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Show Years of Fulfillment 255 County Chronicle. The articles were filled with the rich lore of the Colorado Gold Rush: Chinese laundrymen, merchants, pio neer boys burdened with the support of their families; a dance hall girl turned wife and mother, a Southerner who had forgot ten that there were two sides to the War Between the States, and a young wife who died in childbirth. A prospector from California named William Green Russell was certain that gold existed in the creeks and streams on the slopes of the Rockies. In July 1858 his party camped near the mouth of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River and made a modest discovery. By early 1859 thousands of prospectors rushed to the new El Dorado, and some of them stopped at Russell's settlement to wait for the spring thaw at Pike's Peak and Long's Peak, thus providing the basis for what became Denver. eastern Much of the mining was concentrated at Central City, in Gilpin County. William Gilpin, a major in the Mexican War volunteer regiment of Alexander Doniphan, gave an address on "Pike's Peak and the San Juan" that was published in the 1859 Colorado guidebook and later published in The Central Gold Region. He was the first governor of the newly created Territory of Colorado. An ardent reader of Porter's articles and of Ann Hafen's and her husband LeRoy Hafen's histories of Colorado, Madelyn decided to celebrate their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary by hosting a costume party for relatives and friends at the Denver Club. Some 214 persons attended, so perhaps as many as 250 were invited. Madelyn'S verse invitation, given below, stimulat ed several verse replies: Come to the Denver Club Seven o'clock, Feb'ry the twentieth: Dinner and talk. See a production of Gilpin's first town; Meet the old settlers, now Lost to renown. |
