By Gayle L. Gresham
My love for Colorado maps began the first day of 4th grade at Cherry Valley Elementary School in Douglas County. Mr. O’Quinn, teacher in the “Big Room” (4th – 6th grades) walked to the front of the classroom, pulled a shiny new Colorado map down from its roller and announced a map drill. Before I knew it, I was hearing the names of towns I’d never heard before—Wild Horse, Rifle and Grover—and finding them on the Colorado map. Over the next three years my speed increased as I spent my spare time poring over the map, searching for obscure towns, learning the sixty-three counties and county seats, and finding towns my family had visited.
Years later, I renewed my love affair with Colorado maps when I started researching my family history. Maps became more personal as I searched for the mining camp of “Cash Creek” where my great-great-grandparents first settled in Colorado in 1861. Located between Buena Vista and Leadville, “Cash Creek” became Cache Creek in the later 1860’s and disappeared in the 1870’s when the new town of Granite sprung up. I visited Cache Creek and walked the land where my ancestors had walked; I even panned for gold in Cache Creek! I began buying county plat maps using township and range to locate homesteads and ranches and USGS maps to study the terrain and landmarks. One of my favorite map tools, Google Earth, allows me to sit at home and soar over the mountains. I can zoom in on Cache Creek and observe the crater that hydraulic mining left behind and add the GPS coordinates of places my husband and I have visited. It’s a great way to experience places I’m researching and writing about when I can’t actually be there.
Colorado maps are works in progress. From the time of Colorado’s earliest explorers to the work of the Colorado Geological Survey today, maps have evolved as boundaries change, new roads are built, and more detailed maps are produced using modern technology. Knowledge of how Colorado maps have changed over the years gives a better understanding of both the history of the state and the land today.
Early Colorado Maps
The hope and promise of gold always played a part in the history of Colorado. Early Spanish expeditions sent conquistadors into the mysterious lands north of Santa Fe in attempts to locate mythical cities of gold. In 1540, Coronado went in search of one of the Seven Cities of Cibola and may have travelled through the southeast corner of Colorado when he returned to Mexico empty-handed. More Spanish explorers made forays into the mountains searching for gold, writing about their journeys rather than drawing maps to make it harder for others to follow their paths. The first surviving map of any region in Colorado was drawn by Miera y Pacheco, a member of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition in 1776 which passed through western Colorado while searching for an overland route to California.
Spain ceded a large parcel of land to France in 1800, then France sold this land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Most of present-day eastern Colorado became a part of the United States with this transaction while western Colorado remained in the ownership of Spain. The boundaries changed again when Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836. The new Republic of Texas included not only southeastern Colorado south of the Arkansas River, but also the San Luis Valley with the Rio Grande as the western border, and it telescoped up the Arkansas Valley past the Arkansas River’s headwaters all the way to the forty-second parallel north of present-day Laramie, Wyoming! Texas was annexed into the United States in 1845 and the northern land claims of Texas were sold to the United States in the 1850 Compromise.
Looking at the names of landmarks, towns and rivers, we can see the influence of the early Spanish explorers and the later American explorers Zebulon Pike, Stephen Long, John C. Fremont and John W. Gunnison. What would Colorado be without the Sangre de Cristos, Pikes Peak, Long’s Peak and the Gunnison River? Each explorer brought a new understanding of this land with their stories and maps, and left an indelible mark upon the state.
By the 1859 Pikes Peak gold rush, Colorado was parceled out to the territories of Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah. Kansas became a state on January 29, 1861 and one month later Colorado became a territory on February 28, 1861. The new Colorado Territory consisted of seventeen counties, two of which (El Paso and Fremont) are located in the same places today, although their shapes and sizes changed, and Arapahoe, which ran vertically in Kansas
Territory and became horizontal in Colorado Territory. Colorado had 26 counties when it became a state on August 1, 1876. Counties were added as populations grew and people wanted closer county seats when distances were far in larger counties. By 1913, there were 63 counties. The number of counties didn’t change for 85 years until the proposed Broomfield County was approved by the voters of Colorado in 1998.
The Homestead Act of 1862
When the gold played out in the gold fields, some miners took up homesteads in Colorado Territory rather than returning to their homes in the east. Others moved from the east to take up land in Colorado. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed U.S. citizens to file an application and lay claim on 160 acres of government-surveyed land. The 40th parallel, the line between Nebraska and Kansas, became an important baseline for surveying the homestead lands. Baseline
Road in Boulder, which is aligned with the 40th parallel, was used as the basis for up to 70 percent of the surveyed lands in Colorado Territory.
In order to receive a patent on the land, the homesteader needed to live on the land for five years and make the required improvements upon the land, which included a 12 x 14 dwelling and raising crops. After the homesteader proved up his land, he received a land patent or deed of title to the land. Civil War veterans were allowed to deduct the time they served in the war from the residency requirements. People could also purchase land by residing on the homestead for six months, making some improvements and paying the government $1.25 an acre. An 1866 Map of Public Surveys in Colorado Territory shows early townships running along the Front Range along with detailed mapping of the goldfields.
If you are interested in learning if your ancestors had a homestead or held a land patent, the Bureau of Land Management offers General Land Office Records, which is available to the public. You can search the website by last name and first name in any state where the Homestead Act was in effect. Once you locate a name, it will show how many patents they held, what counties the patents were issued in and the date they were issued. Remember land patents were only given to the first homesteader or owner of the land, so if the land was purchased from someone else there won’t be a land patent. Click on the name and it will take you to the patent description detailing the number of acres and the title transfer information which again gives the date and the authority or the method of how the land was obtained – Homestead Entry or Cash Entry. The Legal Land Description gives the Township, Range and Section numbers for the land. Once you have the land description, you can find the land on a map with Township and Range such as a county plat map or a USGS quadrangle map.
It’s also possible to search the General Land Office records in reverse. If you have the township, range, and section of a place you are wondering who held the original patent, you can click on the “standard” tab and enter the land description and it will give a list of the land patents in that section.
Geological Surveys
The Territory of Colorado began to be topographically and geologically mapped in 1867 by Clarence King along the 40th parallel. F.V. Hayden, who was in charge of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories, started surveying parts of Colorado in 1869. Hayden led a focused effort in 1873 by setting up three divisions for field operations in South Park, Middle Park and North Park. Hayden completed his Colorado work in 1877 and published The Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado. Today we enjoy an added benefit to Hayden’s surveying expeditions—William Henry Jackson, noted photographer of the great west, worked as the photographer for the Hayden Survey and left us with a legacy of photographs recording the mining camps and towns of the time and breathtaking vistas of Colorado Rocky Mountain grandeur. To view a collection of Hayden’s maps and Jackson’s photographs, visit the Denver Public Library’s Digital Image Collection.
The Colorado Geological Survey (CGS) and United States Geological Survey (USGS) carry on the work of Hayden today. The entire state of Colorado has been mapped topographically to a detailed scale of 1:24,000 and the CGS is currently working on mapping the state geologically to the same scale. Geological mapping includes details of the distribution of rocks, deposits, or other geologic features along with detecting geological hazards. These detailed maps are especially useful in areas where development is occurring. Colorado is divided into almost 1800 quadrangles which cover about 56 square miles each or 7.5 minutes of latitude and longitude. According to Dave Noe, Statemap Manager of CGS, “We’ve completed field mapping for 89 maps; 79 are completed and published.”
When I look at a Colorado map today, I think of the changes in the past 200-plus years; the people who explored and mapped the land, the boundaries that evolved, and the towns that boomed and disappeared. Each map in succession records the lives of the people who passed through or lived in Colorado in each era. And when I discover a Colorado map I haven’t seen before, I feel the same thrill I felt as a child when that shiny new Colorado map was pulled down.
Colorado was parceled out stanwyck.com
1866 Map of Public Surveys photoswest.org
General Land Office Records glorecords.blm.gov
Township and Range outfitters.com
Digital Image Collection history.denverlibrary.org
Colorado Geological Survey geosurvey.state.co.us
United States Geological Survey usgs.gov