.

The governmental structure has the usual executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The executive consists of the governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction, each elected for a two-year term. Although nominally the chief executive, the governor has little real authority over other elected officials. The bicameral legislature holds regular sessions at the beginning of each odd-numbered year. Both statutory laws and constitutional amendments may be initiated by the people. Heading the judicial branch of government is the supreme court of seven members. Under it are fourteen judicial districts, with twenty-six district courts, sixty-three county courts, and numerous justices of the peace. Virtually all State employees in Colorado are protected by civil service.

With the statehood came a period of great prosperity and phenomenal growth. Businesses of all kinds flourished. Agriculture had become so profitable that farmers began cultivating the semiarid plains, experimenting with new methods of dry-land farming. Between 1870 and 1880 population increased almost five fold to a total of 194,327, stimulated in large part by fabulous silver strikes at Leadville, Aspen, and other camps. Railroad construction boomed; in mountain canyons and in the courts, the Denver & Rio Grande and the Santa Fe Railroads waged war for disputed rights-of-way, with Leadville's bounty as the prize. The Denver & South Park Railroad between Denver and Leadville was one of the most profitable carriers in the world in the days of the silver boom. The fuel needs of railroads, smelters, and steel plants led to intensive development of large coal fields, which in turn created new industries and new mining camps. Much of the wealth of the mountains flowed down into the larger cities on the plains. Denver, Pueblo, and newly founded Colorado Springs grew amazingly. So rapid was the spread of population at this time that twenty-four new counties were created, eight of them in the plains farming area, to which homesteaders came in ever increasing numbers. The valleys on the Western Slope were filling up ; the Grand Junction Democrat, founded in 1883, was absorbed by the Star, which in turn was succeeded by the Daily Sentinel, the most influential newspaper in the mesa country.

Higher education at last received adequate public support. Although authorized by the first Territorial legislature in 1861, the University of Colorado did not open its doors until 1877. Meantime, in 1874, the legislature had appropriated $45,000 for the School of Mines at Golden. That same year the Territorial Assembly had established the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind at Colorado Springs. In 1879 Fort Collins citizens instituted a movement to establish an agricultural school, a "radical" proposal agreed to by the legislature only after long debate ; now the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, the institution soon established the State's first farm experimental station. The State Normal School, established in Greeley in 1890, became the Colorado State College of Education in 1935.

The last decade of the nineteenth century began auspiciously. The 1890 census revealed a population of 413,249, an increase of more than 100 per cent since 1880. A rich silver strike at Creede in 1890 rivaled those made earlier at Leadville and Aspen. With the Federal Government buying 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion a month under the Sherman Act, the price of silver rose to more than $1.00 an ounce, and Colorado mines were producing 58 per cent of the country's supply. Construction of a monumental granite State Capitol at Denver was begun; the cornerstone was laid in July 1890, and the building completed in 1896.

But neither the Sherman Act nor the Creede bonanza could stay the forces hurrying the State and the Nation into panic and depression. Notwithstanding augmented silver purchases by the Federal Government, the white metal was being produced far in excess of demand. When the silver market tumbled, one of Colorado's great economic props collapsed. Remonetization of silver became a national as well as a local issue. The two major political parties of the country were torn internally by it, and the Populist Party, which demanded a return to bimetalism, was born of a fusion of partisans of both camps. Feeling ran especially high in Colorado, and in the election of 1892 the entire Populist ticket was swept into office, with Davis H. Waite as governor. Matters were at a crisis with many banks closed; real estate was almost valueless; scores of business houses were bankrupt; a three-year drought had taken its toll, and in the dry farming areas whole counties were almost deserted as discouraged men abandoned mortgaged farms, leaving unpaid-for tools and machinery to rust in the fields.

Silver prices were already low when news came that the mints in India, the most important remaining market for silver, had ceased coinage. Even more shattering, the Sherman Act was repealed at a special session of the Congress in November 1893. Colorado staggered under the repeated blows. Leadville, Aspen, Creede, and all of the silver camps lay paralyzed. Mines ceased operations; the fires in the smelters went out; jobless mine workers and their families crowded into Denver, creating unemployment problems so critical that an extra session of the legislature was called to enact emergency relief measures. Recurrent labor disputes perplexed the State, and politics remained in a confused state, with all parties divided on the silver question. The one bright gleam through the dark decade was the discovery in 1890 of the Cripple Creek gold field, destined to be the State's greatest, which by the end of the century was yielding more than $20,000,000 in precious metals annually.

In 1893, in the midst of its perplexities, Colorado extended suffrage to women, being the second State to do so. Education and the press expanded. Born of several mergers, the Boulder Camera was first published in 1890 by Colonel L. C. Paddock. In this decade, too, was founded the Denver Post, which soon had a wide circulation and influence in the Rocky Mountain region. 'Tis a Privilege to Live in Colorado reads a banner head on its front page, quoted as often and more seriously than the inscription that runs in large letters across the facade of its plant, 0 Justice, When Expelled From Other Habitations, Make This Thy Dwelling Place. Established in 1892, the Post was bought three years later by Frederick G. Bonfils and Harry H. Tam-men, whose prowess in many fields brought "Bon" and "Tam" a national reputation ; both have been sharply characterized in Timberline by Gene Fowler, novelist and scenarist, once a luminary on their always capable staff. Tammen, as Fowler saw him, was "a dreamer, bubbling with acrobatic phrases, a puck with both hands full of firecrackers," while Bonfils was "austere, . . . believing that money meant Power, ... a brooding Sphinx." Meantime, the Rocky Mountain News had passed from Byers to U. S. Senator Thomas M. Patterson, an ardent campaigner against the "money trusts," who clashed bitterly with his rivals on the Post. Their mutual accusations and recriminations were scorching, for the era of personal journalism was not yet over. Cited for characterizing the Supreme Court as "the Great Judicial Slaughter House and Mausoleum," Patterson defended himself by saying that he had simply spoken the truth; the court fined him $1,000 for contempt, which, retorted Patterson, expressed his sentiments exactly.