USA > Colorado > Larimer County > History of Larimer County, Colorado > Part 5
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Mormons Passed Through Larimer County
A part of the Mormon battalion of 1846, pur- suing their way to Salt Lake, spent the winter of 1846-7 in Pueblo. They are said to have been the first American families in Colorado. In the spring and summer of 1847 they continued their journey to Salt Lake, coming north from Pueblo and pass- ing through this county, entering the mountains west of Laporte. There were thirty-four married
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women and between sixty and seventy children in the detachment, besides some ten or dozen single men. They followed the Cherokee trail through Virginia Dale, and thence on to the Laramie Plains and to Salt Lake, via Fort Bridger. The first white child born in Colorado was Malinda Cath- erine Kelley, and she was born at Pueblo in Novem- ber, 1846, her parents being Mormons.
Marcy's Expedition
In 1857 President Buchanan appointed A. Cum- ming Governor of Utah to succeed Brigham Young, who had held that office, and also made some changes in other Territorial offices. Governor Young refused to vacate his office or to recognize the President's appointments, whereupon a military force was dispatched to Utah to seat the newly appointed officials and to enforce the laws of the United States. The command of the expedition was given to Brigadier General Harney, but he being detained by the political trouble in Kansas, Colonel E. B. Alexander of the Tenth Infantry went out in command. The troops started west by the North Platte route over the Overland trail, passing South pass and reaching Henry's fork of Green river, thirty miles east of Fort Bridger, then going into camp to await instructions from Wash- ington. In November, Gen. Albert Sidney John- ston arrived and took command, having been sub- situated for General Harney. The greater part of the supplies for General Johnston's force was cap- tured and destroyed on Green river and on the Big Sandy by the Mormons and the command had to be placed on short rations. Captain R. B. Marcy was at once dispatched across the mountains to Fort Massachusetts, New Mexico, to obtain supplies. It was a terrible trip in dead of winter and there was much suffering among the men on the journey. Jim Baker, the noted frontiersman, who died in 1898, accompanied Captain Marcy, and that officer testified that he rendered valuable service as assist- ant guide and interpreter, saying that if it had not been for Jim Baker his little company would never have been able to reach its destination. Captain Marcy's command proceeded from Fort Bridger to the foot of the mountains between Green and Grand rivers, up a canon to the top of the range to Grand river, near the mouth of the Uncompahgre, up Eagle river to Cochetopa pass, and to Fort Massa- chusetts, where he obtained what was required. The return journey was not undertaken until the following June, the party being obliged by the
severity of the winter to go into camp in the pine woods on Squirrel creek. Here he lost several men and a large number of sheep by the cold and snow encountered. In June, 1858, as soon as the grass became good enough to sustain the lives of his ani- mals, including several thousand sheep, Captain Marcy started to rejoin his command, following the Cherokee trail from his winter camp through La- porte to the Laramie plains and thence on by way of South Pass to General Johnston's encampment at Fort Bridger. Captain Marcy's expedition, all things considered, is one of the most remarkable known to the Rocky Mountain region, and his suc- cess is proof of the courage and endurance of the men connected with it.
A Trip Up the Poudre in 1852
In July, 1907, the venerable J. R. Todd, a for- mer resident of Fort Collins, but now living in Iowa, related the following story describing his ex- periences while crossing the continent in 1852, to Judge Jefferson McAnelly, to whom I am indebted for the privilege of using the greater part of it in this volume. In the story as told by Mr. Todd, he said the Cache la Poudre river had not been named in 1852. In this he was mistaken. The stream received its name in 1836, and the name originated from an incident similar to the one de- scribed by Mr. Todd. The name Cache la Poudre appeared in print in public reports and documents fifteen or more years before Mr. Todd traversed the banks of the stream, and I have, therefore, eliminated so much of the story as relates to that matter, for the reason that it is incorrect. Mr. Todd's story follows:
"Doubtless, the trip up the Cache la Poudre val- ley by George Pinkerton and others in the year 1852, will be interesting to the present citizens of Larimer county, as well as to others elsewhere. The waters of the river were as clear as crystal all the way down to its confluence with the Platte. Its banks were fringed with timber not as large as now, consisting of cottonwood, boxelder, and some wil- low.
Its waters were full of trout of the speckled or mountain variety. The undulating bluffs sloped gently to the valley which was carpeted with the most luxuriant grasses. It was in June, the mildest and most beautiful part of the summer in the west- ern country, when the days were pleasant, the nights cool and mornings crisp and bracing. The sky was scarcely ever obscured by clouds, and its vaulted
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blue, golden tinted in the morning and evening, was like a dream of beauty. Not an ax had marred the symmetry of the groves of trees that lined the banks. Not a plow, or spade, or hoe had ever broken its virgin soil. Wild flowers of the richest hue beautified the landscape, while above all towered the majestic Rocky Mountains to the westward of the valley, like the grim sentinels they are, ever watching, watching and noting this advancing van- guard of civilization.
"We, of the present day, call it the beautiful val- ley, and it is so, with its fine farms, its green fields, its growing cities, towns and villages and its beau- tiful homes, but with all the touches of this civiliza- tion, it is no more beautiful now, it never can ap- pear as beautiful to anyone as it appeared to this band of young adventurers on the June mornings in 1852, clothed in that garb that Nature placed there.
"In the spring of 1852, George Pinkerton, Valen- tine Hartsock, Thomas Gates, and J. R. Todd organized a party of young men and emigrants in the State of Iowa, which had for its objective point the new formed Territory of Oregon, on the Pacific coast. The party was organized in Sigourney, Iowa, and started on the journey on April 12th, 1852.
"They went from Sigourney to Council Bluffs, Iowa, which was then the extreme frontier of the white settlement. It was at that time a trading point, and had water communication with St. Louis, by boat, and contained at the time about 1,000 inhabitants. Here the United States troops ordered them to remain until a sufficient number of other emigrants arrived to make the party strong enough to be safe from Indian attack in crossing the Plains. They were held at Council Bluffs until the wagons numbered fifty, and the emigrants numbered about 300. They were organized into companies, and properly officered, and were then permitted to cross the Missouri river, into what was then known as the Great American Desert.
"At that time there were no settlements between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountain region, excepting the military post at Fort Leavenworth, in the vicinity of which a few squatters had settled. The party crossed the Missouri river on a ferry- boat owned by the Mormons, at a little town to the northwest of Council Bluffs called Gainesville. They struck out from the point of the crossing to the westward, and in three days' travel arrived on the banks of the Platte river. They traveled along the north side of this river until they came to the
confluence of the North and South forks of the stream.
"Here the old trail followed the North fork of the river, and wound its way far to the northward, through the Black Hills, and back again southward to the Devil's Gate on the Sweetwater river.
"At the forks of the Platte a portion of the emi- grants suggested that they follow the South Platte river and see if a shorter route could not be found, over which to reach the Lamarie Plains and Sweet- water, but the majority of them argued that it would be safer for them and their women and chil- dren to follow the old route rather than leave it for a new and untried one. George Pinkerton, who had been over the old trail before, was so fixed in his opinion that a shorter route could be found, that he induced seventy-four men of the caravan to join him and start in search of such route.
"They crossed the North Platte and followed along the north side of the South Platte, until they came to the mouth of the Cache la Poudre river. They traveled along the valley of this river until they struck the foothills somewhere near the present site of Laporte. They crossed the Poudre river here and passed through a beautiful glade, un- named then, but now known as Pleasant Valley.
"Still onward they traveled to the northward of the present site of the town of Bellvue, crossed the Poudre river again and went on northward through a long glade, until they came to the first canon south of what is now known as Owl canon, leading into the second glade, and went up through that glade, finally coming to what is now known as the Livermore country, skirting Stonewall creek on the right bank and arriving at what is now called Dale creek, on the evening of the 3rd of July, 1852, where they camped for the night and held a Fourth of July celebration the next day.
"In coming up the South Platte river they struck the mouth of the Cache la Poudre river at noon, and on the evening of the first day's travel on that river they camped. Game was plentiful, herds of buffalo were seen upon the plains, as well as deer, elk and antelope.
"To the travelers the Poudre valley appeared to be the hunters' paradise. Trout were caught then along the Poudre river from its mouth to the foot- hills, and the small streams in the mountains were alive with them.
"As stated, they camped on its banks. Many times during that day they had observed a band of Indians at some distance on the bluffs, and some- times following them in the rear. That night they
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took extra precautions against a possible attack. They posted an extra guard of twenty men around their cattle and still an extra guard about their cor- ral. They were not molested during the night, but early in the morning the Indians charged in two separate bands. One band charged the guards look- ing after the cattle, and the other charged the wagons, yelling and screeching like deamons and beating dried deer-skins and rattling deer-hoofs and bones to stampede the stock. They came out near the corral before they were checked by the rifles of the emigrants. They were all armed with bows and arrows and had a few old shotguns which they doubtless obtained from the Hudson Bay Company. These pea-guns did not amount to anything, as the Indians were met by the bullets of the emigrants long before they came near enough to do any execu- tion with the shotguns. The fight lasted about ten minutes, when the Indians retreated. It was noticed that they carried off some of their dead. The whites lost one man killed outright, and one man mortally wounded, who died on the road, and was buried in the vicinity of the present site of La- porte, and two others were wounded, who recovered.
"After the Indians had left, some of the men went out and counted twenty-seven of their dead and wounded, who were left where they fell.
"The remainder of the trip to Virginia Dale was uneventful. On what is now called Dale creek, near the site of the present home of our former County Commissioner, T. B. Bishopp, where they arrived on the evening of the third day, they cele- brated the Fourth of July in good old western style. There was a large flat rock near their camp upon which they held their exercises. They had several flags with them which they raised on poles. A fellow by the name of A. C. Dodge, who was something of a historian and debater, and who had brought some books with him, in one of which was the Declaration of Independence, read it and made quite a speech. They had a ten-gallon keg of whiskey, which they opened during the exercises, and of course did it full justice, and in the even- ing on the green sod had what they called a stag dance. They had four fiddles, and as many violinists, and it is said by one of the party, who now survives, that they had a splendid time. After they had danced to their hearts' content, they 'turned in,' as it was then called, and went to sleep soon, but when they woke up in the morn- ing they found that a band of Indians had run off some of their horses. They immediately organ- ized a party and started in pursuit. They followed
the trail of the Indians nearly all day and came upon their camp late in the afternoon. The Indians having traveled all night and part of the day were found asleep. Firing on them and killing three, they succeeded in recapturing the horses. They re- turned with them to camp and on the next day started on their journey, traveling northwesterly, arriving at a point near the foot of Sheep mountain, where they struck the Laramie plains. Shortly after they came out on the plains they were joined by a band of Cherokee Indians who were on their way from the Indian Territory to Oregon. These Indians told them that a few days before, a party of what they thought to be Ute Indians had run off a large band of their horses."
It is stated that the valley along the Poudre river afforded the finest kind of pasturage, as well as did the glades in the mountains. At that time it was a difficult matter to travel through the foothills, as well as in the mountains.
The banks of the rivers and creeks were grown up with a dense underbrush, which had to be cut away. Their course lay over the mountains whose grades were so steep that it became necessary in descending them, in some places, to tie a rope to the hind axle of the wagons and to wind it about a nearby tree and then play out the rope as the wagon descended. And in ascending, the moun- tains in places were so steep that it became neces- sary to hitch on ten yoke of oxen to one wagon to get it up the mountain. They traveled on the side of the mountain where it was so steep that it was necessary for four or five men to hold to ropes at- tached to the upper side of the wagon-box to keep it from tipping over.
The party traveled without further incident until they came again to the Oregon trail, at Devil's Gate on the Sweetwater river.
Greeley's Journey Through Larimer County
From Horace Greeley's "Overland Journey to California in 1859," is here reproduced so much of his narrative as treats of his trip from Denver to Fort Laramie, made in June of that year. The story is of absorbing interest as it depicts in well- chosen terms the trials and tribulations of a traveler through this section of Colorado in the early days when there were but few settlers in the wilderness and these scattered wide apart.
At the time Mr. Greeley passed through La- porte, where there was a small beginning of a set-
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tlement, there was not another house, barn or shed in the county save a cabin at the crossing of the Big Thompson, a few miles west of the present city of Loveland. At Laporte there were a few French Canadian trappers, all of the remainder of the county, with the exception noted, being unin- habited by white men. Indians with their tepees there were, but no white men had yet come to the county with the intention of settling and establish- ing homes for themselves in the wilderness.
Thousands of white men, some with families, had years before passed through the county from east to west and from north to south, either going further west or returning to their former Eastern homes, but they had no "stop overs," and rushed onward leaving the fertile valleys of the Cache la Poudre river and the Big and Little Thompson creeks untouched except by footsteps.
Mr. Greeley was the first white man to traverse the county who left any record of his experiences and impressions gained en route. He left Denver at 3:00 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, June 21st, 1859, in an ambulance wagon drawn by four mules, bound for Fort Laramie, where he expected to in- tercept and take passage in the Overland stage for California. Mr. Greeley does not say who ac- companied him on this part of his journey, but it is inferred that he had three companions. The first night out they camped at "Boulder City, a log ham- let of some thirty inhabitants." From this on the story is told as he tells it in his book :
"Here ('Boulder City') we found four wagons, two of them with horse teams, each conveying the luggage of four or five men, who having taken a look at these gold regions, had decided to push on for California, most of them, I believe, through what is known as the Cherokee trail, which forms part of the shortest practicable route from Denver to Salt Lake. I was strongly tempted at Denver to join one of these parties, and go through this pass ; had I stood firmly on both feet, I think I should have done it, saving distance though losing time. We all camped for the night beside a small brook, the rippling of whose waters over its pebbly bed fell soothingly on the drowsy ear. I had the wagon to myself for a bed chamber, while my three com- panions spread their buffalo skins and blankets on the grass and had the vault of heaven for their ceiling. The night was cool and breezy, our mules were picketed on the grass at a short distance, our supper of fried pork and pilot bread had satisfied us, and we slept quietly till the first dawn of day, when our mules were quickly harnessed and we left
our fellow campers torpid, pushing on fifteen miles and crossing two deep, swift, steep banked creeks (St. Vrain's fork and a branch of the Thompson creek) before stopping for feed and breakfast. After two hours' rest we harnessed up and made twenty-one miles more before stopping at the cross- ing of the outer fork of Thompson's creek, for dinner. Here we found a caravan moving from Missouri to California, which reminded me of the days of Abraham and Lot. It comprised six or seven heavy wagons, mainly drawn by oxen, with a light traveling carriage and a pair of horses convey- ing the patriarch's family, some two or three hun- dred head of cows, steers and young cattle, with three or four young men on horseback driving and keeping the herd. Girls were milking, women cooking or washing, children playing, in short, here was the material for a very fair settlement, or quite an imposing Kansas City. While we were snooz- ing, they hitched up and moved on before us, but we very soon overtook and passed them.
"Pushing on steadily over a reasonably level country, though crossed by many deep and steep- banked dry gullies, and perhaps one petty living stream, we stood at 5:00 P. M. on the south bank of Cache la Poudre, seventy miles from Denver, and by far the most formidable stream between the South Platte and the Laramie. Our conductor was as brave as mountaineers need be, but he was wary as well, and had seen so many people drowned in fording such streams , especially the Green river branch of the Colorado, on which he spent a year or two, that he chose to feel his way carefully. So he waited and observed for an hour or more, mean- time sending word to an old French mountaineer friend from Utah, who had pitched his tent here, that help was wanted. There had been a ferryboat at this crossing till two nights before, when it went down stream, and had not since been heard of. A horseman we met some miles below assured us that there was no crossing, but this we found a mistake, two men mounted on strong horses crossing safely before our eyes, and two heavy laden ox wagons succeeding them in doing the same.
"One of them stuck in the stream and the oxen had to be taken off and driven out, being unable to pull it while themselves were half buried in the swift current. But these crossings were made from the other side where the entrance was better and current rather favored the passage. The ox wagons were held to the bottom by the weight of their loads, while our 'ambulance' was light and likely to be swept down stream. At length our French
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friend appeared mounted on a powerful horse, with an Indian attendant on another such. He advised us to stay where we were for the night, promising to come in the morning with a heavy ox team and help us over. As this, however, involved a loss of at least ten miles on our next day's drive, our con- ductor resolved to make the attempt now. So the Frenchman on his strong horse took one of our lead mules by the halter and the Indian took the other and we went in, barely escaping an upset from going down the steep bank, obliquely, and thus throwing one side of our wagon much above the other, but we righted in a moment and went through, the water being at least three feet deep for about a hundred yards, the bottom broken by boulders, and the current very swift. We camped as soon as fairly over, lit a fire, and having obtained a quarter of antelope from our French friend, proceeded to prepare and discuss a very satisfactory meal. Table, of course, there was none, and unluckily we had lost our forks, but we still had two knives, a suf- ficiency of tin cups and plates, with an abundance of pork and pilot bread, and an old rag for table- cloth which had evidently seen hard service, and had gathered more dirt and blood in the course of it than a table-cloth actually needs. But the antelope ham was fresh, fat and tender, and it must have weighed less by three pounds when that supper was ended than when its preparation was commenced.
"Cache la Poudre seems to be the center of the antelope country. There are no settlements, save a small beginning just at the ford, as yet hardly three months old, between Denver, seventy miles on one side, and Fort Laramie, one hundred and thirty, on the other. The North Platte and the Laramie, both head in the mountains, forty to eighty miles due west of this point, thence pursuing a generally north course for more than one hundred miles among the hills, which are here lower and less steep than further south. The bold, high, regular front displayed by the Rocky Mountains for at least a hundred (and, I believe, for two hundred) miles south of the Cache la Poudre, hence gradually melt away into a succession of softer, rounder, lower hills; snow disappears; the line between the mountains and the plains no longer straight and sharply defined, and the still waters of the Plains have for some miles an alkaline appearance, besides being very scarce in summer. The Cherokee trail plunges into the mountains on the north side of and very near to Cache la Poudre, and henceforth we overtake no emigrants moving westward, none of any sort, but meet a few wagons making for
Boulder City or the Gregory diggings. Since we crossed Clear creek, on which there is on this trail a decent fringe of cottonwood, we had seen but the merest shred of small cottonwoods and some scrub willow at wide intervals along the larger water courses; but the pine still sparsely covered the face of the Rocky Mountains. Cache la Poudre has quite a fair belt of cottonwood, thenceforth there is scarcely a cord of wood to a township for the next fifty or sixty miles, and the pine is no longer visible on the hills near us, because they expose little but rock, and hence are swept by the annual fires. The high prairie on either side is thinly, poorly grassed, being of moderate fertility at best, often full of pebbles of the average size of a goose-egg, and ap- parently doomed to sterility by drouth. This region, though inferior in soil, and less smooth in surface is not dissimilar in its topography to Lom- bardy, and like it will in time be subjected to systematic irrigation, should the Rocky Mountain gold mines prove rich and extensive. Some of the streams crossed by our road might easily be so dammed at their egress from the mountains as to irrigate miles in width to the South Platte, forty or fifty miles distant, and at the price which vegetables must always command here should the gold mines prove inexhaustible, the enterprise would pay well. I was told at Cache la Poudre that encouraging signs of gold had been obtained in the stream, though it had only begun to be prospected.
"We were up and away betimes, still over thinly grassed, badly watered prairie, rather level in its general outlines, but badly cut by steep-banked water courses now dry. We drove fifteen miles and stopped for breakfast on a feeble tributary of Cache la Poudre, named Boxelder, for a small tree which I first observed here and which is poorer stuff, if possible, than cottonwood. This is the only tribu- tary which joins the Cache la Poudre below its egress from the mountains. All the streams of this region are largest where they emerge from the mountains, unless reinforced below by other streams having a like origin, the thirsty prairie con- tributes nothing, but begins to drink them up from the time they strike it. The smaller streams are thus entirely absorbed in the course of five or ten miles, unless they happen sooner to be lost in some larger creek. Drouth, throughout each summer, is the inexorable and destroying tyrant of the Plains."
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